Today the summary of the five years of overtime–totaling $1,808,830–is published.
Car fire in Woodstock.
The amounts for each of the five Fiscal Years follows:
-
- 2014 – $415,769.68
- 2015 – $405,416.31
- 2016 – $352,050.33
- 2017 – $241,898.62
- 2018 – $393,595.42
Overtime at the Woodstock Fire Protection District.
The Department’s Fiscal Year runs from May 1 through April 30.
It billed $6,288,801.25 for property taxes to be collected this year.
Over the last three years, the district’s tax levy has increased from $6 million to $6.3 million.
Woodstock FPD $6,000,009 $6,145,009 2.4% $6,288,801 2.3% 
Woodstock Fire Protection District fire engine.
Chief Michael Hill provided overtime information for the last five Fiscal Years.
Reducing overtime “is one of my top priorities for FY 19, ” Hill writes.
“Initial strategies for reducing overtime include hiring of part time staff to fill current openings in our roster.
“Further strategies are being discussed in the course of contract negotiations with the career members’ bargaining unit, which are currently in progress.
Hill has been with the District for twenty-five year, first as a part-time employee.
He signed on as a career employee in Jan, 2003, serving fifteen years in that capacity.
Hill was appointed Chief in October, 2016.
Foi the next five days who got how much overtime will be outlined.
Hill is a great leader. I’m sure he’ll be able to reign in costs without sacrificing service!
Selfless Public Servant, Firefighter Donn Thompson, billed L.A.’s Taxpayers for 9200 hours of work last year. There are only 8760 hours in a year.
So I guess it could be worse for Woodstock. Or, is there a ‘Donn Thompson’ like timecard in the Woodstock books?
Like Nunda, hire Miller as consultant to ‘fix’ this.
When anyone submits or bills that much OT then there is ingrained failure or corruption through the organization including the offending department, payroll, finance and leadership. OT should require supervisor approvals and OT hits >x% of regular salary then additional approvals need to be required. If checks and balances are not part of the organization then the organization is saying we don’t care, we have blinders, do as you please with the OT pool.
Lexfire? How right you are. Corruption complemented with sheer stupidity. The whole system is awash with these criminals. I consider stupidity to be just as criminal as the narcissistic greedy. Integrity seems to be lacking all around.
I remember 4 or 5 Woodstock firefighters walking into Ace Hardware with the ladder truck out front. On the clock and burning gas at a rate of gallons per mile. Those screws must have been really important, just like their shopping cart at Jewel full of steaks. Sounds like I chose the wrong career!
Till we are willimg to not throw $$$$ at teachers, police, and fireman, nothing will change. They use to be public servants, it’s different now.
It is a flawed system because of the 24 hours on and 48 hours off. A lot of firefighters have second careers because they so much time off. They game the system by one person takes off now you have to fill in for someone for 24 hours instead of 8 hours if your sick. And vice versa. Unfortunately firefighters have been doing this for years! They need to go to 12 hour shifts. They make excuses why they are 24 but they are not justified very well. Woodstock use to have a volunteer but since it went full time it has cost the taxpayers to much! Wonder what the rest of the County looks like?
Woodstock does an incredible job staffing and would hire more firefighters to go full time, however, I’ve connected with previous Chiefs before on the staffing issue and he indicated they are so underfunded, they sometimes have to choose between buying new fire suits or hiring additional staff.
It’s easy to armchair quarterback from acomputer screen without the facts.
I apologize for my misplaced comment on this page. I was talking about something entirely different. I have NO OPINION on any fire protection districts.
Dear Satan: your opinion is very important to us. Bring them on…tic, tock, tic, tock, tic, tock, meeeeeoooooowwwwwwwww…
Does anyone in Woodstock feel they need 3 Fire Dept? Yes they go out on accidents and some other calls to make the numbers look good. That has been going on for quite some time now in all Fire Depts. But how many fire calls do they go on? It is different in the city and larger suburban citys/towns but in rural areas what is the cost benefit? Again they should be going to 12 hour shifts.
Why not,
Your idea is literally why we had the great Chicago fire
WoW! Spot is literally really stupid!
Thanks Satan, I know I’m headed in the right direction when you say that. 🙂
Get behind me, Satan!
I have personally heard one of the fire fighters listed on the O.T. list call working at WFPD his “eat & sleep job” (he has other jobs).
They use the WFPD facilities as their personal property. They hold their children’s birthday parties there, wash their personal cars & trucks in the bays, bring the big trucks to their kids ballgames…the list goes on.
We pay, they play. It’s disgusting.
I told you, I’m going the opposite way