Submitted by Lucia Jansen
On May 13, 2019, the RTM approved the BET’s proposed $444 million general FY19-20 fund budget. Included in the budget is $75,000 for an independent town-wide fire study that was added by the BET after a unanimous vote. During the BET budget hearings with the fire department, it showed that there were serious gaps in town-wide fire incident and response time data. Lacking sufficient data, of course, makes it difficult to determine effective and required fire department staffing levels. Additionally, the Office of First Selectman and Fire Department’s report to the RTM and BET revealed that town benchmarking data using national standard criteria for response times, including call processing, turnout, and travel times, was either non-existent, non-compliant (e.g., far beyond recommended standards), or excluded data from our important volunteer fire stations located in the area in which the shortfall in service is claimed. Continue Reading →
