Tacoma turns down $1 million in concessions from fire union
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TACOMA, Wash. -- The city has turned down $1 million in concessions from the Tacoma Fire Union that could have restored some services at two of its fire stations.
The union made the offer in an attempt to reverse the cutbacks that left two stations without fire engines and one of them open only during daytime.
The union said it will make sure the Tacoma City Council hears its side of the story, and hopes a counter offer will be made sometime in the future.
The cutbacks left Station 13 and Station 15 without fire engines and with just two firefighters as of 7 a.m. Tuesday. Station 13 began operating only from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m.
The new deployment model was tested within its first hour of operation when a house caught on fire fewer than two blocks from Station 13.
The department responded to the electrical fire at 4010 N. 25th St. at 7:49 a.m., with the first fire engine arriving at 7:53 a.m. from Station 9 on 6th Avenue.
Two residents were inside the house at the time, Tacoma Fire Department spokesperson Jim Zuluaga said, but there were no reported injuries.
The station's newly formed Squad 13, a team of two firefighters in a pick-up truck, was actually responding to another call at the time.
If the squad had been available, its role would have been to search the home and rescue anyone inside, not necessarily to extinguish the blaze.
The union made the offer in an attempt to reverse the cutbacks that left two stations without fire engines and one of them open only during daytime.
The union said it will make sure the Tacoma City Council hears its side of the story, and hopes a counter offer will be made sometime in the future.
The cutbacks left Station 13 and Station 15 without fire engines and with just two firefighters as of 7 a.m. Tuesday. Station 13 began operating only from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m.
The new deployment model was tested within its first hour of operation when a house caught on fire fewer than two blocks from Station 13.
The department responded to the electrical fire at 4010 N. 25th St. at 7:49 a.m., with the first fire engine arriving at 7:53 a.m. from Station 9 on 6th Avenue.
Two residents were inside the house at the time, Tacoma Fire Department spokesperson Jim Zuluaga said, but there were no reported injuries.
The station's newly formed Squad 13, a team of two firefighters in a pick-up truck, was actually responding to another call at the time.
If the squad had been available, its role would have been to search the home and rescue anyone inside, not necessarily to extinguish the blaze.
If the liberals don't want to pay, let the city burn down.
 @Common Sense Is there anything you won't blame on "the liberals"?
Cuts in emergency services should be from administrative down... seriously what is a fire station without a fire engine... what the hell
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"The cutbacks left Station 13 and Station 15 without fire engines"
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So...where did they go? Were they sold? Given away? Scrapped?
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Inquiring minds want to know.
Re: union salaries. The State of Washington K-12 salary allocation schedule lists the starting salary for new teachers with BA degrees at $33,400 in most districts. It rises to $40,000 for those with master's degrees. According to the salary schedule, someone with a BA degree needs to teach for 15 years to earn $55,000 in our state.Â
This article doesn't give enough details to make an educated guess at what the problems are. I'm sure there's more to it than what meets the eye.
WHY did they decline it? Â That's the biggest part of the story.
PRIORITIZE!
You ALL can bash emergency services all you want UNITL you are out of breath with chest pain.. THEN it ALL changes.......................
just how much does the city have to pump into the police and firefighters retirement funds, that is a major cost to any city, if the police and firefighters have primo retirement programs it is getting to expensive for cities, counties to afford.
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 @Humble Pubic Servant Do you work for the city of Tacoma? or do you work for some other jurisdiction?
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You do realize there are a lot of Tacoma employees that didn't just take wage freezes like you're crying about but we actually had pay cuts because the "humble public servants" wouldn't also take wage freezes to help the last budget. It wasn't just the police and fire unions but all the unions that represent city employees so my bashing isn't just limited to the IAFF. Jobs have been lost throughout the city so why should the firefighters get special treatment? They are cutting positions because that's what has to be done, across the board.
Kudos to KOMO for writing their own article, and doing it without spelling errors. Now if we could just get some substance. The article's title says the Union gave a million dollars in concessions, then the article mentions absolutely nothing about the details of those concessions.
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A little journalism would go a long ways here...
 @Bellevue Scott You ask waaaaaay too much here.
 @Robinsnest
On a totally unrelated subject, my jaw just dropped. Your profile picture is the same design as my tattoo! Granted, I did find it on Google Images, while trying to find a more feminine version of a triskele, so maybe I shouldn't be too surprised to see it pop up. But I am. Sorry to hijack the thread.
There are plenty of overpaid administrators who should be fired before even considering curtailing rescue services. In my local school district (only one of HUNDREDS in this state), there are six administrators making over 100k per year. Teachers on the other hand average about 55k a year. There is PLENTY of revenue for govt to do its job if it were not for the fraud, waste and abuse inherent in every dept of every agency in this great nation of ours.
@Orion987 Not sure what district you are in, but 55k is about starting compensation for a full time teacher in Washington State. If you look real hard, you will find that most of your teachers who have maxed out the pay scale are making $100K +/- a few thousand depending upon the extra assignments they take.
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Now... dont get me wrong. Our School System needs a SERIOUS administrative overhaul, but the days of clamining poverty for school teachers are long gone. If you would like try this link... its a collection of salaries gathered through public disclosure documents: http://lbloom.net/index11.html
 @nlholdem My daughter has been teaching for 7 years and isn't even close to 55k, in fact she isn't even anywhere close to 47k, apparently you don't know anyone who teaches school.
@justmyopinion Sorry, I just got arond to reading your post.
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If your daughters compensation package is at 47k after 7 years, then she is working part time. Now, she may be receiving PAY of 47k, but that is certainly not what she is being compensated with. Please note that I refer to compensation and not pay in my discussions. I do this because teachers have some of the richest compensation packages of any group. As a percentage of pay, beginning teachers often have the highest compensation packages because of their lower starting wages. Again... you can check with your district, but on a minimum level, benefit packages for teachers start at $15 k and that is the very bottom. We have teachers in our district who have benefit fackages paying upwards of 30k per year.
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I happen to know many people who teach school - in fact I work with schools on a regular basis and it is through that work that I have been able to grasp the "truth" behing teaching wages. I would challenge you to go to your daughters district and request a copy of their approved compensation schedule for the current year... let me know what it says.
@nlholdem Wow a whole $55k a year and not even close to $100k a year, all the while requiring a bachelor if not a master's degree. You're an example of a failed public education....
CS... I just got around to reading your response. Perhaps you misread my comments. THe original post said teachers AVERAGE 55k a year. This is incorrect. 55k is about starting compensation with a BA, and as I said the pay scale maxes out at about 100k. A teacher with nothing more than a BA can expect a compensation package of about 75k at the top of the pay scale. Don't believe me, ask your home district, all compenation is provided as public information.   I may be a failed product of Public Education, but at least I provide back-up for my information.
@Orion987 Although this is totally unrelated to this story, I have often wondered how many millions we could save if we merged and unified school districts accross the state. I am a product of private schools so I dont have first hand experience, but where I grew up in Pierce County there was the Franklin Pierce, Clover Park, Bethel, and Puyallup & Tacoma districts all in a 5 mile radius. Unified school systems could be a great budget saver.
OK all you union bashing RWNJs... How do you respond to THIS?
 @EMDF9A Go read the article in the link "the cutbacks". It tells the important part of the story. The fact that no firefighters even lost jobs in this situation because there was enough retirement.
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I have no doubt that some "union leader" and not the actual Firefighters are the ones that would benefit from whatever the "union" is proposing.
So they're offered a million to save the stations, then they turn them down? So I take it the city couldn't find a way to take advantage and put some of that money in their pockets? I don't get it!
Those damn greedy union thugs - trying to give us money! The nerve!
 @Audio Cat The union thugs don't give anything without strings attached.
I'll take the million dollars.
There's got to be more to the story. Â A million dollars in concessions? Â How overpaid IS the union that there even WAS a million to be conceded? Â And are they concessions like Obama's budget cuts... "We cut $5 billion from our plan of increasing the program $20 billion over last year, so it's really a $5 billion cut even though we're spending $15 billion more."
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Show us what the numbers were two years ago and what the union REALLY offered. Â Let's see if there was any actual concession.
@TCat Yes moron, you actually have to pay professionals more then minimum wage.
 @TCat So typical.
Sounds like the city of Tacoma is hoping to break the firefighters union or something. I would consider police and fire protection non-discretionary measures that should be fully funded.
As soon as Firefighters start work normal 8, 10 or 12 hours shifts in a firehouse located within the city, like police officers do, no need to talk to the Union. I'm tired of paying for a fireman' s salary of 70K per year who works only 8 days a month.
 @Habaneroguy And yet most of our military service members make half that and have to leave their families for weeks, months or year at a time and are ALWAYS on-call.
 @Habaneroguy Well, a little basic math throws your argument into the well. For those 8 days, they are on duty 24 hours a day. That's 192 hours, whereas YOU (if you have a "normal" job schedule) would work only 173 hours in that same month - you lazy sack of excrement, you. Go get a second job! I'm tired of reading comments from folks who sit around when they could be slaving away!
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 @Humble Pubic Servant Swap shifts with another FF if you need to see a school or sporting event.
 @Habaneroguy Then you have no clue of WHY firefighters work a shift schedule.  I would recommend that you do a little research into the FSLA exemption for firefighters.....with an unbiased eye you would be able to understand that shift work saves the city money.  I would estimate that a city the size of Tacoma is saving 2-3 million in wages.  But that doesn't fit into your diatribe....does it?
 @Habaneroguy I mean FLSA (damn, why isn't there an edit button).
Emergency services should be among the first things to get funded in a budget. Two firefighters in a pickup truck sounds like a joke they would tell in the firehouse, not a reality. What are they going to do with a fire besides watch it burn? Throw the pickup truck at it?
@Dredd57 I'd have been glad to see them roll up actually...
 @Dredd57 Emergency services make up the majority of any City budget.
 @Dredd57 Which part of "its role would have been to search the home and rescue anyone inside" didn't you understand?
 @My_Thoughts You obviously have no idea what is involved in a rescue from a burning building. Do you really think it's ok for a firefighter to run into a burning building without some source of water backing him up while he searches for victims? If he's driving a pickup, he wouldn't even have a ladder to put against the side of a building to assist people down from a second floor. Why don't you take a few minutes to think about what you are saying before you post?
"The union said it will make sure the Tacoma City Council hears its side of the story,"
Why hasn't the council already heard their side of the story? How does the city turned down $1 million without the people elected to represent them hearing the union position?
 @al_wa It's called a city manager.
"The city has turned down $1 million in concessions from the Tacoma Fire Union that could have restored some services at two of its fire stations."
And, when there is an injury or loss of life because of the delays, they will blame the union...
 @OrcasThunder No they won't, they'll blame the city. If the city raises taxes to keep the service, THEN they'll blame the union for higher taxes. When budgets go awry, someone gets blamed for something.