City, fire union to meet on contract

Can the city of Kalispell and its firefighters come to a new pay agreement and avert layoffs?

City officials will meet with the local firefighters union on Wednesday morning to discuss a possible revision to a new contract.

The City Council last week ratified a three-year contract with the International Association of Firefighters Local 547. That vote ratified a recent binding arbitration ruling that favored firefighters on all 14 points and includes salary and longevity increases - at an estimated cost to the city of $690,000 over three years.

Last week, Mayor Tammi Fisher and council member Duane Larson suggested the city meet with the union to try to renegotiate the contract after City Manager Jane Howington called for layoffs or privatizing the city ambulance service to address the additional costs.

Howington said the new contract will cost the city $129,000 an additional the first year, $245,000 the second year and $318,000 the third year.

Firefighters' union President Kirk Pederson said the union would meet with city officials once the city provided the numbers they were using to estimate the impact of the arbitration decision.

The city released some numbers Monday morning.

These are based on a maximum liability method that presumes firefighters will use a Kelly day as a work day, vacation day, sick day or personal days, which they have the right to do.

Kelly days are normally scheduled days off without pay. The city requires firefighters who work 10 24-hour days to take one Kelly day.

Howington said firefighters typically use a minimum liability method that assumes firefighters will not work a Kelly day, or use it for vacation, sickness or as a personal day.

Previously the city used an averaging method somewhere between the maximum and minimum methods, Howington said, but this did not budget for Kelly days, which left an unfunded liabilty. As a result, the city had to pull $60,000 from its contingency fund a couple of years ago, she said.

Howington said the ambulance fund is not losing money right now, but "the costs will go up dramatically under the new contract."

The current budget shows $25,000 more in expenses than revenues in the ambulance fund, not including $107,000 in cash reserves. Those reserves represent 13.77 percent of the ambulance fund's $777,087 budget.

Since coming to Kalispell in August 2009, Howington has made increasing the city's cash reserves one of her top priorities. She would like to have 15 percent of the budget on hand in cash reserves in order to pay expenses until tax payments come in. With that philosophy in mind, Howington does not want to raid the contingency fund or cash reserves to pay for Kelly days.

Kalispell ended the 2010 fiscal year with $630,000 in cash reserves. The city aimed for $900,000 when the 2011 fiscal year ends June 30, but Howington said it could be closer to $820,000 because the City Council chose to pay for three police cars up front with some $75,000 from cash reserves.

Howington said that one reason the ambulance fund would go into the red with the new contract is because the city has allocated lower-end firefighter salaries to the ambulance fund to bring it into balance.

Those costs will go up significantly under the new contract. The lowest firefighter salary is $41,093 per year, but will go up to $47,696 under the new contract. When benefits are included, the same salary goes from $55,701 to $63,631.

There are 30 firefighters affected by the new contract. Howington would not say how many would have to be laid off to balance the budget. That may be revealed during Wednesday's meeting.

Reporter Caleb Soptelean may be reached at 758-4483 or by email at csoptelean@dailyinterlake.com.