11-21-2018, 03:51 PM
(11-21-2018, 02:47 PM)MidTowner Wrote:(11-21-2018, 08:10 AM)Pheidippides Wrote: Doubtful. You'd probably have to bring every fire fighter up to the highest paid grade across all the cities and townships. Aren't the townships volunteer fire fighters? You'd suddenly be paying volunteers >$100k per year. I'm not saying that is a bad thing or we shouldn't do it, but that the costs would scare any evidence based politician away from doing it.
There's no chance a regional fire service would be able to reduce staffing levels, as common sense would dictate, and every chance of the fire fighters successfully pushing for more money, as you predict.
Reducing staffing levels by making people redundant is surely a non-starter, even given that most of our fire services are overstaffed, and often doing the job of paramedics in order to keep busy -- there simply aren't that many fires any more. But reducing the number of firefighters through attrition should certainly be feasible.
Does anyone have any actual data on the regional pay differences for firefighters?