Bnechis

Then how does the town of Mamaroneck (not a district) and the town/village of Scarsdale do it? NYS Town law allows Municipal depts, fire dists and fire protection dists.

Never say never........but it will take a massive effort. County Government and Spano have nothing to do with it. This is a local issue that will be decided by the communities in the study. If you look on a smaller scale (5 depts) the union looked at this 8-10 years ago and found that to meet NFPA 1710 the 5 seperate FD's needed to hire 332 additional firefighters, but if they merged they needed only 71. Thats 261 fewer firefighters and officers to get the job done. if you figure that 8 years ago the annual cost for 261 ff's would have been about $ 19.5 million, then figure 5 years and we would have spent $100 million. No ones going to give us that kind of $$$. So lets consider there would have been no cost savings, but being short 71 is a whole lot better than being short 261. BTW 71 short = would have ment being 13 ff's per shift short out of a total of 78 on duty. The larger the area / population generally the lower the cost, but almost always a lower per capita cost. Many other cost factors involved, including insurance. I dont think you can educate the people as to what is adequate until they are in trouble. But if you can show them they can get better service for the same or lower tax $$ then you have a shot. The sad truth is that most people drive past the fire house in town (any town) and see lots of truck and think "I'm protected" even if the dept does not have a single firefighter. Trucks don't put out fires. The Vol. have been considered in this study.

The study was commissioned by the Westchester Career Chiefs Association. It is funded by the NYS Senate and being conducted by the Michaelian Institute for Public Policy and Management at Pace University. It is not another Westchester 2000. Which was looking to consolidate all levels of government, schools , districts county wide. This is being driven by the career chiefs and only dealing with depts that were interested in participating. Larchmont is not in the current study, but they and others were told that after the study comes out if other depts want in that it would be possible.

I strongly agree that auto aid and mutual aid have a major roll in the fire service and in non-hydrant areas it is even more important. That being said, a few weeks ago, I read an news article in the local rag and what caught my eye was a recent evening (8pm) bedroom fire (with extension to a second bedroom) that required the response of 8 fire departments to have sufficient personnel. The host department has 2 front line engines, 1 ladder and assorted other resources. and has 3 career ff's onduty. All of these depts have a combined fleet of 25 engines, 5 ladders, 5 tower ladders, 6 rescues, and 24 chiefs cars (#'s are as close as I can figure). the value of this rolling stock is almost $22 million. If any dept, needs that much MA (7 MA plus the host) to handle, what is everyone sending? If we look at NFPA 1710, they want 18 personnel (15 in 1st alarm, 1 ladder operator, and 2 addition for FAST). Since the host had at least 3ff's plus chief the remaining 7 departemnts send what 2 each? I was not there, and I hope this does not come across as picking on the host or any of the MA depts, but it appears to me that something is very wrong. When the tax revolt hits...how do we justify what we spend? And what our capabilities really are.

Thanks for the Humble Opinion.

Thank You. It will be used toward the replacment of Rescue 4.