The Chelsea Area Fire Authority board approved a budget adjustment of $160,000 to cover the renovation costs for Fire Station 2 in Lima Township at its meeting on Tuesday, July 21.
The mid-year adjustment will come from CAFA’s reserve funds, which before the transfer, stood at about $650,000.
“I’ve visited the Lima Station,” Lima Township resident Gary Adams told the board, “It’s quite impressive and seems to work well.”
Lima Township Supervisor and CAFA Board Member Craig Maier told the board that “It seems like (firefighter) Ian Ballard has been busy as a squirrel down there working on it,” when he’s stopped by.
The building owner, Bob Van Schoick, who paid for a lot of upgrades on the station, also agreed to push back CAFA’s first lease payment to Sept. 1, Maier said.
On other business, Fire Chief Jim Payeur said CAFA’s HR company, YourSource, has been working on implementing the newly ratified contract with the firefighters.
The board held a lengthy discussion about an addendum/letter of understanding to the contract, which was not included in the ratified contract. The board voted to accept portions of it but also to make changes to the agreement before sending it to the firefighter’s union.
However, Ron Palmquist, labor relations specialist who was in the audience, told the board, “The letter of understanding is not complete and we don’t accept it. We’ll just go with the contract.”
Below is a statement from Palmquist about the contract:
“At a meeting on July 9, the Chelsea Fire Fighters Local 1889 of the Michigan Association of Fire Fighters (MAFF) ratified the tentative agreement between the Chelsea Area Fire Authority (CAFA) and MAFF.
The CAFA Board had previously ratified the agreement on July 6.
The union believes that this is a fair and equitable agreement for the employees, the authority and the citizens of the communities that CAFA provides fire services to. This contract brings these fire fighters closer to the wages and benefit levels of the fire service in Washtenaw County.
Even with the wage increases in this contract on average Washtenaw County fire departments Ann Arbor Township, Dexter, Saline, Scio and Superior are paid 21.2 percent higher wages than CAFA fire fighters.
The hope is that with the increases in this contract and hopefully in future contracts, we will be able to keep good employees at CAFA instead of seeing them get trained and certified by CAFA only to see them leave for higher paying departments.
CAFA Board Chairman Rod Anderson is quoted as saying, “This is a substantial increase in wages” and it is, however, we still have a ways to go in order to be competitive and retain good employees. As an example with the wage increases in this contract a Chelsea Police Department full-time dispatcher makes $2.66 more per hour than a Fire Captain working for CAFA.
It is attributed to CAFA Board Chairman Anderson that the fire fighters raises in the new contract retroactive to Jan. 1, plus needed repairs to the main fire station will force the Board to dip into their reserve fund about $100,000. However, very little of this is a result of this agreement with CAFA.
The CAFA 2015 budget had increased funding for wages by 14.7 percent and increased funding for fringe benefits including health and dental by $49,089. In this contract CAFA will instead realize a $36,000 savings for the remainder of this year on healthcare and $72,000 savings in 2016 over their current healthcare costs.
Maybe the dip into reserve funds is more attributable to the thousands of dollars over budget regarding the build out of Lima Township CAFA Station #2 and the unbudgeted funds that were paid to
Dexter Fire because CAFA Station #2 wasn’t operational until July 1, instead of the original Jan. 1, date. The repairs at Station #1 have also exceeded the budgeted amounts.
CAFA’s reserve fund stands at $644,234 as stated in their Bank Accounts Report dated 05/31/15 and their 2014 Audit Report showed their total expenditures for 2014 was $1,390,622.That would put their
reserve fund at 46.3 percent of their prior year’s expenditures. The Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) would like to see reserve funds anywhere from 17 percent to 20 percent of prior year’s expenditures.
Even with the “about $100,000 dip” the reserve fund will still be 39.1 percent over the prior year’s expenditures, well above the GASB guidelines.
