Flyboy69

Well you do not need to look to opinions from other departments, you only need to look at the opinion handed down from the Department of Labor back in 1993 to the volunteer fire departments in Stamford. The Department of Labor ruled that all career firefighters working for any of the Fire Departments in Stamford could not volunteer their time to any of the Volunteer departments. So starting in the summer of 1993 the career staff were paid overtime for responding to calls and drills. The employees did not need to be paid a minimum of "X" hours for responding, they could and in BFD case were paid quarterly for all time spent responding to calls and drills. This practice ended when the employees of the volunteer fire departments became city employees because the city was not going to fund an unlimited and uncontrollable amount of overtime.

RIP Brother

You are half right. The courts did say the city did not violate the injunction that was put in place last year. TORFD and the City will be back in court in October to work out the agreement to get SFRD into the TORFD fire houses, an agreement that the TORFD members voted down last month. As for the funding issues, TORFD has joined the Belltown FD case to get more city funding and that case is scheduled for August 19th.

I can not speak about truck 3, but engine 3 was taken out of service and sent to twin lights to be completely checked out. I did see engine 2 on Monday and it did have some damage to the different areas.

I have said this before, the residents are paying for the full time use of the SFRD to responded on EVERY call in Belltown. While some call this mutual aid, it is not. SFRD is being used to supply FULL TIME coverage and IF Belltown gets a rig out, and yes they have at least one call I know of that No rig got out, (they had chief show up on scene) they can cancel SFRD. But somebody needs to pay for this service, which I may add nobody outside of the Belltown FD and their friends is complaining about. As for the 16 firefighters that would of been assigned to BFD, they where going to move a machine that was already in service and change the response areas, since BFD said no, the machine stayed where is was. Maybe Belltown should cancel SFRD response all together and then see what the level of service the residents get?

If you read the article it is because Belltown FD and Glenbrook FD took an extra 6 months and TORFD took an year to complete the merger that it cost more money for last year. You will not be able to tell if this merger saves any money until next year.

Your math is fine on paper, but I can tell you first hand that last summer when there were layoffs and Belltown was using volunteers to fill the vacant shifts they had a real hard time. They had volunteers coming and going every few hours, they were calling volunteers begging them to come down to the station, in fact the Chief and Assistant Chief had to fill shifts as a driver. So I do not have any idea how they are going to staff a 4 person crews 24/7 365. It may work in other areas of the country, but I do not see it happening here. I hope I'm wrong, but I do not think so.

The recent Ct law only applies to municipalities, not to unions, in fact the municipalities must work out a agreement between them selfs before a paid firefighter may volunteer. Here is Public Act 08-131 http://www.cga.ct.gov/2008/act/Pa/pdf/2008...HB-05646-PA.PDF .

You say the residents are being taxed for firefighters that are not there, that is not really true. Even though BFD has no paid firefighters, the residents are getting a SFRD Engine on EVERY medical call, they are getting an SFRD Engine, Truck and Deputy on EVERY fire call, they are getting a SFRD Engine and Rescue on EVERY car accident, etc. Plus SFRD provides Fire Marshal service to the residents of Belltown 24/7 365. This is what the Belltown Volunteer management requested from the SFRD because they could not guarantee a volunteer response to all calls. So they are getting what the paid for, in fact more than what they are paying for.

According to local 786 website it is sold out.