Wither the fire levy?

In today’s MJM there is an article about the Volunteer Rescue Squad. Towards the end, it seems to imply that the Council did not approve of the Fire levy. My recollection might be a little hazy as it came at the end of a 5 hour meeting but I recall that we approved of a nine cent fire levy.

Here’s the rational:The Manager came to the Council about a month ago and indicated that our Fire/Rescue situation was dire and we needed more staff. The council quickly voted to hire 5 more cross-trained fire-fighters/medics as well as a Fire/Rescue Chief. To pay for all of these guys plus our existing staff requires a levy of 8.5 cents. However, the City Manager’s plan to provide 24/7 coverage by paid emergency staff required an additional 11 fire fighters/medics in the budget year that starts in July. This would have required the full 10 cent levy as well as some money from our rainy day fund. The full cost to pay those fire fighters in 2010 would have required the levy to be raised to somewhere around 12 cents.

My feeling about all of that was that we were rushing into this thing awfully fast and perhaps we should get our Fire/Rescue Chief hired first and let him make the determination if the volunteers need more help and, if so, how much. Adding an extra half-cent to the levy was my idea as it builds a bit of spare cash into the Emergency Services fund. If the Chief rolls into town and says we need more staff, at least that way we won’t have to pay for all of it out of the rainy day fund. If we don’t need more staff, we will leave the money in there so that we can buy fire and/or rescue equipment at some point down the line.In any event, it is crucial that the new Chief work very closely with the volunteers to get things working smoothly.