Bloomington firefighters: Low wages, staffing shortages imperil public safety

While the administration of Mayor John Hamilton has given firefighters a 3% pay boost over the contractually obligated 2% raise, firefighter union leaders said the increase is not nearly enough to make up for small pay bumps the firefighters received during the pandemic. In fact, they said, colleagues in the county and smaller cities, including Ellettsville, earn thousands of dollars more per year.

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Firefighter Jordan Canada, president of the local firefighters union, said the union has requested a 12% pay raise, to be paid with COVID-19 relief dollars, to bridge the current pay gap with county and Ellettsville departments. The union also has asked the administration to open contract negotiations early. The current contract expires next year.

However, Canada said, the mayor’s office has not responded to those requests.

“We don’t feel heard,” he said.

The Hamilton administration disagrees with some of the firefighters’ assessments, including that response times have increased, that vehicles are left unmanned because of the firefighter departures and that the administration isn't listening to the firefighters' concerns.

The mayor was at a conference this week and not available for interviews, but Andrew Krebbs, a spokesman for the administration, said the department’s data do not show an increase in response times.

Firefighters said the staffing shortage frequently prevents them from using their "squad" vehicle for medical emergencies. The squad, an F-150 pickup, can respond to fires with one firefighter but it needs two people to respond to medical emergencies, meaning sometimes medical calls are handled by a larger vehicle designated for fire calls. If that vehicle is busy with a medical call when a fire call comes in, another station may be dispatched, increasing response times.

Krebbs said the above scenario is rare.

"There have been a few instances in the past couple of weeks due to vacations and Spring Break when the squad vehicle could not run a call because it only had one employee assigned to it during a shift," he said. "It's not something that typically happens. Even in those instances, response times have not been affected."

Firefighters: Exodus because of low wages

 Firefighter Shaun Huttenlocker, the union’s secretary/treasurer, said the union projects the department will lose at least 17 firefighters this year, which would be an eight-year high. Data provided by the union show between 2015 and 2018, an average of four firefighters left the department per year. Since then, the average annual turnover has nearly tripled. Twenty-seven have left in the last two years.

On Thursday, the department had 87 firefighters, Canada said, or 23 fewer than budgeted.

Even worse, union officials said, in recent years, the department has seen more experienced firefighters depart. Of those who left last year, half had more than 20 years of experience. That dynamic, union leaders said, has forced the department to lower its standards for leadership positions because otherwise it would not be able to fill those roles.

And, the union leaders said, rookies often join the Bloomington department, get their certifications and then leave a couple of years later for better pay. That means the city of Bloomington pays for the training and certifications, but then loses the expertise to nearby departments that pay more.

Whereas pay used to be competitive, union leaders said the local base pay, at about $57,000, now lags even the department in Ellettsville, which pays firefighters a base of $62,000. Ellettsville recently gave all town employees a $10,000 raise. The Bloomington City Council last year, on a request by Hamilton, pushed through a countywide income tax increase. Ellettsville officials, who opposed the increase, used the dollars for the employee salary increase.

Income tax hike:Ellettsville's full-time employees could get a $10K raise

Krebbs said the tax increase the city council approved was not as large as the mayor requested, but will still be used for public safety, including additional pay for police officers, who have been dealing with similar salary-related staffing issues. Krebbs said some of the income tax dollars also will be used to refurbish and rebuild fire stations, some of which were damaged by flooding.

Huttenlocker said the vast majority of Bloomington firefighters who leave cited the low salaries as the primary reason for their departure. As the sixth-largest city in Indiana by population, Bloomington pays the 23rd-highest wages, he said, lagging smaller cities including Columbus, Portage and New Albany.

The staffing shortage also is requiring the remaining firefighters to work more overtime, which leaves many more fatigued and gives them another reason to look for a different department, the union leaders said.

Hamilton administration: Early negotiations ‘inappropriate’

Krebbs said many Indiana fire departments deal with similar challenges, in part because of an overall staffing shortage and because of state legislation passed in 2021 that allows firefighters to live outside of the cities where they work.

He also said the mayor gave firefighters a 3% bonus beyond the contractual obligation and plans to do so again next year. The mayor, Krebbs said, also has offered unique retention/hiring incentives to defray rental and home ownership costs.

More:Bloomington offers unique housing incentive to attract and keep cops and firefighters

The department also is in the process of hiring between 12 and 15 new firefighters, he said.

However, Canada said that those new firefighters won't work a shift until probably November, which means the department at the end of this year will have gained fewer firefighters than it is projected to lose.

Krebbs said Hamilton and others in the administration have met with firefighters a handful of times since the city adopted the 2023 budget and plan to meet again later this month.

“We are listening,” Krebbs said. “We don’t want hiring and retention to be an issue."

However, he said while Hamilton and his staff recognize the difficulties the department is facing, the administration believes it would be “inappropriate” to reopen contract negotiations in an election year. Those talks, he said, should instead happen next year under the new mayor and chief.

City Council member Isabel Piedmont-Smith said the higher number of firefighter departures and the higher salaries paid by smaller departments “is a problem.”

Piedmont-Smith was among a majority of council members who in 2021 urged the Hamilton administration to address low police pay. Some council members even threatened to not pass the mayor’s budget proposal unless he took action on police pay.

However, Piedmont-Smith said she was not sure the council is eager to revisit that “nuclear option” for firefighter pay. That’s in part because of timing. If contract negotiations were to be opened early, they would have to start soon, and it’s difficult for council members to threaten to veto a budget they haven’t seen yet.  Budget talks usually happen in late summer. 

In addition, she said, while Hamilton will propose the budget for 2024, he won’t be in office that year, as the city will have a new mayor and potentially a significantly changed city council. That, too, makes it difficult to intervene in contract negotiations this year.

Council member Susan Sandberg, one of the council members who pushed for higher police salaries, said via email that she, too, worried about the firefighters leaving.

“We continue to lose valuable and experienced personnel, which means money is walking out our doors and into the arms of other cities who also want a solid workforce taking care of basic city services,” she said. “In the end, we will get what we are willing to invest in.”