Elgin explores outsourcing ambulance services

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Updated: February 10, 2012 8:50AM

ELGIN — As contract negotiations with Elgin Association of Firefighters Union Local 439 get under way, the city has posted a request on its website for qualifications from ambulance companies potentially to provide round-the-clock paramedic-level service for Elgin.

The union’s contract expired Dec. 31, and part of what is at issue is continuing with what is known as a jump company that the department has had in place at Station 3 on Royal Boulevard for the last two years.

In August 2010, the union and the city reached an early agreement which kept Fire Department pay frozen through 2011 and kept intact a jump company put in place with the prior year’s contract. With the jump company, three firefighters on shift alternate between pieces of equipment depending on the call, “jumping” from vehicle to vehicle. The city believes that having the jump company in place saves the city about $800,000 to $850,000 annually in overtime costs without any resulting impact on service.

For the last two years, the contract allowed for reducing minimum daily shift requirements from 36 firefighters to 34 firefighters, which the city decided to cover by having the jump company. At question now as well is the matter of those extra two shifts — 48 hours of overtime at roughly $45 an hour or more than $2,000 a day, Fire Chief John Fahy said Saturday. Having a private ambulance firm cover the additional hours would probably cost about $400,000 annually, or half of what paying overtime would, Fahy said.

While city management is disappointed that the union board apparently doesn’t want to continue the jump company during negotiations, union head Lt. Vince Rychtanek said he would prefer to sit down to bargain the entire contract.

Rychtanek said the union’s initial contract proposal is due to the city by Jan. 17, and “the concessions made two years ago were made during a time of economic uncertainty and not meant to be a forever situation.”

Rychtanek said that although times now are hardly rosy, and despite all the city went through during its 2012 budget process, the city’s latest budget actually has a structural surplus.

Contracting for paramedics and ambulance service has been used in other towns, including Rockford, Fahy said. The plan would have such workers go on calls with three firefighters assigned to an engine. Such a setup would mean no layoffs, just fewer overtime hours available.

Rychtanek noted that in Rockford, contracted paramedics respond to calls when the department’s regular ambulance crews are already busy — a situation Elgin and surrounding towns handle with mutual aid agreements. He also noted that crews on private ambulances often don’t have the breadth of experience handling the wide array of situations firefighter paramedics have.

Rychtanek mentioned two businesses that might be qualified for what the city is seeking — Paramedic Services of Illinois, based in Schiller Park, and Public Safety Services Inc., based in Rosemont.

Rychtanek said that with 130 or so firefighters and several out on disability, the department’s bench is not very deep. He said the contract negotiations are a complicated web with the jump company just one strand.

Before a decision to outsource this service could be made, the city would have to formally issue requests for proposals from private firms — a process that would take several months.

Fahy, who once headed the firefighters union, said he hopes an amicable agreement can be reached.