City of Greater Sudbury to hire 4 firefighters next year

The City of Greater Sudbury will hire four full-time firefighters next year to help reduce the need for overtime.

City council approved the new hires at a meeting Monday, although the fire department originally asked for eight new hires to meet demand.

"We can sit here and approve eight new full-time firefighters. There might be savings initially, but these could easily be offset in one or two years by more overtime," said Coun. Mark Signoretti.

"So we'll be back at square one."

City staff reported to council that there are an average of seven absences a day with the city's fire service due to a combination of vacation days, short- and long-term disability, training requirements and sick days.

The city has paid $1.4 million so far this year to cover overtime for the remaining firefighters working those shifts.

Coun. Ren Lapierre noted about30 per cent ofcity firefighters are doing the bulk of the overtime hours.

"And only having a few people take on the overtime, I think that's a concern for us as an employer to be able to try to mitigate that as best as we can," he said.

Coun. Pauline Fortin said she would have supported hiring the eight additional firefighters, which the fire department requested in October.

"It does impact the levy because if we don't hire them, we're not going to see 25,000 hours of overtime get reduced," she said.