By STEPHEN PINTO
What does transitioning the Everett Fire Department mean? What is the mayor trying to do with the Fire Department? Why isn’t the Fire Chief resisting the change?
Reduction in staffing instead of hiring as promised? Closing stations?
Not purchasing or upgrading equipment or stations? Slower response time?
What effect if any would it have on mutual aid? Reduction or longer wait times for inspections? Putting lives at risk?
One slow year in fatal fires is great news but it should not automatically result in cutbacks or changes in operation.
If we turn our back on the fire department, there will be fatalities and injuries.
A city with a growing population and housing is not the time to take chances.
Too many Everett homes are built close together, easily allowing a fire to spread.
If we have firehouses responding to multiple injury or illness calls. what happens if a major fire were to then break out in the city? What if a second broke out at the same time? Ambulance calls can easily take up to twenty-thirty minutes while the patient is being assessed.
Then there is time getting to the hospital and checking in. While that is happening the responding firefighters are returning to their station to await the next call.
Could be a fire, mutual aid, or injury. They should not be spending crucial time assessing a patient. It should be an ambulance service doing this and then driving the patient to a hospital.
The fire department needs an ambulance service as much as the police department needs one.
We will be spreading our fire department too thin. That can result in injuries and fatalities.
Don’t base the year of Covid on changing EFD operation. That is way too much to risk.
Maybe our mayor needs to put on a pair of boots, hop a truck and ride out to the next fire. It’s not something that should be dismissed or taken lightly.
The danger of the job begins the moment they get on the truck.
And since a lot of city hall business was handled by calling 311 during the year of Covid, maybe we should consider large reductions in many departments at city hall.
It’s a good thing the council turned down the mayors $80 million request to build a new city hall several years ago.
Yet we found it necessary to rehab every park in the city over a two-year period.
We found it necessary to install decorative lighting, raised crosswalks, new street signs, and high-end holiday decorations.
Branding Everett which I still can’t understand what that is other than a capital E.
Four thousand a month of taxpayer money to mail out propaganda brochures during an election year makes my blood boil.
Hiring numerous outside consultants with paying them with taxpayer money.
Hiring outside legal counsel and paying them untold amounts of money is another insult to the people lining up for food or waiting for housing.
The casino payments to Everett belong to the taxpayers. The money doesn’t belong to the mayor.
If payments are behind then residents have the right to know.
Stephen Pinto writes about city issues. He is a longtime resident of Everett.