The Mehlville Fire Protection District is taking a closer look at its vacation model as part of some upcoming Employee Manual of Policies and Procedures changes.

Chief Brian Hendricks said the current model has five columns and the newer model would be reduced to four. He said he has run through some mock vacation drafts and the model should still allow people to pick days they want.

The way the days are picked would remain the same – Hendricks described it as a “round-robin” format.

“The bulk of our employees fall into the 12, 10 and  eight 

(days) category,” Hendricks said at the Board of Directors meeting Sept. 8. “So if you have 12 days, you’ll pick six days the first round, four days the second round and two days until the remainder of your amount.”

Rising overtime costs caused the change and Hendricks expects a reduction in unscheduled overtime with the new model.

The second vacation-related item under scrutiny is the lack of vacation time in an employee’s first year.

“We’ve hired quite a few (employees) and our old EMoPP stated you don’t receive any vacation your first year …  so someone hired in February would go the whole year and not receive any days off,” Hendricks said.

The new proposal would give new hires three vacation days between January and March, two days between April and June and one day between July and September. Hendricks said this is mainly to benefit any younger hires who still have young children, and this is similar to what other departments offer so Mehlville Fire would be able to stay competitive going forward.

A third change would allow critical-care paramedics who are further down the overtime list better opportunities to fill open ambulance shifts.