Vicksburg Fire Chief Charles Atkins was criticized by Aldermen Michael Mayfield and Willis Thompson for not keeping the Board of Mayor and Aldermen informed on the workings of the fire department.

Atkins did not elaborate on the meeting except to say, “I got a talking to about my duties as chief as it relates to the board about being more communicative with them about the fire department.”

The discussion with Atkins took 45 minutes of a 90-minute executive session near the close of the board’s Monday meeting. Mayor George Flaggs Jr., who has been critical of Atkins’ management of the fire department left the closed session before the chief met with Mayfield and Thompson and did not return.

The aldermen asked City Attorney Nancy Thomas and human resources director Walterine Langford to leave the session when they talked with Atkins.

Flaggs said after the meeting he left because he had a meeting at Walnut Hills with Mississippi Speaker of the House Philip Gunn, R-Clinton. He added given the relationship between him and Atkins, he believed the meeting should have been between the aldermen and Atkins.

“I recused myself because I don’t think I should be the one talking to them (the aldermen) if I’m the one having concerns,” he said. “I’m waiting on Willis and Mayfield to tell me their conclusion.”

In response to Atkins’ comments, Mayfield said, “We all have to be on the same accord, and we want to always make sure we’re always in the loop with what’s going on as far as appointed positions We all have to be on the same wavelength, and that way, we won’t have surprises. That’s really the key, making sure we’re all singing from the same sheet of music.”

Mayfield declined to discuss most of the issues reviewed at the closed meeting, adding one of them involved overtime, was the only issue Mayfield would discuss in detail, adding the other items involved personnel. Attempts to contact Thompson were unsuccessful.

“We’re just trying to pull everything in line for the preparation of the new budget that we’re going to be voting on. You just have to cover your bases, and we’re just trying to get together and pull all this in line,” Mayfield said.

Flaggs said the fire department’s overtime is out of control.

“I can give city employees a 1 percent raise and it will cost the city $134,000,” he said. “But I can’t do it, because overtime is eating into the surplus and affecting other departments.”

According to an analysis of the department’s overtime prepared for the mayor’s office by the city’s IT department using the city’s Munis accounting system, firefighters were paid about $683,400 for working more than 39,197 hours of overtime for the 2015 fiscal year as of Aug. 5, the day the report was prepared. Of that, about 19,069 of those hours were built-in overtime, while about 20,128 hours were unscheduled overtime.

Also, according to the analysis, one firefighter made $26,506.11 in overtime pay, which was more than the basic salary of 139 city employees. Four other firefighters and paramedics with the city made from $17,508.20 to $20,775.51. The five employees were not named.

“All of this is manageable overtime,” Flaggs said. “It can be managed, and it doesn’t seem like it’s being managed. I just refuse to believe that you ought to have anyone working in government that’s making just in overtime more than 139 employees. That’s what I’m looking at.”

He said his other complaints about Atkins concerned “the inefficiency and management of the department. I have made recommendation after recommendation, and the chief has not been amenable to my recommendations. He basically doesn’t want me to have any input in the fire department. I can’t govern if I can’t have input on something that’s out of control.”

Mayfield said there are mitigating circumstances with the fire department’s overtime.

“You have a built-in amount (of overtime) and it looks like about half of that is built-in for overtime, and then you have other factors with personnel being 13, 14, 15 people below what we project we need,” he said.

Mayfield said he was not surprised by the department’s overtime.

“This is something that’s been happening ever since I’ve been here and before I got here, because you have built-in overtime,” he said.

The fire department, he said, is no different from the police department, as far as vacancies and employees getting overtime for working extra hours to fill gaps in staff.

While the fire department does not have the turnover rate of the police department, “You are going to have turnover, and when you have turnover, you’re going to have people scrambling for certain positions, firefighter, EMT, paramedic.

“As far as the budget is concerned and trying to revamp some things in the fire department, I’m confident that we’re probably in the neighborhood of 80 percent there, and another 3 to 4 weeks to get it nailed down. We’ll probably never will get where we want to be, but we can get close,” he said.

“It’s all about taking care of taxpayers’ dollars and making sure we’re getting the biggest bang for the buck. That’s what the people want and that’s what we’re trying to do.”