The city of Española’s failure to fulfill a contractual obligation to its firefighter union kept the Fire Department from hiring a decorated candidate.
The city was required to fill a spot left in the Fire Department when John Kitchen was promoted to Fire chief from the lieutenant position in 2006, according to the union’s contract. In January of this year, months before resigning from the Española Police Department, then-officer Mike Rossini had approached Public Safety Chief Julian Gonzales and Kitchen about switching to the Fire Department, according to all three parties. While sounding out the idea, Rossini discovered that the city’s contract with its firefighters’ union stated that if Kitchen was promoted to Fire chief, another firefighter must be hired in his place.
The vacancy was never filled and no one has been promoted to the lieutenant position, Kitchen and union president Ron Padilla said.
“I don’t know if it wasn’t caught by the city or the union when I left, or what,” Kitchen said. “Ron Padilla raised the issue to the city, and the city said, ‘Yes, you’re right, but funding is not there right now.’”
Padilla said last week he couldn’t comment on the situation because the union is currently in negotiations with the city. For the same reason, Padilla wouldn’t say whether this issue was among the matters being negotiated with the city.
Kitchen, who in the past six months has secured both a new $160,000 water tender and two $9,300 thermographic cameras for the Fire Department using government grant money, is attempting to address the shortcoming, again, through a grant. In June, documents show he applied for a Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response grant, offered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The grant would pay $600,000 toward five years’ salary and benefits for three more firefighters.
In the grant application, Kitchen states the Fire Department answered 244.7 percent more calls in the first six months of 2008 than in the first six months of 2007, with only a 23 percent increase in its annual operating budget. He also notes the city has a second fire station on La Joya Street that is unused because of a lack of manpower, and that Kitchen himself, because of the need to fill in as a firefighter on high call volume occasions, has not had a vacation since 1998.
“(Española Fire Department) currently operates on a very restrictive and inadequate budget,” the application reads, “If not for state funding, operations of the department would be in serious jeopardy. While the City Council has expressed its intention to pursue additional funding for the fire department, it has also intimated that such funding will not materialize in the near future, and has encouraged the fire chief to seek outside financial resources.”
The Fire Department’s budget was actually has actually decreased from $824,650 last fiscal year to $721,008 this fiscal year, city documents state “The city won’t give him those three positions, they’re making the government take care of it,” Rossini said. “If you get hit by a car, does public works show up? Does water and sewer show up? No, that’s your fire department and EMS. The city only cares about you when it’s not their money.”
Rossini said he was even willing to sign a waiver taking a pay cut from the Police Department’s salary of $17 an hour to the Fire Department’s $9 an hour pay in order to change departments. Gonzales confirmed last week that it was a lack of funding for new positions that prevented the possibility of Rossini being hired as a firefighter.
City Manager Veronica Albin did not return a call for comment.
Rossini handed in his resignation July 8, effective Aug. 8, according to his personnel file, after being hired at the Los Alamos Fire Department. Still, he was reluctant to leave Española, and felt his qualifications — which include college credits in fire science, firefighter certification in Florida and two years of experience as a firefighter in Florida — made him a desirable applicant.
According to Coral Springs (Fla.) City Commission meeting minutes from April 2006, Rossini was awarded a Lifesaving Ribbon and Commendation for helping rescue four people and a cat from a burning apartment building.
Rossini left the Police Department three days before his planned departure date, amid tension over a police report he handed in July 30, that described how City Councilor Alice Lucero allegedly interfered with an investigation by speaking to Rossini on a suspect’s mother’s cell phone.
But his separation papers state Rossini is eligibile for rehire at the Police Department, and Española Deputy Chief Larry Ham said he was sorry to see him go.
“Mike did exactly the right thing,” Ham said of Rossini’s handling of the July 30 situation, which led to an ethics complaint being filed with the city against Lucero.
Ham said Rossini, who was nicknamed “Ratatouille” by dispatchers and left a whoopie cushion on Kitchen’s office chair April 1, had a good sense of humor.
But Rossini and his wife and daughter, who originally moved here from Miami to be closer to his wife’s family, left the state for good Aug. 22 to visit his family, ultimately expecting to end up in Miami again, or Chicago, Ill. Rossini decided not to take the Los Alamos job, and is not yet sure whether he will go back into law enforcement or become a firefighter.
“I’m not like a hero, but in the end, in some small opinion of mine, (the city) lost a good worker, they lost a good firefighter, they lost a good employee,” Rossini said.