More Fullerton “Fire Fighters” On the Way
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Thanks to a federal grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) our city government is being presented with almost $3,000,000 to hire 12 new sworn fire department personnel and subsidize the new employees for three years to the tune of 75%, 75%, and 35%. The new hires will consist of three “Fire fighters,” three “Fire engineers,” and three “Fire Captains.” The City’s obligatory “matching” contribution is $1.8 million for those three years.
Another fire truck will be re-activated at Fire Station 6, requiring promotions of existing FFD underlings to take the vehicle to emergencies. This part of the item is not covered by FEMA.
It’s Item #14 on tomorrow night’s council meeting agenda.
If you want to read about it, here, you’ll see that the staff report is a virtual shell game of verbiage and is based on the notion that savings from the operation of the ambulance service hijacked by the FFD will cover the City’s new expenses; of course these “savings” are speculative – most likely the wishful thinking that goes along with empire building. There is not a single utterance about budget impacts now or in the out years.
Sustainability? It would be nice to know what happens to these 12 positions after the three years are up and there is no longer any federal subsidy. Will these worthy folks be discharged in the name of budgetary constraint? Will they be kept on courtesy of cuts elsewhere? The new jobs will have to have pension costs now, and of course in the future which jack up our required payments to the good folks at CalPERS. On these issues the staff report is silent as a tomb.
It’s long been a tenet of conservative principles that these dispensations of largesse from Washington and Sacramento are sort of like a pusher getting his junkies reliant on his dope. Here, specifically I have to wonder why FEMA is even in the business of increasing fire department sizes and budgets and the obligations that go along with that augmentation.
Obviously the agency that is known for helping communities’ response to big crises, mostly of the natural disaster kind, now has a remit and a budget to hand out money without reference to any disaster at all. And that budget most be pretty damn big if Fullerton can get a $2.8 million commitment.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the federal revenue that pays for this were kept at home, in the hands of the taxpayers and their local representatives, in the first place.
This seems sort of reckless, doesn’t it?
I guess Elan Miusk never found this stuff.
Let’s see. 12 new employees = 400+ years of pension obligation.
Instead od cutting costs by following the Placentia model Fullerton has gone in the opposite direction. The City Council fell for the smoke and mirrors for the ambulance gig and now they’re doing it again.
Only Dunlap will question this.
Interesting
The fire chief Adam Loeser is completely incompetent and a union stooge.
This is where Councilmember Valencia bends over and lets the Fire Hero Bros who funded her campaign give it to her good and hard and demand she say, “Thank you, sir! May I have another?”
Yes, this is exactly why they hired her to be their councilwoman.
Usually, when these grants run out the city magically finds a way to keep the positions and absorb them into their budgets. Typically to the detriment of other city services. There’s no city manager ostensibly minding the store right now so it makes sense that the fire chief is pushing this now.
Adam Loeser is a dishonest fire chief. I believe this blog wrote a post on him and his dishonesty a few years ago. I see some things never change.
The medical emergency boys hired Charles, too.
And will Shana Charles bend over (sorry for the mental image)? They put her in place to do their bidding.
The bigger question is if there is enough room at the fire stations for the additional easy chairs they will need? Where are they suppose to sit all day?
Don’t worry. We’ll buy you some more Lazy Boy recliners. Bought on credit, of course.