Return of rolling fire station brownouts
By Matt Artz
Friday, May 22nd, 2009 at 9:51 am in budget, Uncategorized.
Fremont released its proposed budget today. Due to staff reductions, “fire station closures will be rotated throughout the city.”
That’s what cities do to cut down on firefighter overtime. Fremont is reducing fire department positions from 161 to 152. I don’t know how many of those positions are vacant.
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May 25th, 2009 at 7:40 am
So why did City Manager Fred Diaz get a raise last year?
May 25th, 2009 at 6:23 pm
As you and I and most people know, Freddy got his raise because nobody pays attention to what the City Manager gets paid and because we don’t know what we can do about it even if we do know what he’s being paid. He works for us; it’s our money that’s going out in his check, but we have nothing to say about his compensation.
There’s been a lot of keening about civil service salaries here recently, but you could pay a lot of maintenance workers, account clerks, and IT people on what Mr. Diaz pulls down a year.
May 25th, 2009 at 9:17 pm
Yes Fremont Lifer: it would be addition by subtraction!
May 26th, 2009 at 4:42 am
I would rater see “Brown Outs” vs a layoff for the Fire Dept. We could lay off some cops or at least get what we pay for out of them. I was in a car accident and called the police and they refused to respond.
They clim they were to busy with crimes?
May 26th, 2009 at 10:04 am
Why don’t they just pay firefighters less?
May 26th, 2009 at 10:49 am
Smalls, I’m sorry to hear about your experience with the PD.
It does seem like there is a tendency in some parts to make the working guy/gal the fall-guy for the sins of those who are in a position to address the problem. How many times lately have we seen the bloated salaries at the top of both corporate and governmental “food chain”; people who are rewarded for incompetence, while the regular workers who have no significant input into the policies of the company/agency are blamed and punished.
May 26th, 2009 at 11:55 am
Well put.