When Brian Bond’s surprize attack on Joe DiRocco’s term as Fire Chief, I thought I would take a few minutes to ask Joe his response to some of the questions asked.

He had just received a response back from Town Manager Dennis Piendak on a quick review of a couple of the years. I’ve attached that report here.

Shawn: Brian threw out a list talking about 6 out of 7 years of your time as Fire Chief that you didn’t stay within your budget.

Joe DiRocco: I didn’t take his list from him, because I didn’t know where it had come from.

SA: You went in as fire chief in the early 90s, right?

JD: I became chief in 95. I was chief from 95 to 2002. I came in in April of 95 and retired September of 02.

SA: How did the department get so far behind?

JD: We went through what we’re going through right now.
The early 90s set the trend. We had layoffs, which we never had before. We shut down the library, I mean everything fell apart.
The trucks got so bad that the guys were ready to refuse to drive them.

SA: So once you got in as chief, you immediately started advocating for new equipment..

JD: Oh yes.

SA: DId you just have to go to the town manager for more?

JD: We convinced everybody. What we ended up doing, like for the stations for instance, we had these community meetings so the people would come out and support us.

We went to the people in all the different sectors explaining what the needs were, and that we weren’t able to provide the service that East Dracut deserved. It took us 12 minutes to get out there!

SA: East Dracut is the section down by Methuen Rd, Salem st?

JD: and Peters pond,  that whole section, it took us forever to get there.

So what we ended up doing in my term was we ended up building the two fire stations, we got two pumpers to replace the ones that were the worst, and the ladder truck.

So during my time we replaced two pumpers and a ladder truck.

SA: Did these come up as emergencies? why were they not part of the budget?

JD: The stabilization fund was in place, but the escalating costs … well we probably could have replaced one with the stabilization, but the other one had to be a bond issue, and so was the ladder because there wasn’t enough money there.

We went to capital planning, finance committee, all the boards to plead our case, show them how bad things really were.

SA: So how did this get allocated to your budget.

JD: Well those were bonded.

You see my budgets (we were able to research 3 so far). Of the three, two of them I turned money back at the end of the year.

In 2000, that was the year all of the Scott tanks expired at the same time.

SA: Scott tanks?

JD: The breathing apparatus that they use.

Those had expired at the same time at a cost of about $11,000 if I remember right. That I believe was the overage here, which was approved and planned for by the manager.

The whole thing comes down to that I never overspent my budget. Never.

Its a law, you can’t do it.

What does happen is that if you have a shortfall (because the budget is figured in March), whatever happens beyond March, whether you have to negotiate a contract or we have people retire unexpectedly and we have to pay buy-back, whether we have some big item that breaks down (and one year I believe that out of the budget we did some exhaust systems).. stuff like that, you just can’t count on it.

SA: Can’t predict them..

JD: Right

But I can’t just go spend the money and do these things, I have to go through the town manager and if he’s got money left from other budgets he sees the need and transfers it over.

SA: And you dont change a budget amount, but you do change the expenditure amount

JD: Right, so someone unexperienced with reading the budget wouldn’t get that.

But I’ve never, never overspent my budget.

The part that through me the curve a little bit was yeah, you show numbers that expenditures were more than my original budget, but that doesn’t account for the additional money added by the Town Manager due to emergency or other unforseeable items.

SA: ultimately, these budget figures are an indication of a department head advocating for his department.

JD: Exactly, thats all I can do.

SA: You called his use of CPC Money.. the pot of gold

JD: Its exactly true.

Here they were, ready to pay a developer more than something was worth just to buy it.

He wasn’t willing to negotiate the price for the people.. he sees this seven million dollars he has there as “look, we’ve got plenty of money.. lets go spend it.”

He doesn’t have to make the hard decisions, he’s got the money to play with.

When you’re working your own budget, you have to live within those budget constraints.. you can only spend so much money, and you have to get the most out of that money that you can.

With those millions of dollars, he can say he was a part of this project and that project, but its all easier than when I do something I have to do the crunching the numbers.

Even the whole town budget, you have to be creative. What do we have, a million nine in free cash? What does that tell you? It tells you that all the money that comes in is going out, except a small, small amount.

Even then that small amount is going to be even less. Our snow deficit is over 500,000 and thats going to come off of that million nine.

SA: On the topic the Canney Property, We went to Kasanjian, and he wanted to sell us the property for an amount that you guys thought was too high

JD: We were at a public safety meeting at town hall, and Brian wanted to talk to me after that meeting. He came up to me and wanted me to support the Canney project.

I said look, I have no problem with the field, but I do have a problem that the number is way too high.

I mean this number was based on a number of units for sale that Kazanjian supplied, and that’s how they came up with this number.

I said what you need to do is go back to Alan and get the number knocked down if you want me to support it.

And that’s when he told me “I can’t do that. I have commercial property in the city, and I don’t want to get on the wrong side of anyone.” So I said “then you’re the wrong guy to be doing this.”

He never admitted that he didn’t say that, remember he came back at one point saying we might have saved $15,000.

Well, that’s not what happened, because when we went into executive session what I also wanted them to do was to have them tear the house down. If we tore the house down it probably would’ve cost another 40-50 grand.

So they’re tearing it down, they took care of the contamination that was over by the tanks by the old farm house.

SA: On the topic of lights at Veterans. We all sat in the Board of Selectmen meeting two years ago and listened to all these people say “You promised us no lights.”

JD: Exactly.

I missed this last night, but after he said he went through the neighborhood finding signs supporting me I should have asked.. “This is the neighborhood where you were raised and grew up? and you wonder why they’re not supporting you?”

I have a sign in the yard he grew up in, they came to me.

Most of them in that area came to me, because they knew I was the only one sticking up for them.

We made a promise. I said it last night and I’ll say it again.

If we break that promise than there is no other neighborhood that will trust us. You can tell any other neighborhood that you’re going to do something and a few years later you’re going to what you want.. nobody will trust you.

Its the same at Canney. When it comes in, I don’t know what the numbers will be.. but they’re going to have to have public meetings there. They’re going to have to make committments to these people. And its the same, we’re going to have to live up to those.

You have to be a man of your word.