City Council meeting gets heated

Firefighters, supporters clash with city over layoffs, ICMA plan

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The recent layoffs of four career firefighters, and a plan to replace a number of them with paramedics at lower salaries, led to a highly charged, emotional City Council meeting last week, at which union members and their supporters locked horns with city officials following a highly contentious report on the city’s emergency services.

Members of the Long Beach Professional Firefighters Local 287 have been calling on the city administration and council to provide more details to the public about its plans to restructure the Fire Department, following recommendations made by the International City/County Management Association’s Center for Public Safety Management, a Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm the city hired to conduct a review of its emergency services in the wake of the Long Beach Medical Center’s closure. The plan could potentially cut the career unit’s ranks by more than half and replace them with paramedics at a starting salary of $41,600.

Four career firefighters were laid off on Feb. 15 after a two-year, $900,000 federal grant that funded their positions expired, and the career unit is down to just 19 active members from a high of 30 last year, which the union said has led to a major increase in overtime. The four firefighters declined an offer to stay on as paramedics by taking pay cuts and accepting the starting salary, which firefighter Dave Yolinsky called an “insult.”

“You are proposing a 40 percent reduction of firefighters working each and every day and you blatantly spin this somehow as an enhancement to our Fire Department,” Yolinksy told the council. “This, to me, is staggering — the ability of you to lie to the public and expect them to be dumb enough to believe you.”

City Manager Jack Schnirman and Corporation Counsel Rob Agostisi emphasized that the ICMA plan would enhance emergency services and public safety, and save the city millions of dollars.

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