Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Avoid Kingston Bankruptcy - Convert 1 Paid Fire station to Volunteer, Drastically reduce Fire Dept.Emergency Calls

We all know the facts.  The City of Kingston has a declining population and a declining average annual salary.  How can you ask its residents to pay 9 percent more in property taxes on top of years of property tax increases for both City and School taxes.  The city is very close to bankrupt. The city may be forced to borrow money next year in order to pay for the 7.25 percent raises coming to Police and Firemen. Then, the city will be forced to raise taxes even further - 10 percent or higher in order to pay the bonds which pay the Police and Firemen's raises. Then, more Kingstonians will leave and more poor people will take their place. Are you starting to get a picture of the downward spiral the City of Kingston is now in. My argument is that the DPW is almost barebones. We need the Police for daily protection. We absolutely cannot afford to have firemen responding to emergency calls any more. We can contract with 3 ambulance companies with paramedics and locate them uptown, midtown and downtown for optimum response times with higher level service than the fire dept. EMTs. We should try to encourage the Fire union to get ahead of the curve and begin planning for one of the 3 paid stations to convert to a top notch volunteer company such as Ulster Hose. If we want there to be a City of Kingston that is not a welfare colony, we better start making these plans now!

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

There would have to be some very serious attitude adjustments before this could happen. Most potential city volunteers have chosen to volunteer in surrounding departments where they can feel that their contribution actually matters.

Anonymous said...

How much is the contract that you propose for the ambulance companies
going to cost ?

Ralph Mitchell said...

To 8:41pm,
That is a good question. Let's start by asking the mayor or council for a copy of the current city exclusive contract with their only ambulance company Mobile Life Ambulance Company. Notice how all of the contracts are not on display on the City's web page. You have to go out of your way to ask for them and hope they will be provided to you.

Anonymous said...

The current contract costs nothing to the city. Mobile Life wants to keep exclusive with the city thus keeping the competition out, so to do this they promise a certain number of ambulances assigned to the city. They make money off of the calls. So if you want more ambulances and Mobile Life won't give them, I bet their competition might.

Anonymous said...

8:24 is so right. Before this could happen there would have to be a change from the Mayor, Fire Chief and down the ladder. Currently Volunteer fire companies in the City have a hard time recruiting and keeping members becuase of the over all climate in the City which treats the Volunteers as second class citizens. Why would anyone want to become a volunteer in Kingston and get treated like that, when they can easily join a department outside the City and be treated with the respect they deserve.

Anonymous said...

It's truly unbelievable that that you put the fate of the City on the backs of the firefighters. You must really have an axe to grind against them. Maybe you never score high enough on the test, perhaps.

Ralph Mitchell said...

To 11:07pm,
I do not have an ax to grind with the Kingston Paid Fire Dept. I would like to see the above-average KFD continue its very professional work in Kingston. However, the KFD's budget can be reduced by a substantial amount. There is no reason why KFD has to respond to most emergency calls. As 9:00AM above says "The current contract [with Mobile Life Ambulance} costs nothing to the city." One or two other amubulance companies could also be positioned in different parts of the city. Again, their contracts would cost the city nothing. These amubulance companies would provide the city with paramedic coverage at no cost. Therefore the number of KFD calls could be reduced drastically. A recent year showed that KFD responded to only around 100 real fires per year, which is about one every 3 days. Therefore, with much fewer emergency calls and only 100 fires per year, I think it is reasonable to convert one paid fire station to volunteer and reduce the paid firemen by one third. This has the potential to save about $2Million per year. This could drastically reduce the city tax rate so our population and number of businesses can once again increase instead of drastically decreasing.

Bill Berardi said...

The City owes over $ 100 million in post retirement benefits exclusive of annual pension and benefit obligations. There is no way out unless cuts are made. It is unfortunate that elected officials over many years obligated taxpayers to pay for these benefits without funding them to City employees bargaining in good faith. If difficult adjustments are not made - they will be made for us.