total time: 0.29 minutes
total words: 54
[Lungo-Koehn]: It's putting the city at risk. It's causing $100,000 in overtime. This is a joke, and this is disgusting.
[Reporter 1]: A heated back and forth during a packed city council meeting in Medford about the search for a new fire chief. And it comes after serious allegations of sick time abuse at the city's fire department, which is now under investigation.
[Reporter 2]: City officials say they spent nearly six figures in just one weekend trying to cover those empty shifts. Our Kirsten Glavin is live in Medford City Hall, where that meeting just ended a short time ago. Kirsten.
[Reporter 3]: Yeah, that's right. There's two issues at hand here. The first is the sick time and the overtime. The mayor says that this is becoming a financial and a safety concern. Now, the second issue at hand is who will be the next fire chief. And that was a heated topic here at this city council meeting where the committee or the council rather ultimately voted to turn this over to committee. An investigation now underway into the sick calls and overtime accrued by the Medford Fire Department. After one weekend this month, nearly all firefighters called out.
[Lungo-Koehn]: I believe it was an orchestrated event.
[Reporter 3]: According to the city's mayor, during the first weekend of February, 21 out of 23 firefighters called out sick for their day shifts just on that Saturday alone. She says many of them got paid for that sick time, then came in for the night shifts and collected overtime.
[Lungo-Koehn]: We are way outside of our budget. We have almost $100,000 for just that weekend alone, and we have needs in this community that need to be met.
[Reporter 3]: The firefighters' union is denying those claims, calling them rumors and now threatening legal action.
[Buckley]: It's not my business why they use their sick day.
[Reporter 3]: President of Local 1032 Medford Fire neither condoning nor explaining why the firefighters called out, only claiming the mayor has a history of attacking unions.
[Buckley]: I can't explain. They use their contractual right to use a sick day.
[Reporter 3]: 21 out of 23 people for the day shift?
[Buckley]: Yes.
[Reporter 3]: Were they all sick?
[Buckley]: I'm not a doctor. I can't answer that. I'm sorry.
[Reporter 3]: Meanwhile, at a heated city council meeting Tuesday night, the mayor asking to fill the department's open chief position with someone of her own choosing to manage oversight. Firefighters wanting one of their own at the top as the current chief retires. So you think they're kind of picking and choosing who they want to lead their department. Is that fair to say? That's fair. The union sending out this email titled request to stand down, asking members from outside departments not to apply for the chief job, saying there are qualified candidates at the department already.
[Buckley]: They don't know method. They're not from method. They didn't grow up in method. They didn't serve the citizens of method. They don't have the knowledge that our members have.
[Reporter 3]: Again, the council did just vote to table this to committee. And I did just speak with the union president, and he says he is currently disgusted with the city and the council over what happened in there. And at this point, Medford, it looks like, will be without a fire chief by the end of this week. We're live here in Medford tonight. I'm Kirsten Glavin, NBC10 Boston.
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