Mig, there is something wrong with your numbers. What I said was of all the communities I have lived in spanning the whole spectrum of Volunteer to full time paid, my annual insurance has not varied by more than $100/yr.
Also. I don’t know where you get those rates from. As an example I lived in a home assessed at $280,000 in an all volunteer FD community. My entire annual home insurance was about $660 per year. That includes fire, theft, water damage, vandalism etc.
Maybe not all insurance companies use that survey. I have used the same insurer for 11 years, and when I moved to the area I got a quote from the local insurance company in the mall and it was out to lunch so I stuck with my current company. The only thing of note on my policy is that I am within 300m of a hydrant, there is no smoking in the house, and the fireplace passed an inspection.
The firefighter who is retireing worked there for 35 years and he is happy to be going being a firefighter is not easy it takes alot of hard work and the body just cant take it.The guys are great there im really proud of them as when i started with the city they did also,i hope for the best for them as we move on with our lives i hope more young guys come along and train as firefighters.
Enough of this auxiliary this, auxiliary that. You know back when our Fire Dept. had auxiliary members, they’d start off with 5 at the beginning at year. At the end, they’d have maybe 1 left. Not enough “excitement” for them. The thing is, people aren’t willing to work for free, under the circumstances any more. We have to adapt to the changing world.
So guns and whatever,I take it YOU are a fireman(who does not know what he is talking about)we had a FULL compliment of aux firemen in the past,I don’t know where you are talking about but All other fire dept’s around the province have Aux members,even Terrace has over 20,so what makes you think we can’t do the same? I think it is the attitude of the local dept that is the problem!!!
“…we had a FULL compliment of aux firemen in the past…”
Sounds like you are speaking as a past Auxiliary member. Maybe you never made the cut to promote to full time when the job came up. Is that where this anger comes from?
Hate to say it, but with that kind of attitude, there is not much hope for you being a Wal-Mart greeter this fall either (although you probably are the right age for it). Even the greeters job is not volunteer and you have to be nice occasionally. When they open the doors, you’ll probably start bashing that job on HTMF too.
Damn happy people, they’ll be the end of our society as we know it!!!
The issue of the past auxiliary firemen was brought up in the previous thread that I linked earlier. It was pointed out by a fireman that they were cut in the past to save money because they weren’t being used. Guns and hoses seems to be “in the know” as well so maybe you should start listening to those who are close to the situation rather than pretending you have all the answers.
Again, I’m not a fire expert, or an insurance expert. I just read the website like everybody else.
But the conclusion that I’ve come to by reading this stuff, and viewing the presentations, is that the better the fire protection, the lower the insurance rates. I think this is directly in opposition to the other people in this thread, who are suggesting that having less fire protection means lower insurance rates.
Here’s the presentation I quoted above, in animated gif format.
having less fire fighters doesnt mean lower insurance? Odd I thought living in the middle of a tinder dry forest right on a river bank that happens to also be on a fault line in tornado alley that is subject to terrorist attacks with no police, fire, ambulance, or hospital services was where you would get the cheapest insurance.
I for one, could not meet the requirements for a firefighter paid or volunteer, would any of you that are for auxiliary fire people care to sign up? Oh wait … there is no one signing up … wonder why? Years ago ( more than 25) we have a large compliment of auxilary firemen ( then all men) if I remember correctly WCB and insurance and the general demise of being “volunterred out” stopped this program. It had nothing to do with " the attitude" etc that salty bear refers to. I for one having experienced a fire am glad to have the experts handle things. Perhaps there are people out there who would like to be volunteer firepeople ggod for them. Having known someone who lost their home in the interior as they were out of the local jursidiction ( it was a volunteer fire dept) I think our money is well spent on the services that we currently have. I think that we do need to trim the budgets … in a fiscally responsbile manner but don’t think having a volunteer fire dept is the way to go. If I was a fire volunteer and I had the day off … and was out of town and there was a big fire … “oh well” would not cut it for the people who lost their houses to a fire. I am a huge community volunteer but no my limitations. Salty Bear … are you signing up!!
I believe having a full time fire department costs a home around or less than $30 a month, which is less than internet. I think it’s worth having a full time fire department, if we didn’t insurance would go up for the home owner at least by $30 month and would take away jobs from town and provide a significantly lesser service. I’d rather have a 24/7 service than cross my figures and hope volunteer guys show up, if we go volunteer I doubt the city taxes will be lowered as they’d find other ways to keep that money but end up paying more for insurance and get a lesser service provided by untrained people, so we’d be paying more for less in the end, imho.
It really comes down to cost and acceptable risk. Why don’t we have 60 full time firefighters and have 10 on staff 24 hours. And what about a full time paid search and rescue? The answer is is wouldn’t make economical sense, you compromise based on acceptable risk. I certainly don’t have anything against firemen, and I stated previously that I don’t advocate laying anybody off. But based on the financial state of the city, as firemen retire it might be prudent to replace them with volunteers or paid on call auxiliary and to maintain a small full time staff as is done in a majority of similar sized cities in BC. Some people say there really is no saving, but I dispute that. I think every city would take on full time paid crews if there was no cost saving. And the argument that nobody would step forward to volunteer puzzles me. What makes Prince Rupert unique in this? Every other city finds volunteers including tiny Port Edward. This isn’t about bashing firemen, it is about throwing out ideas to help a city that is broke.
Here’s and idea… sell citywest and all the financial problems will be resolved at least for the short-medium term and likely long term with the amount of $$ pissed away on citywest.
Prince Rupert complaining about being broke is like a crack addict cruising on 22" rims, in their 200,000.00 car, with their 10,000.00 stereo blasting, on their way to their multi million dollar home, to watch pay per view, on their 90’ tv while they float in their pool, drinking expensive wine and complaining on their brand new smart phone (long distance), that they are too broke for food.
There IS something that can be done about your problems and it won’t mean more taxes or any changes to citizens daily lives except those who wrote their meal tickets at citywest.
Care to share your math skills with us? 30 X oh lets say 4,000 taxpayers (f that) comes to 120,000 dollars. that might be two salaries, without benefits. Add on equipment and such and well, multiply over the course of a year, and I don’t know if your numbers make sense.
Please if you can, provide some background on the magic number and how it all works out.
[quote=“MiG”]I don’t think it’s fair to compare Terrace and Prince Rupert’s fire departments.
Terrace didn’t buy a cable company and forgive a $20 million loan to Citywest. Terrace isn’t risking its largest asset by competing with Rogers, Bell, and Telus.
How about the city actually do the things a city should do? Like you know, have fire and police protection? That sounds pretty good to me. How much did Citywest contribute to the City this year? How many firefighters would that have paid for?
Sure, Terrace has auxiliary firefighters, but it also has professional ones like Rupert does. Every interaction I’ve had with both departments has been awesome. I’ve called 911 in both Terrace and Rupert, for a life-and-death thing. Both fire departments responded super quick, way before the ambulance did.[/quote]
Our fire department is amazing! We should be supporting them in whatever the Chief thinks is the best for his department. He knows his staffing requirements and what this town needs to ensure appropriate cover.
Here’s and idea… sell citywest and all the financial problems will be resolved at least for the short-medium term and likely long term with the amount of $$ pissed away on citywest.
Prince Rupert complaining about being broke is like a crack addict cruising on 22" rims, in their 200,000.00 car, with their 10,000.00 stereo blasting, on their way to their multi million dollar home, to watch pay per view, on their 90’ tv while they float in their pool, drinking expensive wine and complaining on their brand new smart phone (long distance), that they are too broke for food.
JESUS! Nail on the head. Thank you for calling a spade a spade.
There IS something that can be done about your problems and it won’t mean more taxes or any changes to citizens daily lives except those who wrote their meal tickets at citywest.[/quote]
Care to share your math skills with us? 30 X oh lets say 4,000 taxpayers (f that) comes to 120,000 dollars. that might be two salaries, without benefits. Add on equipment and such and well, multiply over the course of a year, and I don’t know if your numbers make sense.
Please if you can, provide some background on the magic number and how it all works out.[/quote]
In the other fire hall thread I believe they said the fire department costs 2 million I just guessed at 5000 tax payers, we’re said to have around 12,000 people living here, so about $33 a month for fire services. Not saying it’s concrete as I don’t know the number of tax payers but I would think it’ll be around 5000 area. If we were to go Volunteer the City won’t be lowering taxes, they’ll spend it in other areas like City West. Our insurance will go up and in the end it’s pay that money for fire fighters and EMR or give that money to insurance companies from the increase in insurance costs, I’d rather keep it in town and for it to create jobs locally, keeping locally kids here. It would most likely be lower than that $30 a month as it doesn’t take into account for business taxes, or if it’s lower tax payers the business side would even that out, again not saying it’s concrete as we’d need proper facts on tax payers and costs to find out how much each tax payer pays a month. I think if we break it down we’d find that in reality the Fire Department isn’t costing us that much per person and isn’t the problem, the savings for the tax payers wouldn’t be much, could end up costing us more with higher insurance costs and no break on lowering the taxes.
Anyways I’m not for cutting the Fire Department or anything that has to do with EMR’s (Police, Fire, Paramedics) if cuts need to be made make it at City West and other areas that won’t have the negative effect that moving to a volunteer department would have.
Here’s and idea… sell citywest and all the financial problems will be resolved at least for the short-medium term and likely long term with the amount of $$ pissed away on citywest.
Prince Rupert complaining about being broke is like a crack addict cruising on 22" rims, in their 200,000.00 car, with their 10,000.00 stereo blasting, on their way to their multi million dollar home, to watch pay per view, on their 90’ tv while they float in their pool, drinking expensive wine and complaining on their brand new smart phone (long distance), that they are too broke for food.
JESUS! Nail on the head. Thank you for calling a spade a spade.[/quote]
There IS something that can be done about your problems and it won’t mean more taxes or any changes to citizens daily lives except those who wrote their meal tickets at citywest.[/quote]
I missed your in line quote and saw your signature and thought to myself… wtf that WAS nice, especially for me haha.
You’re right, we haven’t needed backup in awhile. Maybe we should expand the port on a man made clay platform. Because, there’s probably never going to be an earthquake here right? Maybe we should just skip the foundation process of building a house because, there will never be a hurricane or winds strong enough here to knock a house over right? Lets just keep lowering and lowering our standards.
crazyhorse and saltybear… did you ever sign up for when they were hiring the vollys? probably not cuz you are too busy crying the blues on HTMF… all you quit your bitching on this topic… cuz posting shit like this on HTMF aint gonna do ya any good… maybe volunteer your time or get off your ass and do something with your life and make this city proud
