Time for Chief Alston to Resign

It’s time for Chief Alston to resign. Yesterday the Controller’s office published the monthly financial report and it shows NHFD overtime hitting $5 million this year. That’s $95,000 per WEEK and $2.8 million OVER budget.  

More worrisome is the figures above don’t account for the financial impact on pensions. Approximately 35% of NHFD members are governed by a contract that includes OT earnings in pension calculations. Someone familiar with recent OT figures has told me that the Operations Chief has earned 450 hours in OT in the most recent year. If accurate, that would mean this one person’s overtime, by itself, would increase the City’s pension payouts by about $1 million ($35,000 per year over 30 years).

At a BOA hearing less than 6 months ago, Chief Alston and the Union Leadership testified how the new NHFD contract signed in July would SAVE the City millions of dollars a year. At the time, we testified how it would COST the City millions. Sadly, we’ve been proven right.

On Wednesday the NHI quoted Acting CAO Scott Jackson as saying “There seems to be a potential mismatch between our technological capacity and the work we’ve established in the contract”.  Why didn’t we hear anything about this from the City labor negotiator, union reps, or Chief Alston when they testified about how good the contract would be for the New Haven taxpayers? Did they know and not say, or were they blissfully ignorant?   

Here are a few quotes from people familiar with what is happening at the NHFD:

“the city has spent about half a million on time and attendance programs over the last 6 years. One cost $300K and was never used”

“the bloated OT is the result of uncontrolled sick and injury”

“Ricci runs the Dept, not Alston”

“historically the fire training school and fire marshals positions never rec’d OT, now it is out of control”

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Chief Alston has proven that he is incapable or unwilling to control overtime. And he has failed to address the abuse of paid administrative leave.  It’s time for Chief Alston to resign, and take the suburban union leadership with him. The disaster within the NHFD “Management”, repeat MANAGEMENT, is but one more example of how people from outside New Haven have abused the trust of our residents and betrayed our homeowners and hardworking taxpayers. New Haven deserves better.

Chief Alston must resign, and the City must launch an independent investigation into the overtime amounts, how overtime is awarded, and the assumptions behind the contract signed in July 2019. New Haven taxpayers want answers.

Now that we have a Mayor committed to transparency, I’ll be filing FOIA requests to look into the issues discussed above. But, I’ll need help. If you can assist, please email me at dennis@ournewhaven.org.

Dennis Serfilippi

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