Bangor firefighters again ask city for payments from pandemic aid

The Bangor firefighters union is asking city leaders to use the remaining pandemic relief funding to pay employees who worked during the pandemic after councilors rejected a proposal last year to pay firefighters with the funds.

The letter, sent by Local 772 of the International Association of Firefighters last week, points out that the city hasn’t spent any of its more than $20 million in pandemic recovery funds on employees.

“Countless employees worked throughout the pandemic to provide the city with safety and structure,” the letter reads. “Such economic benefit packages could have provided much needed assistance to city employees and their loved ones.”

Jared Willey, a Bangor firefighter and president of Local 772 of the International Association of Firefighters, said city councilors haven’t responded to or acknowledged the letter as of Friday. Several city employees, however, have thanked the union for their advocacy.

Cara Pelletier, Bangor’s city council chair, did not return requests for comment on the letter.

The city has more than $2 million of the roughly $20.5 million it received from the American Rescue Plan Act left to allocate by the end of the year . The federal funding was intended to be used to help communities across the country recover from the financial strains caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, on Aug. 12, councilors preliminarily approved using the remaining funds to prepare two pieces of undeveloped land for housing to be built in the future. The money would pay to bring utilities and road infrastructure to two pieces of land to spare a future developer from the cost of doing so later.

If councilors were to take the union’s suggestion, roughly 500 Bangor employees — including firefighters — would receive about $1,500, according to Willey. This would be significantly less than the $817,000 firefighters unsuccessfully lobbied for last year , which would have given each firefighter two $3,000 payments.

Willey said the union believes any amount would show city employees their hard work amid a chaotic, stressful time was appreciated. However, he suspects the lump sum, if approved, wouldn’t help the department retain existing firefighters and hire new ones.

“Local 772 is happy to be the tip of the spear for the rest of the city employees to get what they deserve,” Willey said.

Staffing shortages have been a years-long issue in the department, which Willey credits to the sharp acceleration of calls the department receives in a year without enough people to carry the load.

In 2003, for example, about 89 Bangor firefighters responded to 7,500 calls, Willey said. Twenty years later, Bangor firefighters responded to 13,000 calls in 2023 with 10 fewer people on staff.

Now, the department has about 12 openings, 10 of which are firefighter positions, Willey said. Though firefighters have managed to hire people periodically, they usually soon lose the same number of people to retirements or resignations.

“We’ve been down by about 12 people for years,” he said. “We can’t shake that number.”

The firefighters who resign usually go to other departments with lower call volumes and higher pay, Willey said.

To make matters worse, periodic raises in union contracts have failed to keep up with rising cost of living, Willey said.

“Some people are making $25 or $26 an hour and they’ll respond to a call at 2 a.m. about a baby that has stopped breathing,” Willey said. “The men and women that do that deserve better because the long-term damage those calls cause is crazy. We’re all behind and we’re all hurting.”

The union is negotiating a new contract with the city that Willey hopes will keep pace with rising costs throughout the three-year agreement. The union’s last contract expired on July 1.