Town May Lose

Fire Protection

By Year’s End

OFD Layoffs Possible, Too,

If Negotiations Still Stalled

By JIM KEVLIN • for AllOTSEGO.com

ONEONTA – The vast majority of the Town of Oneonta – from Brooks BBQ to the Southside to the single-family neighborhoods beyond the city’s West End – faces the possibility of losing the professional protection of the city’s Oneonta Fire Department at midnight on Dec. 31.

Likely, that would also require Oneonta Fire Department layoffs.

Since taking office in September, Mayor Gary Herzig said, he has seen “eight or nine” communications sent to the Town of Oneonta Fire District seeking to renegotiate its annual fee to the city, but City Hall had received no response.  (A separate smaller town fire district, in West Oneonta, is served by a volunteer company.)

The town Board of Fire Commissioners, on Friday, Nov. 7, on schedule, submitted its 2016 budget – $990,000 total, with $970,000 for the fire contract with the city.  But the city budget released last week includes $1.2 million in that line item, a $230,000 gap.

With six weeks left in the year, Herzig, interviewed Tuesday, Nov. 17, said a glimmer of hope had occurred in the previous 24 hours when Fire Commissioner Johna Peachin contacted the acting city manager, Meg Hungerford, seeking information on the situation.

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Regardless, with only six weeks between now and the end of the year, Herzig has asked Hungerford to “come up with Plan B if we do not have a fire contract.  It will require reorganization of the fire department.  It has to involve a change in the number of employees that we have.  There’s no question about it.”

As unveiled last week, the city’s tentative 2016 budget was purportedly balanced, but that’s only the case if the $230,000 in additional town fire fees materializes.

Speaking for the fire commissioners, Peachin said the four commissioners have been bedeviled with a series of personal misfortunes this year, from the passing of longtime commissioner Kellie M. Place in February, a cancer scare, a heart attack, a broken ankle and two broken ribs.  The fifth slot is vacant.

The board also discovered that, after several years without holding elections, it was operating on “limited authority.”  State Sen. Jim Seward’s office got a bill through the state Legislature by mid-year reauthorizing the fire board, but it languished in the Governor’s Office until late summer.  “We expected to be fine,” said Peachin, “but we didn’t want to do too much.”

Further, the commissioners were astonished by Common Council’s request, “a nearly 30 percent ‘non-negotiable’ increase,” said Peachin, adding if no agreement is reached by year’s end, the city has threatened to quadruple ambulance fees when 2016 arrives.  “It blew our socks off,” Peachin said.