List of city's top 15 wage earners includes 10 union fire fighters

No wonder the city is broke,and has to raise my taxes...

Get yer popcorn ready.

I guess I should have become a firefighter.

Yah Guys, now I just heard from an influencial, and trustworthy person from town about a few wage discrepencies. Some are getting payed the Engineer's wages, but don't have the Engineers degree to be in the positions their in??? This person asked me if I had seen the Batavia daily today. I said no why? They told me "Oh your not missing much, just Charlie Mallow patting himself on the back again... This is what our people have to say. Got more digging to do. This is so enlightening.. Just go to the store or somewhere public. People are really starting to wonder.

Can anyone answer the question? Why are we getting rid of the ambulance service?

Another question . . . Will we need to make budget transfers to take care of some of these salaries?

For the rest of you who live on this planet...

We don’t have an Engineer working for the city, not even one. We hire the work out to an engineering firm because, it saves us money.

Who runs the Public Works??.."I Heard" different

Thank You Charlie Mallow . . . that's what we want to hear "saves us money!"

Karen's been hearing a lot of things lately. Apparently everything she hears is fact.

Karen, I would stop getting information from people at the grocery store and sporting events.

I don't see a problem with fireman and police officers making the money they do. These men and women risk their lives everyday for us. I say thank you to all of them for their great service!!

I can understand police officers pay...They are always out on patrol protecting us..And i'm not saying the firemen dont risk there life's also for us but,they do have alot of down time on the job..There aren't fires every day in the city,but there are crimes being committed every day..I think when the firemen make more then policemen something is wrong with the picture..Also lets not forget the DPW they work in all kinds of crazy weather doing all kinds of jobs maintaining the city..They deserve every penny they get.You would expect to see them on the top of the pay list..Thats were the city should be spending pay for overtime..Not at the fire dept..

Well, as a city employee who has "made the list", I would like to respectfully respond to the above article. As the recently late Paul Harvey would say, here is "The rest of the Story".....

First, the average person in this country works a 40 hour week 50 weeks a year, with two weeks vacation. That comes to 2000 hours. I know for a fact that the person who is number one on "the list" worked over 4000 hours.....equivalent to two people. He has many skills, etc, that this city has benefitted from. His work in teaching, training, etc has made and saved this city money.

Second, a good portion of this overtime was from filling positions that the union begged the city to fill with new entry level employees, but they would not. There were months that went by with vacancies that needed to be filled.

The city choose not to fill those needed positions, so they had to be filled with existing employees. For medics, the city choose not to have even one "extra" employee to cover sickness, vacations, etc, PREFERRING to fill those needed slots with existing employees, many times not with overtime, but with straight time.

Existing employees, not wanting our community to be short a much needed ambulance, worked that extra time. When someone quits, retires, or stops working for any reason, someone has to do that work......either a new hire, or an existing employee......that is determined by the employer. That was the cities decision, not ours.
Bottom line, those of us who decided to bear the extra load, sometimes at a personal cost, should not be publicly scorned for it.

Third, in ANY job, weather it be a factory job, Fire Dept, etc, overtime is only paid to fill a NEEDED position. The employer ALWAYS has two options. Either hire new employees, and pay for additional training, uniforms, benefits, etc, or pay an existing employee, if they are willing, to work those hours. If the employer chooses to pay the overtime, it must be because they felt it was the less expensive option.

Fourth, some of us, including myself, have acquired additional training and certifications to do extra work that the city asked us to do. One example is training. I am a NYS certified EMS Instructor, in addition to my Firefighter and medic work. I work extra hours at night and on weekends training the emergency medical service in this county to be EMT's. For this, New York State pays the city of Batavia hundreds of dollars for each student. That money far exceeds what I get paid to do this. The city has made thousands of dollars from my willingness to do this. Now, because that pay is reflected in my annual pay for last year, I should be made an example of?? I guess the alternative is for me to stop teaching, so I can make less, and the city can no longer make that extra money. People would have to go elsewhere for quality EMS training. Great idea.

I find it funny that there seems to be a double standard. When people criticized the assistant city manager for her salary, city council members were quick to point out it was justified because of the many hats she wore, thus saving the city money. When myself and others in the Fire Dept do the same, we are criticized by the same people who defended Ms. Kuzon. That seems hypocritical to me. Shame on you.

My pay is on par with any other Fire Dept. I love my job, and for 18 years have given it my all. We see things and do work most people never could or would experience. We gladly put ourselves in harms way at great personal risk to save lives and property in extreme, adverse conditions......not just once or twice, but thousands of times a year. Am I complaining? No way......as I said before, I love what I do. It is just sad that we have to be maligned for doing it by some of the very ones we serve.

Respectfully,
Frank D'Angelo

I don’t want to go as far as saying this story is a prevarication, but merely stating individual’s salaries is like stating a quarterback threw three interceptions in a game and leaving out perdenent information that lead to those picks. Possibly the WR ran the wrong route? Possibly the WR dropped the pass and it fell into a defenders hands? Possibly a lineman missed his block and hit the quarterback from behind just before the pass was released?

I see one type of number in this article and that is the amount of money taken in at the end of the year by fifteen individuals. I don’t see the amount of OT put in by anyone. I don’t see the amount of holidays that were spent away from their families at the fire hall or police station by these individuals. I don’t see what Craig Williams and others brought in for the past ten years, before they made their way up the ranks to the stated salaries.

Want to know what a better question is?? Instead of spending time condemning hardworking people, why not talk about actual crimes? As Mr. Potwora pointed out, crime occurs every day in the city. On the main Batavian page, I see one story about an actual crime that occurred in the past day; possession of an illegal weapon. Funny thing, there are zero comments on that story and a baker’s dozen on this story.

On one last note: Who is stopping anyone from achieving any of these positions?

Well, it sure gives me a new appreciation of all that the many volunteer firefighting organizations do to protect their neighbors in their communities. These earnings are outrageous for a city the size of Batavia, where the median income for a male is $32,091.

It isn't necessary to continue to do things just because they have always been done that way. Batavia's tax base can't, and shouldn't have to, support services that can be done more cheaply, and more efficiently by the private sector. Time to look at other alternatives for many of governments bloated services, as was done wih the ambulance service.

Debbie, I'm not positive that Frank D'Angelo was right when he said Craig Williams worked over 4000 hours, but lets take it. I surely do believe it's up there.

116,000=2,000x+ (2,000*1.5x)
^^^^with X being a given hourly salary of a normal person for the first 40 hours worked each day. the second summation is anytime after that at one a half the regular hourly rate.

this gives you the formula

116,000=5,000x
23.2=x

multiply that hourly rate, by the basic 2,000 work year and you got an income of around 46,000. So that's roughly 30% increase from the average male. We're not talking 300%. AGAIN, THIS IS JUST A GUESS BASED UPON FRANK'S STATEMENT. Even if Frank is remotely right, this salary isn't too far out there. With the years of service, I don't find the 'hourly salary' of 23 dollars crazy.

Just one last point. Do you know where the volunteer firemen get their training from????? Take one guess. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

How does someone work and average of 80 hrs a week and is able to be alert and preform his job.Seems like you would be tired most of the time and put fellow firefighters at risk.

How many people do you know who earn $23 an hour for sleeping at night?

This past summer I was on a US Flagged ship that was close to 600 feet long. Everyone including the cadets, mates and captain worked 80 hours plus weeks. To your amazement Mark, we didn't have an 'Exxon Valdez' moment. No accidents.

Set up a passive income stream and I'm sure you'll get paid while you sleep. Paid blogs, online sales, internet or internet marketing. While you won't be technically being paid for the act of sleeping, it is possible to generate income 24 hours a day--even in your sleep.

this website being an example.

Oh, No he didnt ! ?

I say the fire fighters deserve to be paid their wages lets see all the people just this year that have had their homes saved and children saved from a fire what do they think and if it were you how do you think you would feel then.

My Mother always taught us that a half truth is a whole lie. It is quite apparent here that all Moms did not teach this.

As stated, the city choose not to fill so many positions this last year. Perhaps it was difficult hiring medics when they heard rumors that their jobs would be so short lived.

Somebody had to work those positions. With over 8000 calls a year, those ambulances were needed. So we worked many extra hours....not for overtime, but for regular extra pay. Lives were saved in doing this. The city saved and made money as a result.

The alternative was to leave them parked and empty......a poor choice, but one that prophetically would be a glimpse into the future........

There are many other examples like this.....

Tyler, the city fire department provides EMT and CPR training to volunteer firemen/women in this county. Other fire and ems training primarily comes from the county, NYS, college or their own fire departments.

Not to take away from what Craig, Frank and crew provide; I have sat in a few of their classes (probably close to a few hundred hours) and hold a great deal of respect for the services they provide as instructors and firemen/emt(emt-p) to our city/county. Thank you guys!

I am just helping to not leave out any ingredients as to no one likes to eat bad cake.

Chucky says the overtime numbers reflect the firemen "working the system" -doesn't someone authorize the overtime.

I wish there was a way to bring Paul Harvey back so we can get the rest of the story on this whole issue. :)

And is it just my work and home computer or does everyone have the same issue with part of the posts being cutoff on the right side? I keep having to guess what people are writing.

Yes Chad. Same issue with the posts being cut off. Sometimes I have to hit reply just to read the message.

Tyler - Without a real breakdown of the wages we are just engaging in some very rough estimates - but based upon your mathematics which is based upon Frank's overtime estimates, it would appear that the overtime tab for just the 10 firefighters listed is about $400,000 -roughly 11,500 hours of O/T. This would be roughly 5 more full time firefighters.

I assert that private enterprises of similar size as the fire department would not tolerate what appears to be a very inefficiently and expensively scheduled workforce. I'm willing to learn however - and only suggest we look at other alternatives, and do some more much needed math to enlighten the taxpayers of all the options available.

My main point is that the taxpayers can no longer be looked at as an endless revenue stream by inefficient taxpayer funded departments without any accountability.
It's not personal towards firefighters - it's a change in thinking in general that has to come about before we end up like California.

Also, I wasn't aware that part of the city firefighters job is to train volunteer firefighters. As I said - I'm willing to learn; but that fact alone does little to argue against my overall position.

I'll whack a hornet's nest with a stick and ask an obvious question; how many of those same firefighters on the list also have a part-time business on the side? It's a fairly common practice.

andrew there r alot of people in this world with two jobs. do u begrudge them for trying to support their families?and if i had to guess i would say less than 8% of them have second jobs.