Thank you to those that have already pointed out the discrepancies/misinformation in the City’s “Addressing Misinformation” post. Below are the City’s statements and IAFF Local 439’s response.

 

-ADDRESSING MISINFORMATION-
A Facebook post by the Elgin Association of Firefighters, IAFF Local 439 suggests drastic service reductions have been approved for Fire Station 6, which is not true.

The only reason service changes to Station 6 are being discussed is because the fire union has refused to defer raises in 2021, like all other City departments.

-The City never offered to “defer” raises. They offered to eliminate the 2021 2.5% wage increase in return for a 1 year contract extension with a 2.5% raise in 2022. In their offer the City REFUSED any guarantees that they would not reduce daily staffing, which would lead to reduced services. The Firefighters Union made multiple verbal offers of deferring the wage increase to a later year or years. The Firefighters Union also made a written offer that included eliminating their pay raise in return for minimum manning safeguards in the contract in order to prevent further cuts/reductions in services.The City refused this and all other offers. It should be noted that the 2021 raise in question is not a new raise. It was bargained, budgeted and planned for by the City in the Collective Bargaining Agreement starting in 2018.

The City is not closing station 6 or permanently retiring a piece of equipment.

-The Firefighters Union never made either of these statements or claims.

No decisions have been made to change the current service model, but discussions have taken place to replace the engine at Station 6 with an ambulance.

-The Firefighters Union received a letter on December 30, 2020 which stated the City’s intent to consider reducing staffing, remove an Engine from service, and run an ambulance from Station 6 by lowering the minimum number of firefighters working on each daily shift. The Fire Chief has already explained his operational change to his department. The Fire Chief also has stated on several occasions that this change is an overall reduction in service.

Station 6 does not currently have an ambulance in regular service, and instead uses a fire engine to respond to ambulance calls.

-This is true and the Firefighters Union never stated it wasn’t.

Ambulance calls comprise the overwhelming majority of Engine 6’s activity in a given year.

-This is true and the Firefighters Union never stated it wasn’t.

Station 6, the City’s most centrally located station, is supported with fire fighting apparatus coverage from the surrounding six other stations in Elgin.

-Every station is supported by the other 6 stations. Engines, Trucks and Ambulances frequently respond to other station’s districts when the in-district vehicles are on calls or unavailable. Removing any of these fire apparatus will result in an increase of response times because a neighboring station will now have to respond to that call.