ladderthebuilding

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Everything posted by ladderthebuilding

  1. Here's what i want to ask: How come union members are not speaking out against this? Isn't this going to hurt union Fire/Police/DPW members? If this actually passes their going to be slashes like we have never seen.
  2. "The bill also provides for the same cap to apply to taxes levied by municipal governments. Local governments that do not levy an amount up to the cap in one year can rollover that amount up to 1.5 percent in the following year." Per the weblink above
  3. Which states? What is their make up? Are they similar to NY? Look Cal. with prop 13 and look at the state they are in. NY's Unfunded Mandates for Pensions and Healthcare costs are among the many unfunded mandates that are applied to local govt. In NY Local Govts have to fund unions pensions at 100% where the rest of the country does not. You can't place these burndens on local gov and the tie their hands. But this is being done intentially. Don't forget NY Passed the consolidation law a year or two ago to get rid of villages, special districts and so on. I think maybe one or two did this in the state? Not much more. The ones that were forced to look into and did not do it, it cost them big tax payer dollars to fund the research only to find it didn't do anything for them in savings. The GOV doesn't want villages, districts and other local governments... Just NY STATE. If this thing passes, he might just get his way. And our elected leaders don't have the you know what to say no becuase they are afraid of being called a tax increaser in their next elections.
  4. Well I guess, once this passes villages, towns and counties in NY will no longer be able to survive. Everyone thinks this is a great idea, not raising taxes. Which of course keeping more money in your pocket is allways good, but people don't realize what is about to happen to them. Lets say a village has a 7 percent tax increase. Lets also say 5 percent is a tax increase due to un funded mandates by the state.... What is the village to do if they can only raises taxes by 2 percent? First: your pd goes, next your dpw/water does, then goodbye village. Oh and your FD too..Either paided or Volley. Then once the village is gone a town will take them over.. But what about the services the village just lost? Will the town pick it up? How can they if they can't raise taxes above 2 percent. Just like the last bill passed in albany to try and consoladate which is not doing what it is inteded, however it costs local governments more money because of the rules. If people are up in arms about reduction in services, wait till this pases and goes through. It's not a reduction, its a gone good bye.... The people up in Albany are afraid to say no becuase in the next election they are afraid of the opposition saying they are for increasing taxes. I guess they are more worried about keeping their jobs vs doing the right thing. You want to lower taxes, get rid of the unfunded mandates.
  5. But this is more important. Improve Processing of Alcohol and Beverage Control Licenses. An investment of $3 million is included in the budget to supplement the operations of the Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control. These new resources will support legislation authorizing the sale of wine in grocery stores, and will be used to alleviate the current license application backlog. We will sell wine in grocery stores so we can tax it and create revenues. But let’s eliminate the patrols ( Which I really can’t see them doing that but you never know.) So instead of spending $3 Million on this, fund the patrols for one more year, hopefully well get out of these financial crises and we can move from there. BTW.. I don't know about everybody else, i get my wine from a LIQUOR store because that have a lot of choices, I’m not going to get it at A & P. I think the problem with the state and federal law makers are that they have no idea on how to live on a pay check to pay check. Running a family budget, eliminating wasteful spending. The majority of them are very rich. So when they say " we know what the average American is going through" they are full of it. Let them fight in the trenches. They won't last... Ordinary citizens could run things better. Take a look at the 50 richest Congressional members The 50 Richest Members of Congress and if you think it ends there Gov. David Paterson unveils dire New York State budget that includes new taxes, layoffs and cuts Let’s try a new concept... STOP SPENDING OUR HARD EARNED MONEY! Happy and Safe New Year To All….I’m off my soap box.
  6. Vote the Party Line... lol People will continue to enter the polling places and just vote down the line. They have no idea the impact it will have. Elections Have Consequences.. Good and bad.. But lately it seems more bad than good. The problem is that we do not elect people who have experience, real world experience. I'm sure a majority of our officials couldn't tell you the difference between an engine and a ladder.. Yet they are the ones who "Fight" for what we need? We put people up in various official offices who have the biggest bank accounts, biggest ties for campaign donations and have absolutely no idea what the "ground troops" do every day. Just look at what is going on in NY..RE: C. Kennedy. This isn't a Paid vs Volunteer Issue this is an issue that will not only affect the Emergency Services as a whole but also many aspects of our professional and personal lives. Of course we do have officials who are the exception. But they are few and far between. Until regular people take over our local, state and federal governments will be still be in the whorl wind decline we are in. I don't know about you but I know I have to live on a budget, and if can't afford a $10,000 Flat Screen TV... I JUST DON"T BUY IT! Why can’t government follow the same? And then put the money saved to the Important Aspects of Governining. I'm off my soap box... :-) Merry Christmas, Happy New Year Have a Safe Holiday
  7. Elections Have Consequences.... You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet....
  8. "That's Change You Can Belive In" LOL BTW... For all that think it can't get worse........We are in for another "Stimulus" Package on Jan 20th..... Chuck Schumer, a leading Democratic senator, predicted it could be as much as $500bn-$700bn. “It’s a little like having a new New Deal, but you have to do it before the Depression. Not after,” he told ABC’s This Week. More Spending On The Way
  9. It actually is a 9ft rescue body on a quad cab F550.
  10. Elmsford FD Tower Ladder 21 1993 Arrow Ladder 55 1999 Dash Engine 137 1995 Arrow Engine 237 2001 Dash
  11. Elmsford FD Tower Ladder 21 1993 Arrow Ladder 55 1999 Dash Engine 137 1995 Arrow Engine 237 2001 Dash
  12. After reading the march edition of fire engineering (Safe Operations Near Roof Cellular Base Stations) we started to pre plan some of the buildings in Elmsford that had them. I was wondering if anybody had addtional information or experience with this type of situation? Any good training websites regarding this would be great too. Thanks Mike E
  13. Few Points: Why should they be taken over by the town when our department does an excellent job of keeping us safe? We have not had problems with them and they work GREAT WITH THE FD and other Emergency Services. Two you are absolutely entitled to your opinion, but note one thing. This was a title change and has actually reduced the pd budget. No additional funds were needed for this. Third I’m not sure what you mean by they are there every day, meaning the town pd? To the best of my knowledge the only “PD” from the town that is in Elmsford every day is our medic. Four I don’t know where you got your stats of the current force, but they are a little off. And that’s the memo
  14. How come I hear the county bee line bus? Any way i can get rid of that?
  15. The truck will be housed at the Elmsford House. We are currently in the planning stages of adding a small bay to the fire house and it will create some additional space. The truck will be white to be neutral. Although it will be housed at EFC it will be a departmental truck, like both ambulances (Which are housed at Live Oak). Not company specific per say. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and a Happy and Safe New Year to All. Mike Eannazzo Chief Elmsford FD
  16. It will be a Ford F550 Crew Cab with a custom mini rescue body on the back. Used for specialized extrication equipment, light tower, hazmat equipment, portable generators, and other functions. Small enough to get through tight areas in the village yet just big enough for what we need. 2111
  17. I absolutely think it's worth driving Santa around your municipality to bring smiles to kids. First as it was said before, Safety First. as long as Santa is properly secure, why not drive him around the town. Besides the kids getting all excited it's great PR for any fire department. If i were not affiliated with a fire department I would be disappointed if one year they stopped driving around with Santa in Elmsford. Having Santa wave to the young and old is a fine tradition that we should keep. My vote is the bring the big guy around and spread the Holiday Cheer. What is going to cost, some fuel? And Thats The Memo Have a Very SAFE Christmas and Happy Holidays 2111
  18. As a Network Admin for my company I just bought a copy of Vista Ultimate. I have only played with it for a week and already I found some issues. First make sure your hardware has vista drivers. If not find out when they will be out. I have to wait on some hardware drivers to come out.. Like my verizon cellular card. Office 2003 does run on vista fine so you really don't have to upgrade unless you want to. Make sure the hardware is beefy. Video card at least 256, 2 gig of memory is my recommendation and a nice size hard drive. I think they went over board with trying to make it secure. We had to do an upgrade to our corporate mail server due to incompatibility with vista and IE 7. All web based stuff. There are lots more alerts and things running in the back ground which could get kind of annoying. AOL has software that is Vista Ready call AOL 9.0 VR There were allot of changes so there is some what of a learning curve. One nice feature is the Ready Boost which allows you to add a memory stick or card and allocate part of the space for memory for vista. I think only certain high end cards will work. You would have to check MS website. I believe MS has a program you can download to verify if your machine is vista complient. I put this on a 3 year old laptop. So far it's been running pretty good. Still trying to get used to it. But it's Microsoft, so at some point it will crash.
  19. In Elmsford we use the Con Ed Boards. Each chief's car has a board ( 1 Large and two Smaller Ones). The larger board was donated by Con Ed and the other two were purchased from them. They are an excellent tool to have on a fire scene. We used the Larger Board at the Payne Street Fire at the Command Post. We also used both boards at the Battalion 14 drill.
  20. Bravo ATFID you are 100 percent correct. First until you know that department's policy you shouldn't judge. Like ATFID said, in Bat 14 we use Mutual Aid Chief's as Staging Chiefs, Sector Chiefs and alike. We train this way in our "Bread and Butter Drills" and this is the way we operate together. In today’s day and age we need to work and help each other not pick on every detail. You can come up with any scenario you want the bottom line is that the chief of that department has a responsibility to provide protection to his/her area first and then assist his/her neighboring department to the best of their capability. We don't have a hard and fast rule but we use common sense when responding to a MA call or an MVA on the highway: This is based on all three chiefs being available for a call: MA Ladder = Ladder Chief and Chief of Department MA Engine = Engine Chief and Chief of Department The 3rd Chief remains in the village. MVA= First Chief responds to the call. 2nd Chief Responds to the Fire house to make sure the Ambulance Gets out and then will respond to the highway. 3rd Chief will remain back in the village in the event of another run. Have there been times all three chiefs have responded to a highway call. YES. It does happen. So now you have three sets of hands, working with multiple injuries and vehicles. Again this is a common sense job. It’s also a lot easier to judge someone if it’s not you that’s in the hot seat. It’s hard enough to be a chief and run a department with out people who aren’t officers judging your actions. Walk a mile in my shoes and then come talk to me.
  21. Very Funny. The greatest achievers are always different!
  22. EFD isn't donating any ambulances. I believe the rotary is or will get a used ambulance and donate it. They were asking for equipment that weren't used anymore to send with the ambulance.