Yesterday I decided
to finally read the August 6th, 2014 issue of the Kokomo Perspective. I became very concerned about our city and
it's goals after reading the article titled "Fire department mothballs rescue truck" on the first
page.
The bullet points
from the article:
- The rescue trucks are
specially equipped to handle extreme auto accidents, such as flipped
(inverted) cars.
- Our city has had 2 for about
50 years.
- Much of the equipment of 1
has been put on Fire Engines, which still doesn't make them capable of
handling flipped cars.
- We are now down to only one
fully capable rescue truck.
- This is due to overtime
budget cuts. $277,500 was spent on
overtime last year and this year it is budgeted to $180,000
(277,500-180,000=97,500).
The thing that
disturbs me is that there are way more cars on the road than there ever has
been but the capability to handle auto accidents have been reduced. I agree with the President of the Fire
Fighters Local 396 when he said that a $180,000 price tag had been put on our
safety.
The article raises
the question of why we have to reduce the budget of the Fire Station when we
apparently have plenty of money in the budget for a downtown parking garage and
a new soft ball diamond which total in $17 million dollars. I agree that the $97,500 dollars to keep our
fire department manned, at the level it was manned last year, is chump change by
comparison.
How ever being a
Navy Veteran I do understand program funding and funds allocation. Basically meaning that certain funds can only
be used for certain things and are not allowed to be used for others. Unless you find some creative
thinking/writing way to connect the 2. I
just don't understand how our city could allocate funds for one and not the
other.
I haven't researched
it much yet but on what I know, think I know, or have an assumption of I do
have a few opinions. The parking garage
is a good thing. Parking downtown is crowded
and many people avoid shopping there because of this. Sooo the parking garage could aid the economy
of down town. Ease of parking may
attract more people to shop the stores, bistros, and bars of downtown. Lord knows it needs it. The only shops that has seemed to survive are
the food services (due to lawyer traffic and such) and those who have generational
patrons like Sound of Music and Palmers who offer the experience of fond
memories of shopping there with family as a kid. I will research the parking garage
further. Chances are I am not going to
argue the parking garage. The baseball
diamond I think is a bit over board. We
have baseball diamonds all over town.
Why do we need another? The sad
thing is that $11 million of that $17 is for the baseball diamond. That is a lot. Mostly to buy the properties that were
sitting in that area being flooded all the time. The other chunk is probably for all the dirt
they hauled in to build it up. Now why
the heck are they building it up? All
this is going to accomplish is creating another flood plane somewhere
else! REALLY!? The only way I can see this being a benefit
is if money was being taken out of the local government budget to pay out
insurance and flood relief claims. Now
they wouldn't have that cost. Unless of
course they just caused it to flood elsewhere.
Otherwise I think it's a colossal waste of money and we should have
tried to figure out how to spend that $11million on the Fire Department. This requires more research to see why the
funds were spent on the ball diamond instead.
What funding was used and if there was any way of creative budgeting
that would have put some into the fire department for the safety of the whole
city.
I also have to wonder if they increased the
budget for the highway department. Last
winter was horrible. According to the
Farmer's Almanac we can expect 4 more winters just like it if not worse. The fact that the trees out in the county
started changing colors in July further reinforces this possibility. I sure hope they allocated the funds to
handle all that snow and ice we are going to get. I mean the high for today is only 71 and this
is supposed to be the hottest month of the year! Reality check! GET PREPARED!
Anyway that is all I
have for now. I will keep you posted on
anything that I find out.
