After a year and a half of political action from Local 1014 and strong leadership from A/C John Nieto, the Pomona City Council has voted to re-instate 6 Firefighter post positions back into the city’s budget.  After about one hour of debate during last Monday’s budget planning session, Mayor Norma Torres, Councilman Elliott Rothman and Councilman Marco Robles were extremely vocal about replacing our positions before they would “vote for any new budget.”

The final vote was 5-1 to restore the positions we lost almost 2 years ago with Paula Lantz voting “NO” and George Hunter actually leaving the meeting so he wouldn’t have to vote on the issue.  Interestingly enough, the budget that was scheduled to be voted on initially DID NOT include our positions even after City Manager Doug Dunlap was given direction by Mayor Norma Torres to include the spots.

The specific time frame to get the firefighters back in the stations is somewhat tentative. The city has allocated funding starting on September 1 of this year.  Now it is up to LACoFD management staff to carry the ball to assure that these Firefighters will indeed be in the station effective September 1 of 2006.

Special thanks goes to two individuals on this one: 1014 City PAC chairman Paul Rusin and A/C John Nieto.  Paul is 1014’s political liaison to every city served by County Fire, and he has been working non-stop with extra commitment to bring the Pomona council back to center on their fire staffing.   We also want to thank Chief Nieto, who was so instrumental in bringing this issue to its successful conclusion.  He went to great lengths to educate the council and got up during the council meeting to fight hard to get “his guys” back into place.  Chief Nieto displayed the kind of leadership and commitment to his city, Pomona, that should be an example for other A/Cs to follow in their respective cities.

This was truly a team effort between management and labor.  Everyone in Battalion 15 should take the opportunity to thank Chief Nieto for championing this issue.  And we here at Local 1014 say thanks to him for his tireless efforts.

The Local 1014 Executive Board