There have been many page views of the Blog concerning a full-time fire department for Germantown in conjunction with the poll now running in GermantownNOW on that question. If you've not yet made your feelings known, please take time to scroll down after reading this and vote.
It seems that Blog may not have been clear enough in expressing my views that a full-time department would continue to need volunteer paid-on-call members. These are not mutually exclusive concepts. The full-time crews would simply put a fully manned Engine Company (4 personnel) and Ambulance crew (2 personnel) on the scene within the six minute average on a 24/7/365 basis, giving the volunteers time to get to the scene to augment the full-time crew.
Quite a few readers have gone the next step with their own comments, and those are always welcome. Some comments have been quite emotional as you might expect, while others have been quite negative, also as you'd expect. Among them are several that present, what to me seems, logical and pertinent information from the perspective of those who protect us at the risk of their own lives. Some have given us the rationale behind the number of personnel required for various size dwellings involved in fire. Please take time to read all the comments if you've interest.
One suggested that an Open Records request might serve to satisfy my curiosity as well as that of others. That certainly is a possibility, although one I had hoped we wouldn't need to employ. Maybe it is time that this approach be employed to try to gather the 'real facts' (as apparently contrasted to the imaginary facts) and get to the bottom of this situation. Maybe it is time to request some help in that regard from the Citizens for Responsible Government (CRG) which is the group, as you may recall, that ferreted out the information on the MATC that we've quoted and referenced many times.
It seems to me that citizens should be able to gather information from elected officials without the need to go through the formalities of an Open Records request, but it also seems as though some expectations are unlikely to be realized without formalities. In the end, there seems too much conflicting information not to go forward with such a request.
