Thursday, December 19, 2013

Fire Department staffing and retirement budget concerns in Palo Alto


Daily News/Jason Green, Staff writer, 12/18/13.  "Palo Alto Fire Department braces for retirement tsunami."

Palo Fire firefighters hired prior to 2011
are eligible to retire at age 50
....  "The last time the city saw a double-digit exodus was in 2011. A new contract inked at the time eliminated minimum staffing requirements and required firefighters to pick up more of their pension costs.  This time around, Nickel said, the coming wave is simply due to employees reaching retirement age.

Altogether, 49 of the department's 115 employees will become eligible for retirement  within the next five years, said Ian Hagerman, a senior analyst with the city. The average age of an employee is 42. Firefighters who were hired before 2011 can retire at the age of 50."  Read article.

Related article Palo Alto online/Palo Alto Weekly/Gennady Sheyner, 12/18/13.  "Fire Department braces for retirement wave."  "More than a dozen Palo Alto firefighters, including many in leadership positions, are expected to retire in the next year or two, prompting the department to ramp up its succession planning, Fire Chief Eric Nickel told a City Council committee Tuesday night. ....  The trend helped fuel the department's higher overtime expenditures this fiscal year, in part due to increased training. Last week, the department reported that it had spent $718,000 on overtime in the first quarter, which started July 1 -- 50 percent of its annual budget and $133,000 more than it had expended last year during the same period. .... While this year's overtime figures represent an increase over last year, members of the council's Finance Committee were generally satisfied with Nickel's explanations. Their biggest concern was over the rise of worker-compensation cases, which Nickel characterized as a "spike" but not a "trend."

Reference City of Palo Alto Fire Department.  And  Flickriver, Palo Alto Fire Department pdf photographs.  Note:  photograph is from a Los Altos Patch photo archive.

Posted by Kathy Meeh

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

How does Palo Alto effect us?

Kathy Meeh said...

714, gee, I don't know. Its a mystery. FMV your comment is spam.

Guess you'll just have to figure out whether what happens in Palo Alto or outside city boundaries has any relevance to Pacifica or you, or to anyone else, or not. And if you can't figure it out, personally I don't care.

I post what I think is of interest. And whether that is of interest to you personally, who cares? Not me. Submitting alternative articles is up to you not me. Are you doing that??? I don't thinks so.