Fire union’s campaign website.
Mayor Toni Harp Monday blasted firefighter union leadership as “irresponsible” for “stoking fears” about plans to switch from a second fire truck to an ambulance at the Ellsworth Avenue firehouse.
“The union is sort of skewing what is going on in a way that really creates a lot of fear and makes people think we’re closing a firehouse. We’re not,” Harp remarked.
Harp made the comment on her latest appearance on WNHH’s “Mayor Monday.” During the program, she also offered a vigorous defense of embattled schools Superintendent Garth Harries.
A Harp administration committee, which included two former fire chiefs, has drawn up a plan to put Engine 9 out of commission at the Ellsworth Avenue firehouse and replace it with a smaller paramedic unit. An estimated 75 to 80 percent of the approximately 25,000 calls that come into the fire department each year are for medical services. The administration argues that it will cost less — and get firefighters there more quickly — to send the smaller ambulances. It is seeking to increase from two to four the number of department ambulances in the city. The west side of town currently doesn’t have one in operation.
It costs $750,000 to $800,000 to purchase and then fully outfit an engine, according to emergency management chief Rick Fontana, a member of the committee that drew up the plan. Four firefighters are needed to operate it. The two new paramedic units recently purchased by the city cost $55,000 and $90,000, he said.
Harp argued on the program that the big engines wear out faster by being sent unnecessarily to medical calls, and they’re harder to navigate through narrow streets, especially in winter.
The proposed change “actually is a more efficient way to carry out the business of the fire department,” Harp said. “I don’t understand why the leadership of the fire union doesn’t get that, and why they are stoking fears in people. It is irresponsible and unacceptable to me that they are doing that. … We are actually making people safer.”
Firefighters union President Frank Ricci responded after the show that the union’s campaign has been factual. You can see its case presented on this website created to oppose the plan.
Ricci said the Harp administration is the side confusing people. It is equating “engine company” fire trucks with “squad” trucks. Both can be hooked up to hydrants to fight fires. But squads have additional equipment for water and boat rescue and extricating people.
The Ellsworth firehouse is one of only two of 10 in the city to have both an engine company and a squad truck. The Harp administration plans to keep Squad 2 at the firehouse. It will serve as the neighborhood’s fire truck to respond quickly to fires, Fontana said.
Ricci argued that because squads are loaded with more emergency equipment, they’re not ideal for being the first on the scene to hook up and fight a fire. Fontana disagreed: “They’re both engines. They have the same equipment on them as an engine.”
Ricci argued that squads cover an entire city, not a neighborhood, so the Edgewood and West River neighborhoods will no longer be able to count on four-to-five-minute response times to fires if the change goes into effect. Fontana countered that the plan is to make Squad 2 a local engine for Ellsworth Avenue, not a citywide unit.
The semantic difference also plays into a contractual difference. Fontana pointed out that Section 37.3 of the current fire union contract specifically allows the fire chief to “redeploy men from an engine company to two additional paramedic” units. The city recently purchased two ambulances. Ricci argued that because a “squad” can’t be considered an “engine company,” the section doesn’t apply.
Fontana countered that the squad is a firetruck that does what Engine 9 did. Ricci is “splitting hairs,” Fontana argued. “The fire chief will make that decision. Not Frank Ricci.”
New Haven is about to get a new fire chief. Mayor Harp said on the “Mayor Monday” program that she interviewed three finalists for the open job last week. She said the city is in the process of making an offer to her final choice, whom she declined to name for now.
School Change
Harp was also on fire during the program when asked by a listener about the controversy surrounding Superintendent of Schools Garth Harries, whom members of the Board of Education and some members of the public are seeking to oust from office.
“It’s no secret: There has been an acrimonious relationship between some of the board members and Garth Harries,” Harp said.
“When you come in to reform something, people bristle. People who are teachers may bristle. The administrators may bristle. The people who’ve always done it this way, ‘We never did it that way,’ bristle.
“We’re in the middle of what I consider to be the biggest civil rights challenge in America, and that’s the achievement gap. What we have always done, the way that we’ve always done it, doesn’t work…. We’ve got to do something that creates change. New Haven has been on the forefront of change around teacher evaluation, principal evaluation, administrator evaluation. Well, everyone’s not happy about that. I know what we’ve always done doesn’t work. I know we’ve made incremental progress by instituting these changes. The question for me: Is it enough fast enough?
“But I also know that people really have trouble with change. It’s very disconcerting as a human being to have a platform that is constantly moving and changing. But if our urban children are going to be competitive in a knowledge-based economy — and that economy is actually changing — they’ve got to be educated. They’ve got to have good numeracy skills. They’ve got to have good reading skills. We’re fighting over how to teach that.”
Click here to hear previous interviews with opponents laying out their case against Harries.
Click on or download the above sound file to listen to the full episode of WNHH radio’s “Mayor Monday.” The discussion about the fire department begins at 10:54; the Garth Harries discussion begins at 27:00.
Today’s episode was made possible with the support of Gateway Community College and Berchem, Moses & Devlin, P.C.