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Guthrie council approves trial change to fire department work schedule
Summary
The Guthrie City Council unanimously approved a one-year trial change to the Guthrie Fire Department’s work schedule, with quarterly reviews and city management reserving the right to revert the schedule if service is affected. Start date discussed as Jan. 3, with some transcript inconsistency on the numeric schedule label.
GUTHRIE — The Guthrie City Council on Dec. 2 unanimously approved a one-year trial change to the Guthrie Fire Department’s work schedule after a presentation from department leadership and discussion about operational safeguards.
Lieutenant Drew Ruther of the Guthrie Fire Department told the council the union is seeking to move to a new schedule (the transcript alternately references the schedule as '48 90' and '48 96') and that the department’s committee, the chief and city management had finalized the memoranda of understanding and related standard operating guidelines. "If things were to move forward tonight with your approval, January 3 would be the start of our schedule, and we would have a 1 year basis on that," Ruther said.
City management and council members stressed oversight provisions. The city manager (Eddie) said the contract and collective-bargaining framework preserve management rights and that, "if it's not working, we're gonna make that correction as soon as we need to do that." Ruther also said the MOU includes quarterly meetings between the department and city staff to review call volumes and performance metrics and to make adjustments if needed.
Council members asked whether the schedule had already been tested and about staff reaction. Ruther said the department had reviewed comparables and consulted other departments and that "better than 95% of the department voted yes on this," while adding he did not have the exact figure in front of him.
A council member moved to approve the proposal and the council recorded unanimous approval. Council members repeated that the change is a trial for one year, that quarterly reviews will be held, and that the city can revert to the previous schedule immediately if service is negatively affected.
The council did not record roll-call vote counts by name in the transcript; minutes note only unanimous approval. The next procedural steps are implementation beginning in early January (as discussed) and the scheduled quarterly performance reviews during the trial year.
