The Nov. 21 meeting of the Hudson Budget Committee opened with a memorandum from Fire Chief Scott Tice addressing earlier questions from the Committee over the Fire Department’s proposed overtime budget.
“We have numerous vacancies in fire suppression that we’re talking about. What the Chief had done was that he budgeted the vacancies, but he also budgeted the overtime to cover vacancies,” explained Acting Town Administrator Steve Malizia. “It appeared that we had too much budgeted for overtime.”
Cutting out unnecessary overtime without removing the open positions would reduce the town budget by $259,533.
“I really do appreciate the efforts of Chief Tice in taking the questions that this Committee brought forward to heart and actually putting pen to paper and doing the right thing, proposing a right sized budget in reducing the cost,” said Committee Chair James Lawrence. “This is a pretty substantial reduction of the original amount that was requested.”
The Budget Committee unanimously voted to remove the proposed overtime for unfilled positions at the Fire Department.
For the first time, the Budget Committee also began looking at warrant articles, not including two collective bargaining contracts still under negotiations. There were no petition warrant articles, although these are expected at a later date. Citizen petitions for warrant articles must be filed by the second Tuesday in January.
Tice spoke for Warrant Article D, which asked for money to hire four new firefighters.
“This would be for Central Station to increase our staffing there with what I would hope would be a multi-year plan to put a company into service,” he explained. “As our call volume has increased, the odds of an occurrence of having multiple calls at one time has increased, and we find ourselves quite often with two or three calls happening at the same time.”
The Fire Chief warned that the Hudson Fire Department was already stretching its resources and personnel and that what he called mutual aid, where EMS and firefighting equipment were needed at the same site, was a significant problem.
The warrant article would add one new firefighter per year over the next few years based on what the town could support. Committee member Shawn Jasper supported the request, but wanted more detail from the Fire Department.
“I know that the department, at least 20-odd years ago, kept really good records about when our calls are occurring and when those were. All I’m going to ask that you provide to us and to the voters a lot more detail about when you’re having the multiple calls and when you’re having these shortages,” he said. “I’m pretty sure you can make a much better case by pulling out the data and showing us.”
Tice promised to get those details before deliberative session early next year.
