If the Army pays for you to go to medical school- you in turn promise to serve for 7 years (or some amount of time). If the City of Dayton pays for you to be trained as a police officer, or fireman, EMT or paramedic- and after you graduate- you quit and go to work at Kettering where the pay is about 17% higher- Dayton doesn’t send the you the bill.
The question is why not?
How many more years of incompetent management can this city take?
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David,
In a word… Union. Don’t be coy– you’re not that naive.
OK- how about this- we get rid of the “Police academy” in it’s entirety and accept people trained by the State- same for the Fire Department. Unless it’s a profit center- or directly providing services to the city- we ditch it.
How many more years before the people wake up and do something about it? I’m not sure, but I know there is a growing number of concerned citizens that want to DO something about it if they find the right way to exert their power and make change. Yet again, another great watchdog post on government waste Mr. Esrati.
David,
The City does do that for the fire dept.
For the last 2 tests, they have required State of Ohio Level 2 Firefighter certification and State of Ohio EMT-Basic before you can take the test. The only certs. left to get that the city sends people to are EMT-Paramedic and State of Ohio Fire Inspector. This caused the DFD Academy to be shortened from about 20 weeks to 8-10 weeks. Although there are rumors that the process might be going back to the old way…
Brad- and the question is: Why do we have a Dayton Fire Academy? For a department as small as Dayton- wouldn’t it make sense to have a regional Fire Training Academy that is good for every department, oh, wait- they have that, it’s called Sinclair.
Disband the Dayton Fire Academy now. Place requirements for staying on the job for a period of at least 4 years after the city pays you to go to school for EMT-Paramedic- or you get the bill.
It has nothing to do with union, and all with the fact that it costs more in court to go after the money, than it would just letting it go. Once an employee is no longer working for the DPD, they are also no longer a member of the police union and have no protection under their union contract.
DPS has the same problem with its transportation department. Upon being hired in, you sign an agreement that you will stay for at least one year, or face penalties of having to pay back the money. But LOTS of people take the CDL training they received at DPS and skip town to greener pastures.
DPS asked the bus driver’s union whether or not they could go after drivers who did this. We said, “sure, go right after them. It’s not up to us, they’re not union members anyway and therefore, it’s not our union’s business.” In fact, drivers aren’t even eligible to join the union until they are hired in permanently after a 90-day probationary period which starts AFTER they have passed their CDL tests.
Disclosure: I am Vice President of the Dayton Public Schools Local #627, OAPSE.
They don’t go after any of the money because it’s a useless exercise that would bleed the district and achieve nothing. I would suppose the same holds true with the city, but to be honest, I am not familiar with the specific details of the DPD police contract, so therefore, I will reserve judgement.
If someone has the time to do a document request, you can get a copy at City Hall. In fact, all of the union contracts with the local government jurisdictions are public record.
David,
Without getting into a lot of specifics about the fire service, I’ll just say that the Dayton Fire Training Center has it’s place. Initial recruit training is far from all that occurs there. The Training Center staff out there conducts annual performance tests on fire trucks, produces and coordinates ongoing training presentationsfor the crews, and plenty of other stuff that is crucial to the day-to-day operations of the fire dept.
And by the way, Sinclair Fire Academy itself has no facilities for doing live fire training. That”s all done at the DFD Training Center under some type of contract. Now, could some consolidation be done and a greater overlap exist between the two entities? Maybe. But the Training Center is important for the DFD.
Now as far as your other issue, I know that a policy is on the books about having to reimburse the city for training costs if you leave within some period of time. But I know it’s not 4 years (as you proposed), and I don’t know how heavily enforced it is. I will say, however, that I know very few with 4 years or less on the job that have skipped out to go to another area fire dept. Often-times it’s guys or gals with mid-range service (maybe 5-10 years) that are looking for a little more money and a bit of a “slow-down” from the daily call volume of Dayton Fire.