Bnechis

If a community can afford to be self insured it will in the long run save money. If it is determined that $5m is the minimum needed to be covered (I believe the formula is developed by the NYS Ins. Dept.) then the community must reserve $5 (which can gain interest and grow for future needs. If the community is not self insured it will pay 20-30% ($1-1.5m) per year to an insurance co. for coverage. If there have been no major claims in 4-5 years then they have paid out the $5m and have nothing to show for it. Another way to cover a municipality is catastrophic coverage. Effectivly this is like having a major deductable policy. We use this and it means we are self insured for the 1st million (or so) and after that insurance kicks in. It reduces the cities costs for coverage, but if we ever had a multi million dollar claim, the outside insurance would kick in

Yonkers has twice the population but is almost 1/2 the size. Depending on the hours worked its 15 to 20 per shift. Flint has been trying to convince its union that they should increase there work week from 50.4 to a 56 hour work week. Prior to the recent cuts, they had 125 FF's, now they have 65. In 5 years they have closed 1/2 of there stations due to staffing. They now cover an area the size of Yonkers, Mt Vernon, Pelham and New Rochelle with 3 fire stations. As of 2003 they had 6) 3 man engines, 2) 2 man squads, 1) 1 man ladder, 1) 1 man command and 1) 2 man ALS unit. At that time they were averaging 22,000 calls per year, with 791 structure fires (more than 2 per day).

This was taken last March at the Rock.

And washing down fuel has been illegal for 20 years. The fines start at $10,000 cheap compared to what this one is going to cost.

FDNY had the power units that can pull the push carts for over 1 year.

Its not new....Braun Made something similar in the 1980's

You are all too young to understand this one. "The Twilight Zone" To Serve Man (1962): An alien race comes to earth, promising peace and sharing technology. A linguist and his team set out to translate the alien's language, using a book whose title they deduce is "To Serve Man". The aliens have been feeding us so well that we are getting fat. It is too late when we determine that "To Serve Man" is a Cookbook"

I always prefered: "To Serve Man" ............................... "It's a Cookbook"

Interesting, ok yes SAFER is supported by everyones tax dollars, but lets look a little closer at SAFER. Prior to this year this was one of the 2 main components: 2. Recruitment and Retention of Volunteer Firefighters Activity. The goal of this activity is to create a net increase in the number of trained, certified, and competent firefighters capable of responding to emergencies likely to occur within the fire department geographic response area and safely. The primary focus is the recruitment and retention of volunteer firefighters who are involved with or trained in the operations of firefighting and emergency response. Volunteer, paid-on-call, and combination fire departments as well as local and statewide volunteer firefighter interest organizations are eligible to receive grants in this activity. With proper justification, applications for assistance in the Recruitment and Retention of Volunteer Firefighters could include activities that would require as many as four years to complete. There is no local match requirement for this activity and there are no maximum federal share limits. What are some examples of incentive costs that are eligible under the Recruitment and Retention of Volunteer Firefighters activity? Applicants who propose to initiate a recruitment and/or retention plan as a part of their application will receive equal consideration for the recruitment activities and the retention activities. Proposals in this activity may include providing incentives for volunteer firefighter members to continue their service in a fire department. Examples of the type of initiatives that may receive assistance include but are not limited to the following: Accidental death and dismemberment insurance College education cost reimbursement Reimbursement for lost wages while attending training Marketing program costs to recruit new volunteer members Staffing needs assessment Explorer, cadet, and/or mentoring programs Initial entry physicals Tuition assistance for higher education and professional certifications Workers compensation Length of service awards and other retirement benefits Now here is the kicker if a VFD applied for SAFER and spent federal money on all of the above activities and the department lost members and did not recruit anyone then oh well no loss (except to us tax payers). The career side of SAFER requires an 80% match by the local department so SAFER was just a 20% sale. In addition if you laid off the hired members for any reason you had to give all the money back. Now lets look at that money, the 20% that SAFER paid equals $100,000 over 5 years, each of the new employees is now paying federal (and state) Tax. at the current rates they will payback all of the money in about 8 years. But to meet the goals we hired 8 ff's under SAFER and agreed to staff 2 seats 24/7 which requires 10.5 positions (on OT) so we actually generated additional taxes. If we maintain the additional staffing over 20 years we will more than triple the Feds money. So yes you are helping to fund career ff's but they are returning the money in income tax. And everyone has been funding the volunteer side of SAFER and can we measure what that has done for retention and recruitment? Lets fast forward on SAFER to fall 2009. FEMA was ordered to drop the volunteer side of SAFER and concintrate on the rehiring of laid of career FF's as part of the overall jobs programs of the Obama administration. This is no different than how they have hired contractors for road projects to generate incomes to stimulate the economy.

Chief Flynn do I have to bring out the yellow plane pic again?

And far more to do than slogans. Actions speak louder than words.

This is interesting....goes NYC support NYS or is it the other way around? I remember a few years back those upstate complaining that 80% of the tax monies go to the NYC metro area, when I looked it up I found that 80% of the taxes came from the NYC metro area. NYC exports about the same amount that it recieves. Did NYC $$ go to OFPC? Maybe, but those in Rochester also had thier $$ go to NYC Schools. Did anybodys taxes support Syracuses FD (other than Syracuse) I do not know, but I do know that the funding that cities recieve from the state (that is not dedicated to specific mandates & FD is not one of them) is so small that it is academic. I have major problems with how the MTA tax is collected and how the state refuses to deal with the MTA's mismanagment, but I also understand that everyone in the Hudson Valley benefits economically from NYC and the MTA. Million dollar homes in Bronxville, Rye, Larchmont, etc. would be worth $200,000 if you could not work in NYC and get there easy and quick. Currently there are 10 bills that the "career" fire unions are fighting for: 3 are death and disability bills that would be paid for by the employeer 5 are pension issues that would be paid for by the employeer 1 is about hearing officers (disapline) that would be paid for by the employeer & union and 1 is to study the effects of Payment in Lieu of Taxes by developers (and its effect on all public services). So this is not about what "career" legislation costs taxpayers in other communitities, it costs nothing.

Can you list any "career" legislation that costs taxpayers in other communities tax money? Also I had stated: "The main purpose of this bill is to convince volunteers to vote for those politicians" My point was this legislation does not appear to be coming from the volunteers, but from the politicians who do not care if it is good or bad for the VFD's but that it will get them votes.

Yes there are other considerations, but economic considerations is the primary driving force in determining the delevery of all services in a community. I am not suggesting that everyone or anyone for that matter should have a "career department" and this is not a "paid vs. vollie" argument ( I am sorry that some can not see past that). If the City, town, village, or district wants to give benefits to its volunteers that is up to the taxpayers of that community. My only issue with that is how are you selling it. Local fundung is just that a local issue. The issue here is why should any community have to fund another communities fire protection. Thats what this bill is asking to do.

WHile this was geared to AC Flynn, I'll take a crack at it. We do not need a wall, we need a fair system for funding. The WCFTC is funded by all the taxpayers in the county...as it should be. The funding for training is not as fair. The training costs for all of the CFI's is also paid for by all the taxpayers in the county, but for the most part all of the CFI's time is spent training volunteers. And no VFD recieves a bill for training, but the career depts. are charged thousands of dollars per firefighter for the career fire accadamy. Law requires that the depts provide the training, but only the career depts have to actually sign a check. Now as a city and county taxpayer why do I have to support both? This is a great question, I am tired of seeing my tax dollars going everywhere but my community. New Rochelle is the 7th largest city in the state and when you calculate out how much goes out, then how much comes back, we are #22 on the list for what comes back.

Is that a surprise? While it maybe hard to seperate it, my issue is as taxpayer in a career community. If I lived in a volunteer community my federal tax dollars (under this proposed bill) would be supporting my FD. This is good, but if you are really really opposed to this and believe it hurts the vollunter service, then you need to take it further...notify the law makers that your vote can not be bought this way.

Because the majority of the population of the US pays for career fire services and with this bill they get to subsize communities that chose not to fund career fire departments. The main purpose of this bill is to convince volunteers to vote for those politicians. We all know that "real" volunteers don't need benefits to get them to volunteer and many on here have honestly stated that the perks have done more damage than good.

When the OSHA Act was past in 1970 it required OSHA to enforce work safety standards in private industry in all 50 states. Public sector employees are not covered. One section of the Act allows each state to set up its own State OSHA, but if a state wants to do that it must agree to have equall or stricter regulations (see Cal OSHA) and it must include public sector employees. The Feds help fund the state programs. 25 states are "state plan" states and cover everyone, NY & CT are partial "state plan" states and cover public sector only with Fed OSHA covering private sector in those states. NY also covers small companies (under a doz. employees).

Time: 1600hrs Location: Larchmont Harbor X Long Island Sound Units Operating: USCG Weather Conditions: Wonderful Description Of Incident: USCG has established a security zone around a dolphin just outside Larchmont Harbor. Is the security zone because the individual is a nonenglish speaking alien who is trying to gain entry into Larchmont or is it more sinister than that?

Thats "frikken" lasers on there heads, get it right.

Last week The City of New Rochelle rolled out its new website. It is the first time he NRFD has truly been on the web. The old site showed us with the fire horses and it was not updated since we got rid of the horse. www.Newrochelleny.com for the city or www.Newrochelleny.com/fire to go directly to the FD portion.

Thank You

We currently use the scott scout multi gas for suppression companies. it is the best we have delt with for that application. very easy to calibrate, lots of features that can be set at different user levels, so a basic detector that with a password can go to tech level with lots of features. Standards are you need to bump test it before use and calibrate at regular intervolts. the default is 30 days and it has a count down that tells you when its needed. We bump test weekly and anytime the detector has other than normal readings on start up or if the crew is unsure about readings it got.

LOL Those are just methods of thining the herd. Survival of the fitest.

We are far from having the perfect or even a very good system, but we realized long ago that tags do not work well. There are a number of elements that are needed: 1) Sufficient personnel on the 1st unit and the remainder of the 1st alarm. With response times that the additional personnel arrive within 4-8 minutes of the 1st engine. 2) assignments based on crew seating or position (i.e. nozzle, hydrant, jump seat, etc.) Everyone knows what tools and procedures each member is going to perform, the tools they are going to bring is all based on the seat and if that rig is 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th due. This way we have a general idea of where each member should be and who they should be with. 3) Portable radio's!!!! Every member and its assigned based on the seat assignment. i.e. 22a - is Engine 22 officer, 22b driver, 22c nozzle and 22d hydrant. 4) A chiefs Aid to start accountability. In the case of a career dept at the begining of the tour. He has a list in the car of all members on duty, seat and radio assignment. If it changes during the day, its updated. So when he pulls up he knows who is here. We still use the tags, but they do not tell the position & radio, for a VFD/call or combo the passport system would compensate for this and the aid would just need to go to each rig and grab it. 5) Command Staff to assign as accountability officer. Once these members show up we document where crews are operating, and based on the roster plus documenting additional members as assigned. we know who is there and generally where they are operating. we try to track air time, but that is difficult for the initial response as they arrive prior to command staff. We do use the tags and they get picked up at some point, but I consider them more like dog tags to tell us after the fact who was here if something goes wrong.