Forest Lake announces reorganization

The city of Forest Lake announced a wave of layoffs at City Hall last week as part of a plan unveiled in 2012 to restructure the city's government and save about $155,000 annually, all while bolstering the ranks of its firefighting force.

Under the four-phase plan, 15 positions will be eliminated over the next year and replaced with 15 new jobs.

"We also have a duty and an obligation to bring forward proposals that maximize value to the community and provide services as effectively as we possibly can," City Administrator Aaron Parrish said. "It was something for the City Council to review and consider. It's something that I felt was representative of my overall assessment of the organization, and the proposal reflects that."

The city's building official, building inspector, building secretary and assistant, building supervisor and custodian were cut in the first phase. One of the eliminated positions was already vacant.

The City Council voted last week to approve the plan, though officials have said it is not yet set in stone. In the coming weeks, Parrish and union leaders will sit down to begin several days of bargaining and "to get additional feedback," he said. He admitted that he "didn't get information and feedback in certain areas as the proposal was being developed."

"There certainly may be opportunity for that. As part of our bargaining process that we're required to engage with the union on, we'll be willing to discuss those ideas," said Parrish, who has been on the job for two years.

The positions were replaced by those of firefighter-building official, firefighter-building inspector, fire technician and two firefighter-custodian positions. The laid-off workers, who range in age from 47 to 62, will be allowed to reapply for the new jobs but would have to complete firefighter training before they were hired.

Parrish said a major component of the plan's first phase was to reduce the time it took for firefighters to respond to emergency calls. Forest Lake, much like other cities with volunteer fire departments, is faced with a shrinking pool of qualified candidates who are willing to put their lives on pause and dash to a fire at a moment's notice. Parrish said it made more sense to retrain workers to respond to the roughly 400 calls the department receives every year than to hire full-time firefighters.

"Preliminarily, we're cautiously optimistic that there will be the opportunity for people to balance their primary and secondary responsibility," he said in a phone interview last week.

Opponents have denounced the plan as a blatant attempt to oust older employees.

"The city administrator is telling older workers that they'll have to move their homes and fight fires if they want to keep their jobs," said Jennifer Munt, a spokeswoman for American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), which represents 15 of the city's 58 employees. "He cooked up the plan in secrecy at a time when the City Council was promising transparency to residents."

Parrish, she said, was essentially "asking a grandmother with a bad hip to rescue residents from a burning building. That's cruel and it's dangerous for everyone."

"One-hundred and fifty thousand dollars is a relatively small amount of money to save. If the real objective of the plan is to realign staff with the priorities of the city, then the people who're doing work can figure out the best to reduce costs," Munt said. "AFSCME believes that the city is engaging in age discrimination and that exposes the city to expensive lawsuits. We urge the City Council to table the reorganization and give us a chance to create a better plan that aligns staff with the new priorities of the city."

She would not elaborate further on a possible compromise. Several of the affected employees plan to file a complaint with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, she said.

The next three phases call for layoffs in community development, public works and police.

About a dozen people, including several whose jobs may be in doubt, spoke out against the plan during the Oct. 28 City Council meeting. Among them was building inspector Tim Okan.

"In the long run, it will slow down economic development, which is one of the city's top priorities. Here's why: If an inspector's priority is to respond to fire calls, then contractors, residents and developers will have to wait for inspections and building permits," he said. "It will cripple the city's ability to grow good jobs and grow our tax base with new businesses and housing developments."