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And
the Vicious Cycle begins
By
Bob Rhoades
The
city of Greenville’s ill-advised decision to lay off fire department
personnel
and cripple the ability of the Fire Department to defend the city from
fire is
just the beginning of a vicious cycle that, once started, will be hard
to stop. Total
proposed reductions in the fire
department budget are $382,896. This
includes the elimination of the Asst. Chief Position, 4 firefighters
and the
Secretary. This
essentially takes us
back to 1980’s staffing. Other city departments’ reductions totaled
$125,221. That
seems fair!
In
the grand scheme of things a history lesson might be in order.
To
land the Fram plant on Jackson St., a second fire station was built on
Gray
Ave. This gave the
false sense of
security to Fram and the south end of town that they were protected. Eventually there were
three pieces of
equipment housed in the station. Ninety
percent of the time, there was one man on duty.
So when Fram or anyone else in the south end
of town had a fire, one
firefighter with one engine responded, hoping that Station 1 didn’t get
caught
by a slow moving train on the tracks.
A
building placed on a street doesn’t put out fires!
Eventually
in an effort to conserve money, Station 2 was closed after the railroad
was no
longer a threat. This
moved all of the
resources into one station. Very
quickly
the efficiency of the department increased.
There were enough personnel in one station to
adequately man the
apparatus. It’s
been that way since the
1980’s when Station 2 closed.
Until
lately, that is. As
fire fighters have
retired, the city hasn’t replaced them.
Now announcement of layoffs as well as
restructuring within are putting
all of that progress in jeopardy. Additionally,
Firefighters did not take a
raise for the last two years and made numerous concessions in their
contract,
plus vacant positions have not been filled.
If this cut is allowed to go through, 1/3 of
the department could be
gone.
The
City’s letter is quite confusing actually.
It states that the end result will be a 16 man
department with a
chief. With the
families involved there
could be as many as 21 people in these families affected by the loss of
income
to their families. The
loss to the city
is magnified significantly. The
Union believes
the intent was to have three 5-man shifts with a chief.
This would be then a 16 man department. The letter really doesn’t
say that, we’ll
see. The union
believed that the
reduction would occur from attrition as it has in the past. As guys retire, they won’t
be replaced down
to the 16 man department.
Union
President Russ Thompson says that the union was notified through
unofficial
channels. In other
words, the administration
didn’t actually give the union notice.
Through
the process of coming to this decision, the union never met with city
officials.
At
the present time, there is one firefighter on injury leave who will
probably
not return. At
least one more should
retire next year. Depending
on how the
city sorts this out, the knowledge lost with these cutbacks could be as
high as
68 years of experience, plus the skills and schooling these guys have. At some point, someone
needs to figure out
that if four man shifts is what they meant, what the impact really is. Current
standards for fire fighter safety
would go out the window. The
overtime
costs to maintain the shift staffing will be magnificent. One man off sick or
injured will mess up the
works real good. If
one other person is
off for working a holiday then overtime will be needed.
Was this really thought through? Did the Safety Service
Director actually go
to the fire chief and the firefighters and talk this through? Was access given to the
committee to the
Auditor, the person with the money?
City
officials will tell you they are being fiscally responsible. Truth of the matter is
this is a Band-Aid on
a sore that won’t go away. Get
rid of
people, balance the budget, case closed.
Or is it?
A couple of years ago
when the Township of Greenville decided to go their own way with fire
protection, their ill thought plan did have a few flaws. When a government entity
embarks on a project
of this magnitude, it’s assumed that the end result will be service
comparable
or above what was already being delivered.
There was the matter of fire insurance rates. A few people told me I was
nuts when I
mentioned it. Then
the Insurance Service
office (ISO) came in and did a rating check on the Township. Their rating dropped
significantly. The
ISO’s Fire Protection Rating Schedule is
based on a lot of things. They
include,
Fire Alarms, Engine Companies, Training, and Number of firefighters
responding,
maintenance and testing of equipment, Water Supply, to name a few. Although the records and
training of the crew
that’s left will continue in the city, as will everything else, the
actual
personnel on duty will be able to man one piece of equipment. Most of the rating
schedule for the city is
the same. Removal
of personnel is not
conducive to maintaining a Class 4 rating.
So we keep everything in perspective, if your
fire insurance rates go
up, remember why it happened. This
is
not a scare tactic, its common sense.
Let’s
not forget the big picture. Some
of the
same people who thought the ISO thing was crazy also thought that
schools had
no bearing on industry locating in our town.
Well here’s the deal folks, if corporations
don’t care if the kids of
their workers get educated, you can believe they DO care if their brand
new
building burns down.
Bottom
line is they care about both and a lot more.
They do care about schools; they do care about
fire protection,
recreation, police protection, sanitation and everything else that goes
with
making a town a home, and not just a place to stop for18 years so that
you can
leave and never look back.
We
don’t need to get rid of the infrastructure that we have, we need to
think
smarter, think out of the box, listen to every idea that anyone has.
The
Township of Greenville did think out of the box.
And even though they have spent an inordinate
amount of money, more than it would have cost them to stay put with the
City,
they did it and certainly didn’t look back or apologize. The city has the ability
to do the same
thing. The
taxpayers in the City of
Greenville have been subsidizing the Township EMS Department since day
one. The
overwhelming majority of the
EMS runs are in the city of Greenville, so doesn’t it make sense that
we have
our own EMS. The
Firefighters are
already trained to perform at the Basic Life Support level which is
acceptable. Eventually
Paramedic status
would be desirable. Buying the equipment which should be paid for very
quickly
would be an initial startup cost, but totally recoverable.
Someone
said to me “if the city did that, the township wouldn’t have enough
runs for a
full time EMS Dept.” Duh! It
made little
difference to them when they moved the fire apparatus.
What exactly is going on here?
This is about people’s lives, literally. First it’s about the lives
of the people who
live in the city of Greenville. Secondly
it’s about every piece of property in the City.
It’s also about the firefighters and their
families, their way of life
and our way of life.
The
City of Greenville could show some real backbone in this situation and
probably
ease our tax burden in the process.
Along with that, it would save the personnel
in the fire department and
allow them to provide EMS care also.
No
one likes to talk about it but it’s a money maker.
Greenville always has to be the lone holdout,
the one place on earth to do everything differently. How’s
that working out for us? Troy,
St. Mary’s, Celina, Wapakoneta, Dayton,
Piqua and many, many more run EMS from the Fire Dept.
That’s not an accident, that’s what
works. It also pays
the bills.
So
there is the vicious
cycle. An
infrastructure that has
taken almost 50 years to build is in jeopardy of being demolished. We need more industry
because we have lost a
lot. We can’t build
new schools because
people say they already have too many taxes.
They have too many taxes because there aren’t
as many paying them. There
aren’t as many paying them because we
lost too many jobs. We’ll
do away with
the fire department, but then there will be two major reasons why
industry
won’t come. Do you
see a pattern here?
We
have a chance for a new Nursing Facility, but council and the zoning
board is
holding out for a gas station?
Hello! The
gas station isn’t
coming first of all and secondly, we don’t need another gas station. If someone was going to
build a gas station
there, it would have happened when the road was built.
We
need more jobs! Call
your councilperson
and let them know what you think.
We
have an economic development person who strives to bring more work to
the
Greenville Area. Elimination
of 1/3 of
the fire department as well as falling down schools isn’t the way to
help his
office get the job done.
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