Borough responders’ hours capped

PALMER — Some pretty big changes are coming down the pike for emergency services in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough.

As of the start of the year, the borough is going to have to keep a lid on the number of hours responders work.

“We are trying to manage to keep the responders’ hours below 30 hours (per week) on an annual basis,” Borough Manager John Moosey said Monday.

That move comes in response to an audit the Retirement and Benefits Division of the state’s Department of Administration conducted last year. That audit found that responders were regularly working more than the 30-hour threshold over which they would have to be offered participation in the state’s Public Employees Retirement System.

The borough had been operating under definitions for who qualifies as part-time, full-time or on-call that had been hammered out with the unions that represent borough employees.

Responders are paid on-call, meaning they are paid for the time they spend responding and training. Though the department is, second to the school district, the largest borough department, there are very few actually people classified as full-time employees in the emergency services.

There are many that work it as a job with full-time hours, though, which was fine under the borough’s definitions. But the state objected and, after that audit, the state insisted the borough had to use state definitions instead.

That lead to a resolution passed without discussion at the borough assembly’s Dec. 17 meeting, which pasted the state’s definitions over top of the previous definitions.

And that led to the borough’s decision to limit emergency services responders to working no more than 30 hours.

Back when the PERS discrepancy first popped up, Moosey had said that one of the options was to limit responders to 15 hours.

That prompted an outcry from responders who worried that a limit on hours would reduce the effectiveness of borough fire departments and emergency medical crews.

Moosey said that he is working on a plan to present to the borough assembly at budget time that would seek to address the hit the borough is going to take in staff hours.

He said part of that will look at adding more full-time positions into the budgets of the various fire departments.

“There’s no way we could afford to make the adjustment all in one step but we’re working on a proposal that I will be submitting to the assembly in moving that forward,” Moosey said.

Contact Andrew Wellner at 352-2270 or andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com.