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Depending on whom you ask, the struggle with an Edwardsville firefighter being laid off may or may not be over.

During the Edwardsville City Council meeting Monday, City Administrator Michael Webb announced the laid off firefighter, James Befort, had procured another job with the Lenexa Police Department.

After the meeting, Mayor John “Tiny” McTaggart made his stance clear on the subject as well.

“He’s gone. That’s it,” McTaggart said.

But ask Bob Wing, president of the International Association of Firefighter, Local 64, which has been negotiating with the city since news got out of the potential layoff, and he’ll tell you a different story.

“If they think just because Befort has a job offer, and if he accepts it, this issue goes away, they’re mistaken,” Wing said. “It’s bigger than Befort. It’s not going away, and it could even gear up some before it’s all over with.”

Wing said the union had filed four grievances against the city that would move toward the legal process. Attorneys from both sides will attempt to deal with the situation and an arbitrator may be brought in at some point for hearings.

While Wing said he wouldn’t go into detail about the grievances for legal reasons, he said he believed that lay off is all part of the mayor’s agenda.

“(McTaggart) seems pretty proud of this,” Wing said. “This is what he wanted. Clearly this has been part of his agenda.”

“This issue is from a budgetary standpoint,” Webb said. “They originally proposed waiving all holiday pay for the remainder of the year and then came back and said, ‘we want comp time for holiday pay.’ The doesn’t help. It just creates more debt on the books, and we don’t need anymore future debt.”

Webb said the city’s loss of property tax revenue for 2009 was dealt with in several ways that effectively left the fire and police departments in the same position.

Just like in the fire department, a position on the police department was eliminated with the only difference being that no one held the police position at the time it was eliminated.

“The bottom line is the city, through its city council, has the right to make financial decisions,” Webb said. “The council and city, as an organization, has the right to determine its proper staffing, and the council determined that we were going to reduce staffing in the fire department.”

For more on this story, check out Thursday's Chieftain.

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