It has been a long process, but Danville City Council members have finally approved a new fiscal year budget. Mayor Scott Eisenhauer says the council approved a plan which makes cuts in all departments.
‘’ This isn’t a budget where anybody’s going to run around and high-five each other over. You know, there are cuts in every department. There are still some question marks as it relates to the reductions or savings within the Fire Division. But the reason why I didn’t want to stop that is we’re making great progress at the table. Fantastic communication is going on,’’ said Mayor Eisenhauer. ‘’The Administration and the Fire Division personnel are working very well together right now. And while we’re still a little bit away from a resolution, we’re moving much – much closer towards it. So I didn’t want to rush that. I didn’t want to stop that because of an arbitrary May 1 deadline.’’
May first is when the new budget takes effect. Those talks in the Fire Division are focusing on ways to reduce their budget by over $700-thousand dollars. Danville Firefighters Local 429 President Jerry Sparks says several ideas have been discussed.
[In the photo Jerry Sparks, President of Danville Firefighters Local 429, speaks to members of the City Council during their meeting Tuesday night (April 18, 2017).
‘’Including buy-outs with the primary benefit of having your most expensive employees leave the department – as opposed to your least-expensive employees. And those least expensive employees also fall under what’s called Tier II Pensioning, which is far less expensive for the pension fund, and beneficial to the City in helping them catch up with pension debt. And also that condition would allow any overtime that would be created to be covered by less-expensive personnel,’’ said Sparks during an interview with VermilionCountyFirst.com News.
And Sparks adds firefighters also believe they may have found a way to keep the Number 3 Fire Station on North Griffin Street open.
‘’The main thing is when you’re able to keep Station 3 open, you would be able to prevent the building of a road which the (city) council had passed. You would also be able to maintain operational control over all of the reserve equipment as well by keeping Fire Station 3 open. You would not have to do any renovations to any fire station. All of these things have large dollar figures attached to them,’’ added Sparks.
But Sparks notes he has been reminded often that much of that involves one time savings. He says the Firefighters Local believes it would work ‘’as a very effective bridge for this particular fiscal year to get us into a position to where maybe we can work something out for a longer term.’’ The city’s new fiscal year begins May 1st.
