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Q&A
Overtime usage in FDNY and EMS operations
1:41:30
·
4 min
Council Member Ariola inquires about overtime usage in FDNY and EMS operations, given recent mayoral directives on overtime control. Commissioners Tucker and Christoff provide detailed responses on the current state of overtime usage and its necessity.
- Over 80% of fire side overtime is tied to field operations, including staffing posts and contractually mandated overtime
- 70-80% of EMS overtime is related to field operations and emergency medical dispatch
- Overtime control measures are not aimed at reducing public services or the number of units in operation
- The focus is on reducing overtime through increased headcount and accelerated promotions
Joann Ariola
1:41:30
Thank you.
1:41:31
Let's talk about overtime.
1:41:33
So the mayoral director on overtime control has been placing strict limits on overtime spending across all city agencies including FDNY and EMS.
1:41:44
Given that FDNY has long relied on overtime to compensate for the staffing shortages and high call volumes, these restrictions may impact response times recruitment and overall service delivery.
1:41:58
What percentage of FDNY and EMS operations currently rely on overtime to meet service demands and how has this changed since the implementation of the mayoral directive?
Robert Tucker
1:42:10
I'm gonna let commissioner Christophe give you the specific numbers, but what I would say is that you and the committee and the public should know that neither the mayor nor the OMB director wants public safety impacted by the overtime directive.
1:42:33
Where we can look at overtime differently is in our discretionary overtime, not necessarily in our uniformed, member overtime.
1:42:45
The numbers will inherently come down.
1:42:48
We're about to promote how many captains in the 40 more captains and 64 more lieutenants.
1:42:57
The more we get the right number of captains and lieutenants and battalion chiefs and deputy chiefs in the seats and firefighters in the seats, naturally there's an expense that comes along with that but the overtime expense will come down.
1:43:12
And so I'm working very closely with the OMB director on that.
1:43:18
He just approved 26 fire marshals and four supervising fire marshals.
1:43:25
That'll bring down over time.
1:43:29
So I think starting to be able to make the argument more coherently.
1:43:37
But over time, we're operating a lot of overtime in the fire department.
1:43:40
Commissioner?
Lizette Christoff
1:43:42
Yeah.
1:43:42
So to follow-up on what the commissioner was saying, on the fire side, over 80% of our overtime is tied to field operations.
1:43:51
That's staffing posts in the field, that's contractually mandated field overtime including the overtime that's built into firefighter schedules as well as overtime related to late calls or moving firefighters across different locations to equalize staffing.
1:44:06
On the EMS end, 70% of our overtime is related to field operations, staffing ambulances.
1:44:13
It goes up to a similar 80% if you include overtime associated with emergency medical dispatch which are EMS call takers and dispatchers that respond to nine eleven calls for medical emergencies.
1:44:25
None of the overtime control measures are aimed at reducing public services, so we're not looking to reduce the number of units that are in operation at all.
1:44:36
The focus on reducing that kind of field overtime has come on the side of trying to increase headcount.
1:44:42
So on the fire side we've been looking to accelerate firefighter classes, get them through more quickly.
1:44:49
We did actually work with OMB in the summer.
1:44:52
They approved additional resources to help us with processing candidates.
1:44:57
So they approved an additional 24 staff for us primarily in our candidate investigation division, but also including folks in health services and in other parts of the department to make sure that we were able to process candidates quickly in order to get those classes through.
1:45:14
We've also made some changes on the training side to double the number of fire lieutenants that we can promote at one time.
1:45:22
So traditionally we've done about 32 at a time, but as the commissioner noted, our next set of lieutenant promotions is actually going to be 64.
1:45:31
Those 48 captains that we also talked about are positions above our budgeted headcount and we are doing that in order to bring down this kind of ordered overtime.
1:45:43
The focus otherwise has been on the remainder of our overtime, which is discretionary.
1:45:48
So it's making sure that full duty personnel are in the field as much as possible, that we are leveraging our light duty personnel for any non field tasks that can happen and seeing where we can reduce things in non field areas.