To “FD” or Not “FD,” – Politicians Puzzled

THE SAN CARLOS, CALIFORNIA, CITY COUNCIL is considering a brainstorm presented by their City Manager Mark Weiss.  He thinks that the cash-strapped city could save $3 million to 5.5 million if they shut down the police department and the fire department and contracted other agencies to provide the emergency services.

His plan calls for contracting with the San Mateo County Sheriff’s office to patrol the streets and answer calls, and making an agreement with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or CalFire, to come in and answer fire calls.

According to THIS ARTICLE in the San Jose Mercury-News, Weiss said he prefers the outsourcing plan because the city needs to “do something bolder” than what they have been doing for the past several years.  His alternative proposal to the “outsourcing” is to save the money by, among other tricks, closing the city’s Youth Center and discontinue televising the City Council meetings.  (We are not making this up…Ed.)  The article does not say whether Weiss has gotten any pre-approval from either the Sheriff’s Dept. or CalFire for this scheme.

Firegeezer is of the opinion that the good citizens of San Carlos are in real trouble when their city is being run by somebody who thinks that running a “youth center” is more important than running a police station.  When you think that televising the city council public meetings is more valuable than sending out a fire engine to handle an emergency, then you have completely lost touch with reality.

“If we adopt this, if we totally outsource departments, it will dramatically affect how we do business,” Weiss said.  (At least he’s got that part right….Ed.)

The San Mateo Daily Journal has MORE.
San Carlos Fire Department WEBSITE.

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IN VIGO COUNTY, INDIANA, NEVINS TOWNSHIP Trustee Carl Gregory arbitrarily shut down the town’s volunteer fire department last Monday March 1 after he became upset with some administrative shortcomings of the VFD.

Gregory donned his best coveralls for this interview with WISH-TV last week:

But the township leaders have had second-thoughts on such a drastic reaction to the lack of a few reports and rapidly called a meeting of all the involved parties to settle the dispute.  Work has commenced at the firehouse to satisfy some requirements and the volunteers are expecting to return to answering alarms in a few days.

WTHI-TV Ch. 10 filed this video update last night:

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