Coventry Fire Departments to Shut Down (Providence, Foster: house, property taxes, costs)

[Raiderman]

Central Coventry tax payers turn down fire budget, district like - ABC6 - Providence, RI and New Bedford, MA News, Weather

Amazing. The largest town (in area) to shut down fire departments. Hopefully no one in Greene or Western Coventry has a fire. I wonder how long the response time will be now from the other towns. Money before safety, sounds very familiar as we approach the 10 year anniversary of the Station fire this week..

[Hollytree]

Another good opportunity for local fire districts to consolidate and get some efficiency of scale. RI has far too many independently operating services for its size.

If that can't be arranged then Coventry, being fairly rural, could probably get by on a volunteer fire department. Foster has had one for years.

[mr2448]

Originally Posted by Ryan_Eagan

Central Coventry tax payers turn down fire budget, district like - ABC6 - Providence, RI and New Bedford, MA News, Weather

Amazing. The largest town (in area) to shut down fire departments. Hopefully no one in Greene or Western Coventry has a fire. I wonder how long the response time will be now from the other towns. Money before safety, sounds very familiar as we approach the 10 year anniversary of the Station fire this week..

no, not the whole town, just the Central Coventry Fire District. Coventry is made up of volunteer and regular manned stations and a mix of both. Western Coventry has their own fire department. Many towns in Rhode Island still have volunteer fire departments. Some even have a few paid employees. Here in Glocester there are 3 fire departments. The fire fighters are all volunteer except for one paid employee in the Harmony Station. These departments are not municipally funded. Each district runs on its own needs and has their own tax structure. Yearly meetings are held and the people of each district can vote to approve or disapprove the newly proposed fire budget. Many times disapproval means coming back a month later for a new vote on a new budget.

Most towns with volunteer departments have multiple stations.

[CoventryDude]

Good. the CCFD has been mismanaged for years with the head of it spending money like a Washington politician.. boo hoo the union members have to pay for more of their health care like the rest of us.....Waaaaaaa.....

Coventry needs to consolidate into one district and do away with the seperate fire taxes. Having the districts under the control of the town council will (hopefully) bring expenses down by eliminating redundancies. Our property taxes are outrageous enough in this town.

[mr2448]

Originally Posted by CoventryDude

Coventry needs to consolidate into one district and do away with the seperate fire taxes. Having the districts under the control of the town council will (hopefully) bring expenses down by eliminating redundancies. Our property taxes are outrageous enough in this town.

I disagree. Why incorporate into one large district? You really think your town council will control costs better? What are you drinking? If you bring all those fully or partially volunteer fire departments into town expenses your taxes will go up. You are getting for free, volunteers. They make no money, no benefits, etc. A station that now has 40 volunteers would need to be run full time by at least 25 full time employees. I don't begrudge what these people earn or their union membership, but why increase costs when you don't have to?

[Saltatrix]

Several years ago I met with the Coventry Town Manager who was also acting as the Town's Planner. It was one of the most depressing public-sector environments I had ever experienced, and ended up being the last straw for my two weeks on my new job, so I quit while I was ahead. Consolidating things may also mean consolidating jobs, which is pretty impossible.

[Raiderman]

I guess I'm too close to the issue, knowing many of the firemen and first responders. And having a wife who is a survivor of the Station fire and owes her life to the first responders may also come into play, but the firefighters HAVE been working for free while all this is going on, and now they've lost their jobs. It just seems sad that the taxpayers in that town wouldn't accept a meager increase to continue having the most protection they could. But no worries, I'm sure no one's house will burn down...

[Hollytree]

I believe the tax increase that was quoted in the paper was 43% for Coventry!

To me, all of RI needs to do studies for cost savings. Travis County Tx for example is the size of this state. It has 7 fire departments. Obviously this is not strictly apples to apples since they have better roads and fewer tiny towns and streets. Plus in RI, you often have to go around to get around and cross bridges and it can be slow.

However, there are national standards for numbers of firefighters, believe it's about 1.5 to 2 firefighters per thousand of population. My guess is that we far exceed that number and likely have far too much management at the top. Would streamlining and consolidation help? Why wouldn't it?

Lists but doesn't give numbers of personnel.... http://www.fire-marshal.ri.gov/departments.php

[mr2448]

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/media/ac...0-19144106.pdf

[mr2448]

http://www.muni-info.ri.gov/document...strict2006.pdf