Kenney: No more Fire Department brownouts
Mayor Kenney will announce on Thursday the end of two Fire Department policies he vowed to get rid of as mayor - rotating firefighters through stations and the temporary closure of firehouses.
Mayor Kenney will announce on Thursday the end of two Fire Department policies he vowed to get rid of as mayor - rotating firefighters through stations and the temporary closure of firehouses.
Both practices were implemented by then-Mayor Nutter as cost saving measures.
In 2010, Nutter instituted rolling "brownouts" to temporarily close firehouses and reassign their firefighters elsewhere. On Dec. 31, five days before he left office, the Fire Department halted the brownouts.
In 2013, Nutter's administration announced a highly controversial plan to rotate senior firefighters to stations throughout the city to broaden their experiences.
Kenney, whose father was a firefighter, lambasted both policies as a City Council member and on the campaign trail.
So did City Controller Alan Butkovitz, who issued a preliminary look at a full audit of the Fire Department in December. The report was inspired by the 2014 death of Firefighter Joyce Craig in a West Oak Lane blaze.
The Butkovitz report found that rotations cost the city $20 million in overtime and that the brownouts inhibited safety, because response times to fires lagged behind state standards.
Fire Commissioner Derrick Sawyer said Butkovitz misapplied the National Fire Protection Association's standard in measuring response times, and took issue with several findings in the preliminary report.
Butkovitz is expected to present his full audit to coincide with Kenney's announcement at 1:30 p.m. Thursday.
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