And all of us at the station said, "That's nothing!" Time to revisit CARTNE:
A city pays for a decent fire department for one main reason - to keep the city from burning down a couple of times each month. Most of the time you won't hear anything about it on the news. It takes a lot of people, training and equipment to keep our infrastructure from going away. All the other things a fire department does is done in between the times that it is not fighting the fire that would spread to other buildings, etc.
It's like having a standing army for a country that gets invaded frequently, and in between invasions the army does other civic duties.
We could be brewing and selling beer for the city, making monastic fruitcakes, etc., but instead we do emergency medical services. It's a great fit. We are located in a bunch of neighborhoods. We have sirens. We operate really well under pressure. We are trainable. But it's amazing the things that people will pick up a phone and call 9-1-1 for - every day.
All to say, Please vote yes for the Fire Bond Levy. For some reason the Spokesman-Review called this a new tax. It isn't. It's a continuation of the old. If you want to know more about it, you can go here. I know that it's a shock that the SR got a story wrong, but...
I just shot the Yuppie 911 article to a few search and rescue friends with NASAR, US Coast Guard, and Colorado Search and Rescue Board. Some of the groups were contacted by the author of the article. All downplayed the issues addressed by the author and tried to correct the author on her use of PLB (the device she is talking about is the SPOT, NOT a PLB.) Nonetheless, the author was able to find a few people who were more than happy to deliver fine quotes. Yay.
ReplyDeleteFor the fire department, it's mostly Cricket and then the other cellphone services.
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