Cohoes and firefighters union agree to deal on overtime reduction
Agreement ends situation over city refusing OT pay
The city reached a deal with its firefighters’ union to cut overtime by $133,000 over 27 months in return for a guarantee of no layoffs, both sides announced Thursday at the city’s Central Fire House.
The agreement ends the situation where the city has refused to pay overtime during the summer to maintain staffing above four firefighters on a shift. The Uniform Fire Fighters of Cohoes Local 2562 does not have minimum staffing requirements in its contract. Usually, seven to eight firefighters work each shift.
The union and the city agreed that a fifth firefighter will be paid straight time instead of overtime when staffing drops to four firefighters due to sick time, makeup days or vacation time. Mayor Bill Keeler and city firefighter and local union president Brian Bullock said this solution was drawn from the firefighters’ contract in neighboring Troy.
“This agreement allows us to keep our community and our firefighters safe while achieving essential budget savings. It’s a win, win,” Keeler said.
Bullock said the times when only four firefighters were on duty created dangerous situations and would have adversely impacted fighting any fires. “We dodged a bullet,” Bullock said.
“Being part of the solution is a core belief of every firefighter,” Bullock said in an announcement of the agreement Wednesday night.
The city opted not to pay any overtime due to the staffing issue as it dealt with the increasing budgetary pressures arising from the coronavirus pandemic. Keeler is scheduled to release his proposed 2021 city budget Friday that will confront potential revenue declines resulting from the pandemic.
The mayor said the agreement with the firefighters union will permit the city to reduce expenses over the next 27 months, which is the duration of the current firefighters’ contract. The city currently has 30 of its 32 firefighter positions filled. There will be no reductions in the ranks and the city anticipates filling the vacancies.
As part of the agreement, Fire Chief Joe Fahd said the city will plan certain days off known as Kelly Days which will alleviate any overtime issues. Fahd agreed that having a guaranteed fifth firefighter working when staffing falls due to time off will make it safer when the department responds to fire calls.
■ on the county’s Board of Supervisors aimed to diminish the authority of SEDC, a nonprofit organization that has been in existence since 1978 and has been credited with much of the county’s economic growth. Some supervisors, however, turned on SEDC after Brobston refused to allow a supervisor to sit on its board. The county then formed the partnership and stripped SEDC of all funding. But since the Prosperity Partnership’s start, its leadership under Marty Vanags was heavily criticized, mainly because Vanags spent a lot of his time on crosscountry travel (45 trips in 35 months) at a cost of $154,000.
That led to the Saratoga County Board of Supervisors last year to slash the partnership’s funding by $125,000 per quarter and restore some funding ($150,000 total) to SEDC. The supervisors also created a unity committee through which the two entities would meet to shape distinct roles for the county’s economic development. After that, in early 2020, Vanags resigned, Schneider was appointed and things between the two entities seemed to settle down — until this recent hacking allegation.
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■ activities for up to two weeks.
Only cases among students and employees who live, work or study on campus will be counted toward that threshold, Albany County Health Commissioner Elizabeth Whalen said Tuesday.
According to a separate case tracker maintained by Ualbany, 46 cases have been recorded since Saturday — the start date of the current two-week period.
Public health experts have questioned SUNY’S method of tracking cases using discrete time periods like this. They say that epidemiologically, it makes sense to track cases on a rolling basis by looking at the previous 14 days.
While the number of positive cases continued to rise, the county’s number of hospitalizations and recovered patients improved as well. There are seven people hospitalized, down from 15 two weeks ago and no county residents are in intensive care.
The county also saw 27 more recoveries from the coronavirus, for a total of 2,635 since the pandemic began.
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