The Vicksburg Fire Department’s personnel budget, which covers salaries, could finish the 2015 fiscal year more than $250,000 in the red, requiring a budget amendment to shore it up, city officials learned Monday.

But attempts to find a long-term solution to the problem before the city starts a new fiscal year in October hit a dead end Monday morning as Fire Chief Charles Atkins balked at a recommendation by Mayor George Flaggs Jr. to close Fire Station No. 7 on Washington Street and reassign the firefighters there to other stations.

The recommendation came at a meeting to between Flaggs, Atkins and his deputy chiefs, South Ward Alderman Willis Thompson, city officials and Ty Windham, head of the Mississippi Fire Rating Bureau, to discuss the fire department overtime.

Atkins asked Flaggs and Thompson to give him and his deputy chiefs a year to let new policies take effect before making changes.

“Taking away from this situation is not a good thing,” Atkins said. “I don’t see it happening. Right now, it’s not going to work at all. We can’t tell what’s going to happen in the future. Let’s stay where are and move on.”

“I think that’s what you’re going to get from the board,” Flaggs said, “The status quo.”

“I think the numbers are where we can make some adjustments and get firefighter pay where it has to be without overtime.”

Firefighters work 24-hour shifts. Under city policy, they work 2,912 hours a year and have 230 hours of overtime per year built into their pay, which is known as built-in overtime. Unscheduled overtime is overtime a firefighter receives if they are called to fill in for another firefighter because of illness or because a station is short-handed.

As of Friday, the city has paid $783,212.40 for a combined 44,578 hours of overtime. Of that total, 22,872 of the overtime were for unscheduled overtime. City employees are paid twice a month.

As of Monday, city Accounting Director Doug Whittington said, the department had spent about 93.6 percent of its personnel budget, which covers firefighter salaries and benefits.

“There’s three paychecks left to post,” Whittington said. “Taking an average of the first 23 checks multiplying that by the last three checks, I’m estimating roughly the department will need approximately $265,000 to $270,000 in the personnel category.”

As of Monday, he said, the fire department had spent 93.6 percent, or $4.162 million of its $4.44 million budgeted for salaries.

Deputy fire chief Craig Danczyk said the total fire department budget as of Monday totaled $350,499, and the ambulance service budget was $410,560, giving the fire department a combined total of $761,000 for the remainder of the fiscal year. The fire department operates the city’s ambulance service.

Whittington said after the meeting the totals do not consider how much the departments will spend before the fiscal year closes Sept. 30. He said any money left in the fire department’s budget could be applied to help cover the salaries deficit.

As of Monday the fire department had $23,791.80 remaining in supplies and $44,577.53 left in services, according to accounting department records. Capital expenses have a $2,000 deficit.

Whittington said ambulance service has spent 88.3 percent, or $1.72 million, of its $1.95 million personnel budget, adding, “They’re going to need $228,000 of that $410,000 to cover their salaries.”

Atkins said the department is trying to improve the overtime situation, adding he expects to advertise another testing sequence for firefighters in October to try and reduce the 16-person shortage in the department.

“As far as overtime, we have to have overtime to make sure we have the people on duty,” he said. “We’re still doing what we have to do. Overtime is a bad word, but we have to have it until we get our operation going.”

Danczyk said the recent policy changes that lowered the application age to 18 years old and a lateral transfer policy that will allow firefighters at other departments to transfer to the fire department at a higher grade will also help.

“The 18-year-old recruitment will be a game changer,” he said.

Flaggs said he doubted the fire department could fill its 16 open slots, “because we don’t have the work force in the area. I’m not talking just about the fire department, it’s all over, because we don’t have the people trained to go out and get these jobs.

Flaggs, who has pushed to close Station No. 7, which is manned the majority of the time by two firefighters and has one pumper, said the city could close the station without hurting coverage.

The station, Danczyk said, is responsible for the casinos and the Vicksburg-Tallulah Regional Airport under an agreement when the city became a partner in owning the airport.

Windham said the city could safely close the station and reassign the firefighters or combine it with another station and not hurt coverage. Such a move, he said, would ensure the department would keep the minimum of 23 firefighters per truck per shift (with city’s other stations) excluding supervisors and ambulance workers. He said the bureau uses miles to determine coverage and looks at coverage as the ability to respond to structure fires.

Danczyk said the move would not reduce the payroll.

“What’s changing is your unscheduled overtime,” Flaggs said. “The only way we can eliminate the scheduled overtime is to change the way we pay, and we’re not going to do that.”