Gomer

I think one thing that this points out is how little people know about fire districts and how they work.
People expect that town government and services are integrated. A separate entity making its own decisions can be hard at accept.
People also don't like surprises.

They had a public meeting on the proposed budget and the EMS increase in OCTOBER!
http://www.wassaicbluecrew.com/firedistrict.htm
Fire Districts can not bill by NYS state law, so now the taxpayers will foot the cost.

My department recently had 2 Chiefs go out to pre-construction on our new truck. The other one was working. They gave it to the seniormost Captain the car to use, especially since it has most of our command equipment with it and the Captain could arrive and figure out what he needs sooner.

Congrats!

My department recently had 2 Chiefs go out to pre-construction on our new truck. The other one was working. They gave it to the seniormost Captain the car to use, especially since it has most of our command equipment with it and the Captain could arrive and figure out what he needs sooner.

My department recently had 2 Chiefs go out to pre-construction on our new truck. The other one was working. They gave it to the seniormost Captain the car to use, especially since it has most of our command equipment with it and the Captain could arrive and figure out what he needs sooner.

Just curious?
Mount Pleasant is a town in Westchester County, New York, in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the town population was 43,724.[2] The villages of Valhalla, Hawthorne, Thornwood ,
Pleasantville and part of Briarcliff Manor lie within the town,[a] as well as a number of hamlets.
The town has a total area of 32.7 square miles (85 km2), of which 27.7 square miles (72 km2) is land and 5.0 square miles (13 km2), or 15.26%, is water.
Taken from Wikipedia.
Is there a formula for how many BLS and ALS units a town this size needs?

Volunteering does not need to be done from home, but it is able to be done from home in many communities. The biggest single factor effecting this type of response would be call volume, after that would be the distance / response time. Look at the thread on run totals, many of the departments are in the 300's, which means for the most part 1 call a day. In a system like this it is hard to justify full time staff, paid or volunteer. I know of one own where it is small enough and most members live in town that home response is very easy to accomplish. Another I heard of had a member who took home a fly car and home responders who went and got the ambulance. Different solutions work for different towns although all have some similarities.
As for the double edges sword, this is an issue in the fire service also, although it is mitigated sometimes by the need for multiple apparatus. What I have see is a call comes in that 3 rigs would go to, you have a crew for the 1st rig in quarters, so they get out fairly quickly. As members come in and get the other rigs on the road the crew of the first rig starts canceling them en route. This in turn has the effect of members not seeing themselves as useful and leading to less responses and eventually quitting. I don;t know the answer to that, because I would not want to keep unneeded units on the road, but the sudden cancellations were definitely a problem. This sounds like the same thing being reported by the VAC in questions.