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Comment by Matthew Cosgrove on May 7, 2008 at 9:31am

As for you comment that "This will never happen" The FD in my area has said that before. We as a fire dept were looking to add a BLS or ALS rig to help our already over run EMS system. We have run as First Resopnders for years but want to do more. The next thing we knew the city came in and told us that we were going to Public Safety and would have a PD cheif as our new Cheif(this has changed, we are keeping our FD cheif). However our cheif now has someone over him now.
Never say never...Its all up to the "powers that be" for us...thats the city.

Comment by Matthew Cosgrove on May 7, 2008 at 9:21am

The way it is going they are trying to run off the firefighters...I know they will need us and our equipment, but they don't want seem to want us. The attiude of the city is that they can do it all without the vol. firefighters.
As for the budget...SLASHED!!! I don't know how else to put it. We never had a large budget but now we lost almost 40% of what we had. The city had an answer for everything(while cutting out funding), if a tool is broken or lost(this happens from time to time) its the firefighters fault, it will come down on us. If we need a tool that we never had...than we must not need it(things like a K-12 saw, new adapters...ect). I know that the training will be needed, more now than ever before! But its not on us to worry about anymore. There are some up sides to the whole thing....I'm just waiting to see them.
As an officer I'm trying to be positive about it and keep my people happy but, they are seeing past it all. I have stoped most of the rumers and we go by what the city has to say, nothing else.
I'm all for what is best for the people of the city, I just don't see this working out so far. I have been in contact with some dept's who have had good luck and some that have had bad luck with the Public Safety. It looks like a great thing when we all work together! But, The city won't play fair. I'm hopeing for the best but fearing the worst.
I hope this helps clear things up a bit -Matt

Comment by lutan1 on May 7, 2008 at 7:53am

I struggle a bit with this topic because we run a totally different system here in Oz where this will NEVER happen (ie: cross training cops to be FF'ers) but a couple of questions as I try to understand the problem-

Things are going down hill fast and unless we find a way up or out I see the end of the fire dept in my town for good. Will this really happen or is it simply a bit of emotive language? Even with cross trained cops, surely they're still going to need a fire department, the trcuks, equipment, etc

The real kicker was the training budget being slashed to almost nothing and that money being given to PD for who knows what. Again has the budget totally gone or just not been increased or slashed- bi difference between all three. Also, surely there needs to be some accountability in relation to the budget. Surely a budget can't be hidden from the public eye and someone must know where it's gone or going?

Comment by lutan1 on May 7, 2008 at 7:45am

If anyone is looking for the original topic, go to
http://www.firefighternation.com/profiles/blog/show?id=889755%3ABlogPost%3A530096

Comment by Matthew Cosgrove on May 6, 2008 at 8:20am

go to my home page and read "Fighting Fires with cops, is it safe?"
This will give you some info on what has been happening.
This much I will say, with the responce I got before I was looking forward to this...But PD and the city are getting carried away big time. I will have more updates and info to follow. Thanks -Matt

Comment by lutan1 on May 6, 2008 at 5:56am

Matt- I'm not familiar with the old post that you refer to- can you enlighten us a bit more? It sounds interesting to say the least!!!