Crowsnest Pass Fire/Rescue

For all of you that have any interest in the Crowsnest Pass Fire and Rescue situation. The long awaited Fire/Rescue Master plan will be presented to council on Tuesday afternoon at the G+P meeting at 2pm.

I wonder what would happen if council determines that they don't want to go with a Full time Chief and Deputy Chief plus full time Firemen or disagree with the direction or contents of the plan?

There is much speculation that a couple of Fire Halls will be closed, I don't think so, the timing does not work for the politicians being an election year. I think all of the stations will be maintained has storage facilities and to allow responders quicker access to equipment for now.

Later on at the Council meeting 7pm I see one of the items on the agenda is:
Donated Used Apparel and Old Surplus Fire Apparatus Removed, it will be interesting to see what was on the list.

Efficiency: Doing Less for More in the Crowsnest Pass.

On January 22 at the last G+ P, meeting Administration had intended to present the Fire/Rescue Master Plan to council, at the beginning of the meeting the CAO requested that the issue be placed “In Camera” due to there being some sensitive Personal issues. They also stated that this plan is tentatively scheduled to be brought back to council and the general public on May 19 at the next G+P meeting. 

Most of our present members of council ran on a platform of “Change”, change that would make the municipality more “efficient”. My understanding of efficient was doing the same for less, or in a perfect world doing even more with less.

So let us get to the issue at hand the Fire/Rescue plan, this great opportunity to provide us the good taxpayers of the Crowsnest Pass with a better service at either close to what we were paying before or optimistically even cheaper.  

Therefore, what confuses the hell out of me is I and many other folks are expecting this Grand Fire/Rescue Plan to bring us Less Fire Stations, Less Equipment and Less Firemen. Some taxpayers would be open to debate this issue if it was going to make us more “efficient” but the sad reality is it is not.

In 2010, our operational cost of running the Fire Departments was less than $300,000; today we are paying close to that just to administrate the Department. Don’t believe me? Let us look at the numbers Director of Community and Protective Services $110,000, Fire Chief $95,000, Assistant Fire Chief $85,000. Assume that half the Director’s wages are being applied to Fire/Rescue that is $235,000 just in salary, add on top of that the 35% that the Municipality allows to cover benefits, the $235,000 becomes $316,000.   

The next issue is the contract Firemen nobody knows how long they are going to be here but at $6,000, a month each multiplied by the three that are here that becomes $216,000 for the year.  

Now keep in mind that we have not included a dollar for Firemen’s wages for call out, being on call, or training. For a uniform, for a tank of gas, a bad tire on a truck nothing has you can see for yourself the numbers just do not make sense.

Would anybody like to disagree? Please show me that we will have even the same number of Fire Departments, the same amount of equipment to protect us and the same number of Firemen to serve us. After the full implementation of the Fire/Rescue Master Plan.   

Only in the Pass under this regime can we argue that being more “efficient” is providing less at more cost.