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"By the way, we did a survey in Uganda where the Ebola virus is spreading like wildfire. The only place on Earth that has more sick days than Uganda is the Warwick Fire Dept. Take a look at the virus colony."

Captain,

That is a direct quote from a comment of yours less than a month ago. You now claim that FFs are banking sick time by utilizing COS.

WFD sick time usage is flat through out the year. Q1, Q3, and Q4 sick usage is nearly identical, with an uptick in Q2 with call outs in November and December accounting for the entirety of the increase. That increase bleeds into Q3 with January also showing a higher than average call out rate. I wonder what could possibly lead to an increase in sick time in NOV, DEC, and JAN?

As for COS, totals are higher in Q1 and Q3, but drop in Q2 and Q4 with no correlation with to sick usage whatsoever.

At the budget hearing on 5/31 you stated the WFD used 1652 COS in fiscal 2017. A year in the FD consists of 33580 shifts (46 FF x 2 shifts per day x 365 days). So COS account for 1652/33580 or 4.9% or all shifts worked. So on average a FF takes a change every 5 weeks, or 1 out of every 20 shifts for a job where half of all shifts are overnight, 6 out of every 8 tours fall on all or some portion of a weekend, and depending on how the schedule falls, a single platoon could work nearly every major holiday in a calander year. This isn't meant as a statement on "how hard FFs have it." Its simply to show that FF's time off often doesn't correspond with the rest of society. There aren't a lot of kids birthday parties, LL games, or family gatherings at 10am on a Tuesday.

As for the 206 “unreciprocated” shifts, they represent just 6/10ths of 1% of all shifts. A number that severely undermines your assertion that this is some sort of wide spread “scam” or abuse of the system. And the arbitrary start and end dates to the data further skew any conclusions drawn from the numbers. A FF could take a COS on the night of 6/30 and repay that shift back on the day of 7/1 and your analysis would show an unreciprocated shift even though back to back shifts were swapped.