News release: VBT Board votes to get rid of blended rate

A news release sent out by Van Buren Township Deputy Supervisor Dan Selman at 7:41 p.m. Monday, Jan. 17, announced that the township board of trustees would approve ending the blended-rate firefighter program at its meeting the next day, on Tuesday afternoon, Jan. 18.
The Tuesday meeting is after the Independent’s deadline for this week’s paper, so the details of the meeting and the actual vote will be reported in full next week.
The news release said the blended-rate program was instituted in 2003 and was designed to address the issue of covering shifts in the fire department with police officers. [The program was signed off on by Supervisor Cindy King and newly appointed Public Safety Director Jerry Champagne, but not voted on by the board.] Revisions to federal labor laws affecting dual-employed or “blended” public service employees later established a pay scale altering the base pay that effectively translated to “blended-rate” fire fighters costing three times that of a full-time fire fighter, the release said.
The federal rules also made the program mandatory unless the blended-rate employees agreed to end the practice, which they hadn’t.
The news release said VBT pays out more than $300,000 a year to this program and will pay two installments of $408,000 each over two years to the blended-rate fire fighters to end the program permanently. Deputy Selman said there are six blended-rate fire fighters.
“Van Buren Township is in the process of forming a full-time fire department,” said Township Supervisor Kevin McNamara in the news release. “The costs and rules established by the federal blended-rate program have proven to be an insurmountable obstacle to that vision and they must be eliminated. Van Buren plans to hire three full-time firefighters with the savings.”
In the most-recent Independent report on VBT salaries, published Feb. 11, 2021, Kenneth Floro got top compensation in the public safety department with $96,162 in fire wages for 2020 and $118,603 in police wages, for a total compensation of $272,614.
The next highest was Marc Abdilla with $195,104 in total compensation for his police and fire employment. Ryan McCormick, Louis Keele, and David Champagne each earned more than $190,000 in total compensation. Ordinance officer David Schuler earned $124,197.
The report on the 2021 salaries is expected to be published by the Independent within a few weeks.