I have been a long time member of a volly/paid dept in my city.  We are a private group that recieves a tax to operate.  We have come upon new rating time and require an additional truck and station.  The last city council bought the minimum sized property we needed in 2011. Before I get to far some background on the city.  When I joined in 2002 we had 2 Engines and a Squad truck.  One engine was fairly new , The squad truck was. 1980s suburban and the other engine was from Kentland and was a 1978 . Come to 2016 and we still have one of those trucks. We have two newer engines.  One that is a 9/11 vereran and the other is a used aerial.  We staff two people 24/7.   rating calls for 4.  we have over 700 hydrants.  The city is the fastest growing in the state.  We hold a fire rating of 3 currently but will be dropped to a 4 or lower because we only have one station

Last night we appraoched the coty because we need to build the station now . The council was stunned saying they were not aware yet they bought the property 5 years ago because we needed the station then.  We offered up 500 k to the city to help pay for the station of we buy the pumper and they purchase the station . They were more surprised that we had 2 million in our account (which is the same that they have) and basically told us we were wrong to ask for money when we had the same ammount.  They praised the police chief for spending all of his budget . The police chief actually understands that his budget is paid monthly while ours is paid one year in advance.  The 2 million we have covers payroll,repair,and equipemnt usage.  The city is facing a 36% increase in home owners come next year.  They bought a parking lot last year that costs as much as our station.  I have to believe some of you found a way to make your city understand paying now is cheaper than later

Birmingham City Council

Doesn't get much worse.

I've always assumed that every city counsel is horrible, and full of busy-bodies who can't keep from trying to force everyone to do what they say.

Well yeah!


 

NYC

Ahhh Yup.

J-

Our city council would not allow us to carry hollow points for years.  The reason?  The white po-leece would be murdering black kids in the street. Dailey!  Changed a long time ago, but seems like yesterday.

2 years ago we were getting $5.xx for training pay and the city said they couldn't afford to pay us our normal $10.62 wage for training. They couldn't find the $1800.00 it would take to bump our wage up. So we stopped going to training and the money magically appeared!



Our city council if full of a bunch of dumb fucks. We are trying to get in house ems instead of the private ems that's currently in the city (they suck). Proposals have been drawn up with grants covering much of the start up cost and the city manager won't let these proposals be shown to the council.

You can always short circuit the city council and go to the voters.  Let people know how much their home owners insurance is about to go up.  Educate them on how much money you have and what it is there for, how much the city has etc.

Don't feel bad we deal with the county board of commissioners. They are just as bad as any city council trust me

Ours too! We live in a rural, ag-based part of the country & our commissioners won't spend a penny on anything. They don't "get it" and they never will. We're considered "paid volunteer" & only three of us are FT paid positions because of our administrative positions, but we're working toward creating FT paid EMT/medic positions in the near future since finding an abundance of reliable, competent volunteers is a thing of the past.

Edit: Had a bad call, going to leave it alone.

This was the default for much of the 60's and 70's.

 




NYPD carried ball ammo until 1999-ish.

The hollowpoint issue actually fueled a lot of the drive toward hicap auto's throughout the country.

Lots of places that issued hollowpoints were satisfied with .38's for the most part.





 
 
 

Voted themselves a 244% raise.

 

Nice.

Pretty much this. You did miss 'self-important'.

Several years ago I attended a city council meeting and one of them got on his high horse and went on and on about what he had done for everybody.

I stood up and told him the guy that ran the city dump did more for the city than he does because at least he gets off his ass and helps unload our pickups.

It got a standing ovation.

He then threatened to have the CLEO run me out of town.

I told him to go ahead and pointed out that everyone in the room would be a witness when I sued him.

Another ovation.

The next day a cop bought me a beer. He said the department didn't like him much, either.

Small update.   City secured 300k for the 1 mil we need and will buy trucks.  Seems like sense prevailed.  will update when we break ground.  Has to be complete before the rating next year