In my latitude, yesterday was that twice-yearly day when it was exactly 12 hours from sunrise to sunset. So we’re officially steaming toward winter now. Believe me, within 3 months I’ll have had enough of that.
I don’t normally play videos during the morning lineup, except the occasional buckle-up reminder. But I want to play this one for you because it relates to something that I want to bring up:
When I watched that yesterday my first thought was, we’re going to see more of that type of squabbling in the months ahead. I’m sure that there’s more to this dispute than how many assists each department is running to each other. But this “shot across the bow” looks like it’s meant to bring whatever it is they disagree on up to the top of the negotiating pile. Somebody is seeing a money crunch coming up and they want to either reduce minimum staffing, or response sizes ( 2 engines, or 3 engines or 4, for example), or something like that.
The other event that we’re starting to witness is the absolute shutdown of small fire departments. Some larger departments are closing stations and now some smaller ones are ceasing operations completely. These are just about always brought on by financial mismanagement, usually directed by the elected politicians. A recent example that we saw this week is happening in the town of Lincolnville, South Carolina, where the mayor hid the fact from the citizens that he hadn’t paid the liability insurance for the town’s vehicles and the state informed the police and fire departments that they had to stop driving their cars and trucks next week.
Another problem that keeps popping up here and there is unreliable fire apparatus that is too old to stay in service reliably. And the townspeople wring their hands because they just don’t have the money to buy a replacement. Listen, folks. That’s not due to “hard times.” That’s because their finances have been mismanaged. Most departments/towns/districts set aside a set amount of money each year into a captial fund account so that when there’s a replacement needed, then the cash is there to buy it. The same goes for daily operations. Poor planning kept budgeting tax income for more and fancier things without providing for the so-called “rainy day” that always comes around every now and then.
There are some communities that were passing tax increases all nilly-willy whenever they needed to make a capital expenditure. But the citizens are feeling all taxed out now. They don’t want to pay more. They just want what’s already being taken to be spent more properly. There’s no excuse for a city to have a 40-yr.-old ladder truck because they don’t have the $500K to replace it. They’ve had 40 years to save up for it. Now that there is a real economic problem nationwide, these slipshod practices are coming to light and can’t be ignored any longer.
This isn’t quite as widespread as it sometimes appears. There are 30,000 fire departments in the U. S., most of which are volunteer departments. True, some of the smaller ones in remote and rural areas are in a perpetual state of poverty, but a well-run state government (and there are several) will have methods of supplementing the costs of their operations. Most fire departments are not laying off firefighters. Most fire departments are not closing down stations. And very few are closing down entirely. With good planning and financial practices, you can keep your department from falling into this pit.
Ane we definitely need to keep the coffee cupboard stocked. I’ll go get the coffee started while you get the equipment checked out.
