Henry Lima at an April 11 meeting of Somerville’s City Council, giving testimony about a “corrupt hiring process” in a screen capture from city video.
Henry Lima, a Somerville resident, has been in the process of becoming a firefighter for the city since 2014. He is No. 1 on the current list of Civil Service eligible candidates.
“I took the exam in 2014, went through the hiring process in 2015 and was bypassed due to a corrupt hiring process,” Lima said at the City Council meeting April 11.
Despite fighting the bypass in court and coming out of it victorious, when he went through the process again he was not hired. Lima is still trying to become a Somerville firefighter.
“People keep asking me why I keep going,” Lima said. “I love this city. I grew up here. I went to school here. I volunteered here. Blood, sweat and tears here.”
Somerville resident Steven Flythe says April 11 that the city changed its rules on hiring from civil service eligibility lists.
Somerville’s council chambers were filled with firefighters and residents such as Lima who, with city councilors, expressed frustration with Mayor Katjana Ballantyne’s office after it announced the plan for 12 hires to staff the new fire station coming to Assembly Square – hires that would be “lateral,” or of firefighters transferring from other cities who already have a pension, health care and benefits for themselves and their families.
No one from the Mayor’s Office took part in the discussion. No high-level staff attended.
Bringing in lateral hires takes an opportunity from 12 Somerville residents who might be hired, said Local 76 Union president Michael Jefferson, who was sponsored to speak at the meeting by by Ward 1 councilor Matthew McLaughlin. “Local 76 is adamantly opposed,” Jefferson said.
Somerville fire Local 76 Union president Michael Jefferson on April 11.
A new list of 60 names of civil service-certified Somerville residents was released April 1. The certification allows for resident and veteran preference for hiring firefighters.
“Lateral hires will absolutely, undeniably circumvent those preferences and those rights that those individuals deserve and have earned,” Jefferson said. “This Mayor’s Office talks a lot about equity and what’s fair and what’s equitable … what is equitable about that? What is fair about that?”
Somerville resident Steven Flythe is on the civil service eligibility list and spoke at the council meeting about just how difficult the test is. “The physical exam is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done,” Flythe said. “It’s only to give you a sense of what it is to be a firefighter, and it’s not even close. We dragged an empty hose and people were out of breath. Imagine standing there in 60 pounds of gear, it’s impossible.”
He has been on the eligibility list for two years.
“I committed to this process – and at the end of the process, it’s saying no, we’ve changed the rules,” Flythe said. “We need to be consistent.”
McLaughlin gave a presentation at the meeting on the city’s history of hiring firefighters.
“As someone who’s served on this council for 10 years, I’ve seen the historic problems with hiring particularly within the fire department,” McLaughlin said – namely four or five civil service eligibility reserve lists that decade that the city has not hired from.“If you took those exams you would never even looked at once to get hired in the city.”
Mayor’s Office response
Ballantyne’s office was asked for comment the next day about firefighter hires, and again Tuesday when there was no reply. After the second request, the office sent a statement rather than grant an interview.
The city has an “unprecedented number of first-responder vacancies,” which could put the public at risk, according to the statement.
“Our decision to use lateral hiring is not a choice made lightly, but a necessary step to ensure the protection of our community,” Ballantyne said. “This type of hiring process provides the city with the agility needed to swiftly bolster our ranks, the opportunity to enhance diversity within our public safety departments, and serves as a prudent fiscal measure, curbing overtime costs and mitigating the strain on our dedicated first responders.”
Because the statement left many questions – including why the city was not also hiring from the list and why an unprecedented number of first-responder vacancies had grown despite that option – Cambridge Day tried again over the weekend by email. But Monday passed with no response.
Every councilor said they were against the lateral hires.
“This is an extraordinary situation,” council president Ben Ewen-Campen said. “I think if anyone in the administration is under the impression that lateral hiring is going to save the city time and effort and costs, it seems extremely clear to me from what was said tonight that that is wrong. It’s not too late to reconsider this decision, and I urge the administration to do that.”