New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Fed funds covered fire OT, cleaning
Freda: North Haven added its own money to CARES Act funds to ensure employee, public safety
NORTH HAVEN — COVID-19 related Fire Department overtime and extra cleaning and sanitizing marked the town’s biggest expenditures under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, according to documents provided by the first selectman.
Receipts show the town received roughly $250,000 as a result of the federal legislation. However, the COVID-related costs that qualified for CARES Act funding actually exceeded the allotted aid money, coming closer to $365,000, First Selectman Micheal
Freda said.
“There was a total cost involved to ensure the safety of the employees and the general public, and even though that cost exceeded a CARES act allocation, I still felt it important to not compromise in any way the safety of the employees and the people coming into Town Hall,” Freda said.
The remaining balance was
paid out of the town’s general fund, according to Freda.
He provided a breakdown of COVIDrelated costs for the 2020-21 fiscal year. It shows the town spent roughly $140,000 more than usual on annual cleaning costs.
“We stepped up our cleaning and sanitizing in all of our town buildings,” Freda said.
Town buildings were cleaned more frequently — either every day or every other day — and the town worked with the cleaning company to use a “high-power disinfectant solution” he said.
Normally, the town’s contract with the cleaning company costs around $112,000 annually, according to Freda.
Correspondence between an employee in the North Haven finance office and the Federal Emergency Management Agency shows the town spent closer to $252,000.
“So we took the overbudget with the greater frequency of sanitizing these buildings for the safety of our employees, and we applied it to the CARES Act — not the contract, just the overage,” Freda said.
COVID overtime for the Fire Department marked the other major expenditure that qualified under the CARES Act, coming in at around $116,000, according to Freda’s breakdown.
When a firefighter was out sick with COVID, the department had to bring someone in off-shift and pay them overtime to fill in for the sick employee, the first selectman said.
Unlike some other town agencies, the Fire Department could not “go remote.”
“We had to continue to respond to those incidents, and we had to take additional precautions in doing so,” said fire Chief Paul Januszewski, noting there was a point when every medical call was treated as a possible COVID case.
To determine whether the firefighters responding to a call had to quarantine, Januszewski said, the department followed Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines, basing the decision on how much personal protective equipment was involved and how long the interaction lasted.
They also began consulting a database of reported active COVID cases in town, enabling dispatch to warn first responders whether a residence might be higher risk, Januszewski said, emphasizing that the list of sick individuals was well-protected and only accessible to certain employees.
“We did well. We kept COVID out of the station up until November of 2020,” he said.
At that point, COVID began sickening firefighters, keeping the department on high alert until the following spring, according to the chief.
“In a firehouse setting when there’s one bunk room that sleeps eight people ... it kinda keeps exposure pretty hard to control,” he said.
When a firefighter quarantined due to a work-related exposures, the town incurred another COVID-related expense. In such instances, the town paid the quarantined
employee, as well as overtime for that employee’s replacement, Freda said.
Through the course of the 2021 fiscal year, those costs added up to $41,000 according to the first selectman’s breakdown.
It shows the town also spent approximately $15,000 to increase security.
“We put in some additional security protocols for the safety of our employees. That entailed making it so that there wasn’t just a walk-in type component to Town Hall,” he said. The town enhanced doorways and security camera coverage, he said, also stationing a guard at the entrance to Town Hall.
Another expense that qualified under the CARES Act was plexiglass installation, which totaled $28,000, according to a MUNIS report provided by the town.
Nearly $15,000 went toward masks, sanitizer and other supplies, and around $1,000 went toward training firefighters to administer the COVID-19 vaccine. The town also paid firefighters around $8,000 to work at vaccine clinics and conduct homebound vaccinations, Freda said.
As the vaccine became available, Freda said, he began receiving calls from family members of homebound residents. The callers were panicked because they did not know how their loved ones would get to a clinic, he said.
“(The residents) had no transportation,” he said, and some used wheelchairs. “They had no ability to go out and get vaccinated.”
Januszewski said the firefighters, who knew their way around the town, helped register the individuals, accompanied a nurse to the homes and stayed afterward to ensure patients did not suffer an adverse reaction to the vaccine.
In all, the service was provided to between 25 and 30 residents, according to Freda.
North Haven has not yet spent any of the $3.5 million it is slated to receive under the American Rescue Plan Act, Freda said, but is considering applying it to improvements to sewer, broadband and water infrastructure, as well as arts programming.
The town first will hire a consultant to ensure the money is spent according to the guidelines, Freda said, noting the consultant will be paid using ARPA funds.