Ward 2 Coun. Michael Vagnini has stepped down from his seat on the city's emergency services committee, stating that he feels his voice has not been heard.
The committee's former chair, Ward 3 Coun. Gerry Montpellier resigned from his role on March 9 after city council voted to add eight career firefighters at a cost of $1.07 million in order to allow Station 16 in Val Therese to be staffed with four career firefighters on each shift.
Vagnini told Sudbury.com that the decision was a tipping point for him as well and that he felt he added no value to the committee at this point in time.
"I would come to the table with what I thought were good ideas and nobody implemented or looked at them," said Vagnini. "I realized that I shouldn't be on the board because I really have no value added to it."
Vagnini and Montpellier were at the centre of the controversial fire optimization process in 2017 that saw harassment complaints filed against the two councillors on behalf of former GSFS chief Trevor Bain, who was dismissed in October 2017.
While Vagnini speaks highly of the city's firefighters, both career and volunteer, he feels that the fire optimization plan that was proposed by Bain is slowly being implemented in bits and pieces. The plan would have harmonized fire response times across the city, but involved reducing the number of volunteer firefighters and hiring dozens more full-time firefighters.
"We're seeing optimization not come back all at once with all of the different things that cost $90 million, we're seeing chunks of it coming back," said Vagnini.
"When they did the optimization it was public in town hall meetings; today they're taking little chunks. They moved the fire halls over to assets, now the next thing is they're looking at the consolidation of fire halls. It's all pieces, but if you reflect back and look at optimization it's all pieces out of optimization."
The costs associated with adding career firefighters to Station 16 was a sticking point for Vagnini, who pointed to his nearly 40 years working in the finance sector. Highlighting the difficulties that have been presented by COVID-19, Vagnini says that adding more costs to the city's taxpayers was not the best course of action.
"I have nothing against professional career firefighters or volunteers, they both have their place, but it's just the cost to the taxpayers," said Vagnini. "We're putting career firefighters in outlying rural areas where volunteers have been doing an amazing job for years."
Vagnini said that he had planned to step down when Montpellier did, and the firing of Marc Morin, the former chief steward for the former chief steward for the Christian Labour Association of Canada (CLAC), which represents Greater Sudbury volunteer firefighters was the final straw, though he wouldn't elaborate on the firing.
"I have to abstain from commenting on that because that was handled in camera and the talks about Mark (Morin) are all out there," said Vagnini.
Morin was fired from his position last week due to his comments about a 2017 collision that claimed the life of 22-year-old Patrick Roussel-Sivret.
During the March 9 meeting when council voted to add more career firefighters to Station 16, Vagnini had raised the idea of having two separate fire divisions within the city, one full-time and one volunteer. The idea didn't gain much traction at the meeting, but Vagnini feels the concept is worth a closer look.
"They suggest that they all get along but when you talk to some of the volunteers in certain positions they'll disagree with that," said Vagnini.
"Dare to be different and do nothing ordinary, if we have to do that right now to get our fire services in place; you have to remember across Ontario there are a ton of fire services that are all volunteers. I'm not suggesting we go to all volunteers, but sometimes in these little rural areas they may not get a fire call for a long time and how many people do we have sitting in the fire hall?"
Vagnini says that the decision made by council goes against what he hears from his constituents and that the city needs to be more cognizant of how they're spending.
"It's like if the roof of your house is leaking and you go out and buy a new truck," said Vagnini. "We have things working well right now, why are we going to spend another $1 million to do what we're doing in the Valley?"
