FDNY budget cuts, comparison to Cheshire
Across America, municipal budgets are under the gun. Taxes and spending are a concern and budgets seem to be getting cut everywhere.
The NYTimes's Al Baker is reporting that even the NYFD is going to face cuts:
“If we have to close 20 companies, which is a 6 percent reduction in the number of companies we have, it is going to tax us,” said Salvatore J. Cassano, the newly appointed commissioner of the Fire Department of New York. “It is certainly the most challenging thing we have faced in decades.”
What caught my attention with this article though was less the discussion of cutting the NYFD budget - as Cheshire's FD is volunteer - but more the statistics included in the article. Back in 2006, I compared Cheshire's FD to Southington's FD, but this article gives a few interesting statistics on NYC that can be compared to Cheshire:
I'm glad Cheshire has a volunteer department. I certainly wouldn't want to add 20 to 30 paid firefighters to Cheshire's budget.
Tim White
3 comments:
The truck comparison doesn;t really work because of NYC's extreme population density. A better comparison is by area served. NYC has 340 trucks for about 340 square miles. Cheshire has 7 trucks for 32 square miles.....1/5 the ratio
Obviously, it's feasible and cost-effective to have a fire house within a mile of most of NYC. Not possible in the likes of Cheshire, and out of necessity the trucks/1000 residents look "high" unless one were to have minimal coverage in one end of town or another
I know the comparisons don't mean much. But I still found it interesting... and a nice reminder that we have a volunteer dept.
Thank you CVFD. We should be more than grateful for what we have.
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