The hiring of firefighters from outside Somerville to staff a new Assembly Square fire station was defended Thursday by the Mayor’s Office, but the defense of the practice was rejected by city councilors.
If the city were to hire off the civil service eligibility list with Somerville residents tested to become firefighters in their own city, the station serving Assembly Row and Ten Hills wouldn’t be ready to open in February, fire chief Charles Breen told councilors at their Thursday meeting, a response to complaints from officials and the fire union heard at the previous meeting.
“We will not open that fire station for many, many months later without using the lateral hiring process,” Breen said.
If the city does use the lateral hires administrators are “confident” the station will be ready in February, said Anne Gill, human-resources director for Mayor Katjana Ballantyne, while if the city uses only the civil service list, the station couldn’t open until September 2025.
There is a 15-step process for hiring a firefighter from the civil service list, Gill said, and the hiring process does take “great length of time.” The reason for lateral transfers, she said, is because it is “unusual” to have 12 “potentially” open positions, and Assembly Square is its own little city within Somerville with its own needs.
“We want to make sure that they have the resources and the adequate safety protections that they need and deserve,” Gill said, calling lateral transfers also part of the civil service process, since those workers also passed the test to get onto a hiring list. “We are not looking to do anything that isn’t already available through civil service. We’re just trying to employ everything we have, every resource we have to fill positions – again, for the safety of this city.”
Station plans approved in 2021
The 10,000-square-foot fire station at Middlesex Avenue and Foley Street in Assembly Square will be the first new station in Somerville in more than a generation. The council approved plans for a 30-year lease in the fall of 2021 and in February released money for a lease to mark that “the space is substantially complete.” If the hiring process had begun at the same time, the city would have had a year to hire.
The city would have to complete around 25 interviews when hiring from the civil service list but only 12 to 15 for lateral hires, Gill said. The new lateral hires also would not have to go through the academy, which has a three- to four-month backlog.
Councilor at large Jake Wilson asked which of the process’ 15 steps would be skipped when doing lateral hires. The city would still do a lot of the steps to ensure due diligence, Gill responded, but there are two that are different, interviews and the academy.
Councilors unswayed
Ward 2 councilor J.T. Scott asked Gill to confirm that it would take eight extra months to complete 13 extra interviews when hiring from the civil service list. Gill was able to confirm that this was correct – then a few minutes later amended that to seven months.
“I continue to be mystified,” Scott said before the correction. “It’s stunning to hear that the extra 13 interviews are going to cost the city eight months of process. I’m not sure how that happens, frankly.”
The City of Quincy, he noted, was able to do 16 firefighter hires in six months last year when hiring from the civil service list. Malden hired six firefighters in three months.
“I appreciate this presentation. I am unmoved by it,” Scott told Gill and the fire chief. “I for one, remain steadfast in the call for using a proper civil service certification list as opposed to these lateral transfers.”
United against laterals
Other councilors were equally unimpressed, and on the suggestion of Ward 1’s Matthew McLaughlin, a motion in opposition to the lateral hires passed unanimously. Council president Ben Ewen-Campen warned that the administration seemed to have “a fundamental underestimation of the resolve of the council as a body on this issue.”
“I stand against the lateral hires,” said Jesse Clingan, of Ward 4. “Certainly it’s faster, and more convenient and it’s a messy process hiring firefighters and anybody in the city, but I do think it’s possible to get it done in time.”
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