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Regular City Council Meeting <br />August 28, 2003 <br />Page 3 <br />ranking system is archaic and not in line with other fire services in the United <br />States. He said that he and his staff officers would like to change it. To make <br />this change they would have to implement a new position and put the <br />Lieutenant position directly under the Deputy Chief. He would like to do away <br />with the engineer position and move those firefighters to the Driver/Operator <br />level and add more to that salary. Chief Grooms said that on page 11 you can <br />see a better understanding what this task would take with the table shown on <br />this page, and it would certainly amount to an increase cost to the budget to be <br />able to do that. Firefighter, Driver, Engineer and Deputy Chief will be the ones <br />that will be effective and they will all be effective with the automatic overtime. <br />That whole table falls under paragraph D which is under automatic overtime. <br />Chief Grooms said the optimum change would establish the position of <br />Driver/Operator, which is self explanatory, as they actually drive the apparatus, <br />setting the apparatus up and operating it. Then you would have a Lieutenant <br />who would actually ride a jump seat on the apparatus and would actually be in <br />the function of a firefighter, but he would supervise these crews or teams. He <br />would not be forced to pump and it is hard to do those two jobs at the same <br />time. Chief Grooms said this would give them a better capability of providing <br />safety for a firefighter. Chief Grooms stressed that safety is one of the primary <br />issues. We want to protect our people as much as we can. Implementing the <br />Lieutenant position with the responsibility of supervision of the fire <br />suppression group and making it subordinate to the Deputy Chief would help. <br />There is a tremendous amount of administrative work to be done by the Deputy <br />Chiefs. This would also free up some of the Chief's time to be able to do more <br />administrative work. <br />Mayor Fendley asked if the $300,546.19 figure on Page 15 already has <br />overtime in it. Chief Grooms said this reduces the projected overtime budget <br />by $180,000.00. What he projected and what he requested in his budget is to <br />provide $280,000.00 for overtime. That is with no changes. If we hire the 6 <br />firefighters, he felt we could reduce that proposal from $280,000.00 for <br />