Last week the mayor announced a possible plan to help Reading out of its $15 million deficit. Are you ready for this?
Cutting 35 of 120 firemen, including one of three ambulance crews and 45 of 209 police officers plus 15 support personnel. That’s the proposal on the table but he has asked the unions involved for alternatives.
I don’t know about you but to me, this hardly seems like a good idea. Three ambulances are incapable of keeping up with the demand. The firemen and police are already overworked. It just doesn’t seem like the safety of the city is being considered here, does it?
Unless, perhaps this is the mayor’s way of pushing the unions to work with him to find a viable solution? I don’t know but I sure hope they come up with something better. Given a choice, I would rather be safe and protected and know help will come if ever I need it than have the bike path extended to connect the city with neighboring boroughs which is one of the local improvements that’s currently in process.
In other news, the story following that one on the radio was that a local politician who works damn hard has managed to secure a $1 million grant to finance the hiring and training of four new police officers. Now I can’t figure out if that’s before or after the proposed layoffs but maybe he could arrange for that money to go towards the deficit. Hey, every spare million helps, right?
Cutting 35 of 120 firemen, including one of three ambulance crews and 45 of 209 police officers plus 15 support personnel. That’s the proposal on the table but he has asked the unions involved for alternatives.
I don’t know about you but to me, this hardly seems like a good idea. Three ambulances are incapable of keeping up with the demand. The firemen and police are already overworked. It just doesn’t seem like the safety of the city is being considered here, does it?
Unless, perhaps this is the mayor’s way of pushing the unions to work with him to find a viable solution? I don’t know but I sure hope they come up with something better. Given a choice, I would rather be safe and protected and know help will come if ever I need it than have the bike path extended to connect the city with neighboring boroughs which is one of the local improvements that’s currently in process.
In other news, the story following that one on the radio was that a local politician who works damn hard has managed to secure a $1 million grant to finance the hiring and training of four new police officers. Now I can’t figure out if that’s before or after the proposed layoffs but maybe he could arrange for that money to go towards the deficit. Hey, every spare million helps, right?
2 comments:
Yikes about the cut back on first responders. Scary.
Oh, hell no! Get rid of the mayor instead!
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