Following the City Council’s unanimous approval of hiring eight additional firefighters through funding provided by the Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response grant, Mayor Eddie Sundquist and City Council President Anthony Dolce, R-Ward II, outlined the reasons behind the changes to the resolution, as well as the next steps in the process for the city. Pictured is City Council President Anthony Dolce, R-Ward II. P-J photo by Timothy Frudd

Jamestown’s City Council president wants to see future ambulance revenue directed toward the Jamestown Fire Department rather than the city’s general fund.

Moving forward, Anthony Dolce, R-Ward 2 and council president, said the City Council would like to see any potential revenue generated from the two city ambulances go “directly” to the Jamestown Fire Department. While the resolution passed by the City Council on Monday night did not include that as one of the stipulations, Dolce said it would not have to be “put necessarily in writing.” Instead, he said the city administration and the City Council could work together to ensure that the revenue generated by the city ambulances could be put towards the Jamestown Fire Department, rather than the general fund.

“This would be specifically for the fire department, so they would kind of offset the revenue stream that it would cost them to add more firemen, so to put that back specifically in the fire line so that any of that revenue will be put back in there to cover that shortfall,” he said.

Dolce also addressed the issue of training, which was hotly debated during April’s voting session by City Councilman Jeff Russell, R-At Large. While the city administration and the Jamestown Fire Department had originally expressed interest in holding a fire academy in Jamestown, Dolce said the new firefighters will be trained at the reputable fire academy at Montour Falls.

Mayor Eddie Sundquist highlighted the collaboration of various city officials that led to the Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response grant with eight additional firefighters resolution being approved.

“I very much appreciate the City Council, the fire union, our police and fire chiefs that have been working diligently to try to get to that end result,” he said. “At the end of the day, what matters most is that we have a safer Jamestown, we’re going to be able to add eight new firefighters with no cost to our taxpayers, and that’s truly an incredible thing.”

Sundquist explained that the stipulations that were added to the City Council’s unanimous resolution approving the SAFER grant and the hiring of eight additional firefighters are meant to ensure that the eight new firefighter positions are not utilized in any future impact payment award for the firefighter union, Local 137. Currently, the previous negotiations and arbitration decisions mandate that Jamestown firefighters are paid additional impact pay anytime the Jamestown Fire Department’s staffing is below a certain level.

“As long as that number remains above a certain level, we don’t pay that as a city, so there’s some savings to it,” Sundquist said. “But more importantly, we’re asking the union to agree to not bring it back to arbitration once those eight are put in. Luckily, it’s something that the union and I had been working on for at least a month now, and we have a tentative agreement. We’ll get that hammered out at the request of City Council, get it back in front of City Council and get these new folks hired.”

Dolce told local reporters that the “caveats” added to the SAFER grant resolution Monday were intended to provide protection to the city and local taxpayers. Like Sundquist, Dolce said the “big question” was what the city firefighter union would do if the city raised the staffing level of the Jamestown Fire Department for three years under the SAFER grant and eventually had to lay off firefighters if additional funding was not provided for the city. Dolce said the concern was that the firefighter union would attempt to reopen the impact arbitration cases in an effort to “make more money,” which he said would have been “catastrophic” for the city.

“We put in there, and it was discussed back and forth about the fact that they will not go to seek to reopen the arbitration case for impact payments,” he said. “It would just revert back to whatever originally was under the 2002 (arbitrator Howard) Foster agreement; that was one thing that we put in there. We also just wanted some outside counsel to review the resolution to make sure that the t’s are crossed, i’s are dotted and all that.”

At the conclusion of Monday’s City Council voting session, Sundquist explained that his role as mayor is to bring as much funding as possible to Jamestown. He added that this can be a difficult process as the city is starting to see “very large” state and federal funding coming to Jamestown.

“Our task, unfortunately, is not going to get easier, and in fact, it’s going to get harder, but only to benefit every single resident of our city, every single taxpayer,” he said.