Wednesday, October 21, 2009

3rd Ward Alderman Charles Landi Proposes Closing 1 Paid Fire Station

Current 3rd Ward Alderman, Charlie Landi, who is unopposed for re-election, proposes closing one paid fire station.  Charlie will not pledge to not vote for  budgets which increase taxes for the next 2 years, but he will begin the serious debate in the Kingston Common Council about closing one paid fire station.  If one paid fire station is closed and the manpower is reduced proportionately through early retirement attrition, approximately one-third of the $7 Million fire budget can be saved.  This $2.3 Million savings can reduce about $2,300,000 divided by $150,000 (per tax increase percentage) equals about 15 percent.  Therefore,the Kingston City tax rate could be reduced by 5 percent.  So instead of the proposed 10 percent tax increase, we could have a 5 percent tax decrease.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maybe with the money saved from closing a firehouse, we can keep the police officers on the street and perhaps hire more.

All of the Aldermen have to take a stand on this, and bring back beauty and saftey to this city.

Anonymous said...

Well when my house in on fire who the heck am I going to call.


Come back to earth

Ralph Mitchell said...

To 1:24pm,

If we convert 1 paid firehouse to volunteer, we still will have plenty of firemen and equipment to call on.

If we continue with our unreasonably high fire dept budget, we may not be able to live in the City of Kingston.

Mark Ingoglio said...

Also, do not count out the volunteers. For that matter, each citizen of Kingston should at least consider signing on himself.

Anonymous said...

I don't see you or Landi volunteering. Exactly who is going to volunteer? Its a heck of thing to ask people who are already working 2 or more jobs to give up more of the precious time with their families. That's why there are paid departments around the country. Its not a "sin" as some people make it out to be. Besides, the volunteers in Kingston already have 4 stations, how many more do they need?

Ralph Mitchell said...

To 6:29pm,

We need strong leadership to develop a strong volunteer group to take over one of the paid Fire Stations. Let's take the Central Fire Station for example. Make that a Volunteer Fire Company that is a clone of the Town of Ulster Fire Company. Offer strong incentives such as health insurance and social activities such as the Town of Ulster has for its members. Maybe the other 4 Volunteer Fire Companies in the city can be closed and merged into the new Central Station Volunteer company. If a strong leader wanted to convert one paid fire station into a strong volunteer fire station, it could easily be done. In 2 years, we could be saving about 2 to 3 Million dollars per year.

Anonymous said...

Strong leadership or not your missing the most basis premise, people. Again, people don't have the time or inclination to volunteer. You keep quoting Ulster Hose. Look at the rest of the county and all volunteer dept together. They are all suffering because peope don't have the time to commit. I still don't see you or Landi volunteering. Why are you going to put the onus on others. If people are are to volunteer, why are you going to entice them with perks? You also fail to mention that Ulster pays people to respond. They just call them janitors to keep the volunteer persona going. You need to wake up to society today and realize nothing comes for free, no matter how much you want it to.