This National Post article on desperate cities trying to cut or at least slow the rate of increase the costs of firefighting was pretty interesting. It was interesting that Kitchener-Waterloo managed to make some cuts:
"Last month, city council in Kitchener, Ont., voted soundly to axe
half a million dollars from the city’s fire department budget after
noting that its staff costs had leaped an incredible 22% in only five
years.
“It is not just Kitchener, it is every municipality … it is totally
unsustainable,” said Mayor Carl Zehr in the lead-up to the vote,
according to the Waterloo Region Record.
The decision went counter to a 14-page November letter drafted by the
Kitchener Professional Fire Fighters Association. In it, complete with
graphs and charts showing how quickly residential fires can spread, the
union wrote that “community safety” was in jeopardy.
“We realize that although financial constraints are always present in
budget management, we must … not sacrifice safety in order to balance
operating budgets,” it concluded."
As far as I know, Hamilton hasn't done anything of the sort in the 2013 budget. The sunshine list for 2012 will be coming out in a month and it should be interesting to see what happens with the number of firefighters on that list versus the previous year.
I've also blogged on how it seems that a lot of the fires in Hamilton, especially in the lower city are caused by smoking. Public health programs concentrating on reducing smoking in Hamilton may be more cost effective than having a vast army of firefighters.
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