On call emergency response for Municipality's

[Aprue10]

Good Morning All,
I know this forum is mostly focused towards private tree care operations. However, I am now a Municipal Forester and was curious if anyone else on here is. I am looking to revamp our on-call tree emergency schedule to be more fair and equitable across the board for everyone. If anyone has any insight how your or other municipal departments schedule their on-call personnel schedule, I would greatly appreciate the feedback. Thanks in advance.

 

[pcpTR33]

If it was just clearing/opening the road the cities I had worked for would call based off the overtime list, all employees were trained in proper chipper and chainsaw operation, any calls that warranted aerial operation went specifically to those qualified and able to use the bucket proficiently, kind of a “perk” of being a trimmer/bucket operator. No one took issue as it was seen as the equivalent of the sewer jet operator position.

 

[Lumberjack]

Good Morning All,
I know this forum is mostly focused towards private tree care operations. However, I am now a Municipal Forester and was curious if anyone else on here is. I am looking to revamp our on-call tree emergency schedule to be more fair and equitable across the board for everyone. If anyone has any insight how your or other municipal departments schedule their on-call personnel schedule, I would greatly appreciate the feedback. Thanks in advance.

How do y'all handle towing/recovery rotations? Could you adapt from that?

 

[colb]

Mainly, there is a need to clear trees down in roads, and notice of this comes from the police office most of the time. Whoever is on call for the rest of the City can send that tree in the road out to an on-call contractor. At my municipality, the Stormwater division handles all on-call duties, which works well because some are blocked stormwater conveyances. They also get a number of road cave-ins. If your city is smaller then you probably have a public works dispatch on duty 24/7. A small number of trees down in road do not get forwarded to the police and these are intrinsically less important than the others, and can wait to the next day/beginning of week, or they eventually get reported to the police and get into the first track. If the contractor takes good pictures, the forester can tell whether they need to visit the site the next day to assess the rest of the failed tree.

If there is another type of tree emergency, it would be handled by whoever handles permitted tree removals (usually associated with Development Services staff in the Planning or Engineering department who review development plans), so they should make the determination of whether the permitting process can be waived for the emergency, then send it to whoever their contractor is. They may piggyback on your urban forestry contract or have another contractor. The City on-call dispatch might have their number on file. You can also contract out the assessment of a potentially hazardous tree for non-normal work hours, but it's a lot to ask a guy to be on standby for one or two call-outs per year.

 

[Simpleiowaguy]

When i did line clearance the utility had a cell phone for on call and all crew leaders were on a weekly rotation for on call. You just took the phone for your week and it was your responsibility. You got an extra 2$/hr on your regular check for on call weeks as well. You knew your rotation so you could switch with guys if it interfered with vacation or something like that. Worked well.

 

[Brocky]

Most counties in Michigan have their own road commissions, separate from any DPWs. Ours had the forestry dept personnel called first, depending on overtime hours, if not enough, then went to the general maintance people, which got a yearly refresher course.

 

[AdkEric]

Good Morning All,
I know this forum is mostly focused towards private tree care operations. However, I am now a Municipal Forester and was curious if anyone else on here is. I am looking to revamp our on-call tree emergency schedule to be more fair and equitable across the board for everyone. If anyone has any insight how your or other municipal departments schedule their on-call personnel schedule, I would greatly appreciate the feedback. Thanks in advance.

I am a municipal arborist, in a city of about 67k residents and about 11 square miles in size. Our tree crew is a subset of our Parks Department. In the event of a call in, tree crew personnel are called first, followed by or along with, parks Department personnel.

At this point in time, no personnel are obligated to come in when called for tree emergencies. In the event the tree crew personnel aren't available, and parks Department personnel aren't available (rare occurrence,) other departments are contacted (streets, water, sewer, waste collection.) Most of these employees are classified as "Motor Equipment Operators- Medium" and hold at least a class B CDL and are qualified to use a wood chipper and chainsaw for material on the ground. They may not utilize aerial lifts or fall trees. Who is called first in this case is supposed to be done according to an overtime list, but often isn't. The person with the least amount of overtime hours shall be called first. This is all union negotiated.

Other departments (water and sewer) maintain an on call list for emergencies pertaining to water/sewer issues, that alternates weekends. These personnel receive "beeper pay" and are obligated to respond when it is their "weekend on." They receive the stipend wether they are needed or not.

In our city, an after hours call in is paid a minimum of 4 hours. That might be a NYS labor law thing, not sure. Time and a half, double time on Sundays and holidays.

 

[XTREEC]

Not specific to tree work but we used text messages for emergent and last minute overtime issues. We sent a group text to everyone eligible. This can be done through email instead of phone. The first people to respond got the work. Overall, it worked really well. It was far more efficient than calling people which was our previous protocol.