On page four of the presentation made by the president of the IAFF union at the last Commission meeting it states that you need four firefighters at the scene of a med/vac call to do “traffic control”. We fell on the floor laughing. Oh, he or she also acts as a public information officer. Not only is that also absurd, but how about the second fire engine, EVAC rescue vehicle, and at least two police cars that will probably be on the scene within minutes. The need for the third firefighter is just about as laughable when you consider that at least seven of 24 County stations have only two and there is no statistical evidence that they get to a location later than the ones with three to a station. There is no need to even consider dispatching them for medical calls since the EVAC ambulance crew is two and they have as good or better “ save “ rate as any fire crew. SEE below the complete article addressing the Union presentation. Moreover, when you think about effectiveness of saving someone with a heart attack, remember that if you are in an intensive care unit in the hospital you have only a 42% chance of survival and in a hospital if you are not in an intensive care unit, it is only about a 20% chance of survival. That is with experienced nurses and doctors hanging around in close proximity of the patient.
May 5th, 2008
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1. It was brought to the Shadow's attention that those who have a problem with repetitive noise problem actually have a cerebral deficit. Someone who lives next to an elevated subway tunes it out, just like those who live near a railroad track hardly know when a train has gone.
2. A small light unmarked half-ton pickup truck on SR 44 stopped a loaded flat bed truck for running a red light on SR 44 at the recycle dump across from the Fairgrounds. (8;30 am, Tuesday). Gosh, not only a couple of Impalas on SR 44, but an unmarked undersized pick up truck. The Sheriff's office says not its truck, then whose?
W-2S REVISITED
The W-2's published over the last few weeks are again presented this week as an EXCEL file so that you can manipulate the data as you wish. Additionally, we provide a number of analyses regarding pay and benefits. We have added charts in columns showing each employee and the percentage of increase that includes the benefit package for each employee.
NOTES
1. Some pundit once said that thinking was hard, and that most people tried to avoid it. This comment went to making hard decisions. The usually hard problems usually have no easy answers, and frequently result in harm to someone or some sector of the population. The most poignant example of the consequences of hard decisions is the comment made by then Prime Minister of Israel Goldie Meier, who said that she resented Yassir Arrafat, not just for killing Israeli children, but forcing her to kill and harm Palestinian children. Protecting the State was more important than killing assailants. The same is true on every level of decision making, not as poignantly as Meier's lament, but nonetheless real, in that spending cuts when they affect personnel hurts individuals. It is neither easy nor pleasant. Nevertheless, if they had spent the money wisely when there was a lot of it, now that the sources of revenue have dried up, they could have avoided this decision. They now have little choice but to address personnel levels and pay. Keeping the city solvent is important.
2. There are other aspects of revenue shortfall. Potential revenues not collected suddenly become even more important. Ensuring receipt of market value fees from leased City property which was high on the agenda a month or two ago, should still be on the table. Whatever happened to the plan to charge the Chamber of Commerce fair market value for its use of the City building on Canal Street? We have not heard a thing in the past month. How about asking the City Attorney to pursue setting aside the $25 a year lease on the Angler's Club, one of the prime pieces of City property. It was improper at the time it was made and is almost obscene by present standards. Money is in short supply, so collect what you can. It would help.
3. The analogy of boat ownership and the Municipal Golf Course is apt. it is like an open drain for money. Simply moving a couple of employees to other departments does not lower the overall City budget. Nothing the City can do will create more players and our golf course is not a stellar course that will attract a larger share of the local business. Besides, it would be unconscionable if a subsidized government business makes it more difficult for private sector golf courses to stay in business. d.
“Best Blog of the Week”
(Edited for grammar and punctuation)
A POTPOURRI OF CITIZEN COMMENTS IS
AGAIN PROVIDED THIS WEEK IN ORDER
FOR YOU TO GET IN TUNE WITH THE
MOOD OF OUR READERS
Tuesday, 4/29/08, 7:00 AM
SUBJECT: CITY COMMISSION AUDIO I am listening to the audio of the city commission meeting posted on the Shadow. Are these people for real? There is absolutely nothing of substance that has come of these comments. These people are a bunch of IDIOTS!
Tuesday, 4/29/08, 1:48 PM
The last line was best. Like most normal humans I don't think we need to destroy the planet or eat manatees until there are more of them. I am aghast at econazi crowd stealing property rights endorsing global harming and their list of loony stuff. MDC is Socialist central here in NSB - I would tar and feather most. Based on your appeal I must agree we could have changes dates for pumping. Save the turtles for later - Yummm
Tarnished Shields Problem!
Wednesday, 4/30/08, 1:02 PM Tarnished Shields this is your problem. Ron Pagano was a higher up in one of what the newspapers in South Florida has called one of the most corrupt police departments in the state. From all we know Ron was the see no evil, hear no evil, know no evil monkey. He was certainly a guy no one in their right mind would have hired to be police chief of their community. His defense was he did not know about the corruption in the Hollywood Police Department. Whether this is true or not no one has ever tried to figure out. Now the flip side with the condo manager. The tarnished shields have tried to link her bad deeds to another person and have failed. Is our police chief a crook? No one wants to know or has made any effort to find out. The guy the tarnished shields have gone after obviously is not guilty because the tarnished shield did everything in their power to get him and failed.
NSB
Thursday, 5/1/08, 4:16 PM Daytona may not be efficient but they are trying much more or harder then our Leadership in NSB is. NSB Leadership just goes on spending and spending, and to heck with its Citizens, that are suffering or hurting from expenses. The NSB Leadership just does not get the message about the condition of the State, City, as well as the Country. Let us hope they wake up real soon before they ruin this great City.... From: NSB
Lets Play who am I ?
Friday, 5/2/08, 4:12 PM Got laid off, car almost repo'ed, house near foreclosure, got no health care, got no pension, got no cell phone, can't afford taxes, gas, insurance, new tires, or my electric bill or my water and sewer bill. And every time I turn around I have to pay the gov't a fee for something! Who am I?
Roger Johnson
Saturday, 5/3/08, 6:44 AM I am going to address a couple of issues that need addressing. One is, and pardon me Mr. Shadow, stems from an article in "Hometown News" where a group called " Watchdogs" or some such tag purport to be vigilant in watching wasteful spending where they lump in EVAC Ambulance into the "tax waster" category. Well they don't offer a mechanism for reply or rebuttal so here goes! First of all EVAC is not "tax supported" in the way you support fire or police services. Fire and Police are 100% tax based and every dime they spend comes directly from YOUR WALLET! On the other hand EVAC gets less than 15% of its budget from tax dollars. In fact most of what EVAC spends comes from its customers, the patients it transports! What a novel idea. Next years expenditures are based on last years numbers plus projected growth. EVAC has about 1 supervisor to every 20 "Fire-County Wide" supervisors. The units don't sit in barka loungers in between calls like fire does because they cannot afford to. Most of EVAC's stations are 40 to 50 years old, mobile homes, old vehicle inspection stations or run down wood frame structures, or co-habitat in a city fire station for an exorbitant rate! EVAC covers all 1200 square miles of the county with 200 field employees and 22 trucks. 18 fire departments cover the same area with over 200 vehicles and 500 employees and run less than one quarter the calls! Do the math! And, when fire responds to a sprained ankle, they usually send two or three half million dollar apparatus, sometimes from more than one department, and each vehicle that responds is counted as a response. So, one ankle injury racks up multiple call responses for fire, its called padding the books! For the "fuddy dutty" tax watchdogs you need to do your homework! EVAC sits in parking lots between calls to save you money. Or should they build 5 million dollar stations like fire so they could lounge around in and have union meetings in? No-because they don't have time to. EVAC costs the taxpayer less than 10.00 per person per year. Fire, close to 500.00. So stop lumping EVAC in with other public tax wasting, were in it for us, keep telling them they need us, agencies. If government ran like EVAC over a hundred million a year would be saved collectively. The average employee at EVAC makes between 25K and 35K per year. Mr. Shadow has more than once showed you what fire makes, 70K to 90K+ per year. Fire spends so much money you would think its dollar bills flyin from them hoses instead of water! Wake up people! From: Port Orange Email:
NSB
Sunday, 5/4/08, 6:59 AM Good point "You will be surprised" good example is the recent problem or death next to Dairy Queen on Rte 1 in NSB. There were approximately 10 vehicles from 3 or 4 Agencies there. Most of these vehicles were gas guzzler SUV's. So I am sure there are loads of examples like the Library as you said etc. Which would include many many less vehicles, supervision, cell phones, etc. In these more trying times each and every department spends more time protecting thier own turf, which sure causes confusion for upper Leadership on how to reduce costs. Even the Mayor and Commissioners protect their favorites and/or the more domineering or outspoken department heads. Most of them continue to say we have no gas guzzlers in NSB which protects the Police Chief. Also voting in Green was for whom or what purpose? protecting someone, and/or a re-election gimmick, this was all just a big big joke, and the 3 that voted that way should be ashamed of themselves.... From: NSB
DEAR JOHN
We know of the limited resources available to John Hagood, the City Manager, and to his inability to get all of the important letters written that he would like to send. So we decided to help him and provide him drafts that will simplify his tasks and free him up for more important tasks.
TO: Mayor MacKay
FROM: John Hagood
RE: Vehicles for police sergeants
I had an epiphany on how to save some money and not buy at least one of the SUV toys Chief “Crown Vic” Pagano’s wants for his sergeants. You probably do not know that we have an old armored car that was sold to the City by Brinks for $10 under an agreement that we give it back to Brinks when we do not want it anymore. We could clean it up, paint it appropriately, and assign it to one of the sergeants. Compared to an SUV I am almost certain that the four sergeants will fight over the use of a prestige symbol that says “look at me”. Tell me what you think? I can have the motor pool start work on it next week.
John Hagood
Just to give you some perspective, there are about 313,000 paid firefighters and over 834,000 volunteer firefighters in the United States (2.7 times more volunteers). The fatality rates have been going down and if you read carefully, you will see that it is mostly younger firefighters that are killed on the job and older ones who die from heart attacks. Volusia County has 133 volunteers and 15 'Friends of the Fire Department' who are retirees, do not answer calls, but work on administrative matters. LINK
HE UNION (IAFF) EFFORT TO CONVINCE YOU THAT THEY NEED THREE FIREMAN PER SHIFT, MANDATORY OVERTIME, AND MORE PAY
At the last City Commission meeting, the fire department union (IAFF) president presented each of the five Commissioners with a 17-page document that he claimed justified why fire department staffing should not be reduced to two per shift.
(SEE LINK) As you will see, it is not just the ludicrous idea that a med/EVAC house call to a two-bedroom house needs a “crowd control officer”, to the fanciful, if not totally laughable, comment about the number of firefighters needed for an accident where a victim has to be “extricated”. Think of the number of pieces of equipment that show up even for fender-benefits. The number of fires went down to 104 from 117 in 2006, and only a small percentage were house fires. Again it appears all were a total loss—i.e. either fire or smoke finished the house off.
For the fun of it, page by page:
1. Page 1. The key for evaluation of the effectiveness of your fire department is the insurance industry rating system that is called ISO. On a scale of one to ten, all of Southeast Volusia County is 5 if it is within 5 miles of a fire station and there are fire hydrants no more than 1000 feet apart. This is independent of whether there is two or twenty firefighters on a truck. It is the same for med/EVAC, If they cannot get to you in under seven minutes you will have serious brain damage. That too is not dependent on the number of people riding on the truck.
2. Page 2. The so-called study on efficiency conducted in Austin, TX, by the fire department was for evaluating aerial truck efficiency (hook and ladder to us layman). It has nothing to do with the service that is available on all but one of the City’s fire trucks, and in any event, was done by firefighters, for firefighters. If you want to see that this is a nationwide effort by the IAFF to bootstrap its arguments, see the slick web site presentation made on the web by a department near Austin.
LINK. The presentation points here was basically copied from this web site. On the other hand, maybe it was from a union handout on how to counter arguments that staffing levels, as well as pay and pensions, have gotten out of hand.
3. Page 3. This statistical comparison to Edgewater is amusing. Number one, with almost the same population, we supposedly had 40% more med/EVAC calls than Edgewater. We think an independent audit by the County or State is in order. Secondly, they had 199 fires with a property loss of about $500,000, and NSB had 104 total fires, which we estimate is only about 10 or 12 house fires, for a loss of almost $3 million. Edgewater's ISO rating is “5”, NSB is”4”, and Silver Sands a “5”. Most Insurance Companies make no distinction in fire coverage rates between four and six ISO. By the way, 10 is no coverage and one probably is a fire at the firehouse which is bricks and stone.
4. Page 4. Edgewater has annexed out to I-95, just like NSB, and its total area is 22.24 square miles, not 13. Statistically, the Union misrepresented Edgewater's size by almost half. Remember too, much of the area of both Cities is farmland West of I-95 and not heavily settled for the most part, just east of I-95.
5. Page 5. We laughed at the comment about the need for a crowd control firefighter for med/EVAC calls. What about the police on the scene? There are only two to an ambulance, and we are told they handle their job well. However, the more important question is how many sudden cardiac heart failures do they treat? Does anyone arrive in time to save the victim, how many are taken to the hospital alive, and how many leave the hospital alive? Unfortunately, the number is so small that it is unlikely that even if you are in an ICU unit in the hospital you will survive that type of heart attack. In a survey of all U.S. Hospitals, only 42% do. Bert Fish does not keep statistics of those “saved” with sudden cardiac arrest.
6. Page 6. Those numbers work when the special rescue vehicle, two fire trucks, and the Battalion Commander in his SUV are on the scene. Add at least two police vehicles. At a recent fender bender last year on A1A at 27th Avenue there were seven emergency vehicles on the scene. The driver of the car had a cut hand and refused to be taken to Bert Fish.
7. Page 7. Their overtime is a three hour per week built in gift that costs the City the City between $5,000 to $10,000 a week. Their normal workweek is 53 hours at regular pay which includes at least 16 hours of sleep time. We do not know of any other employees, Federal, State or local, other than fireman who have a built in sleep component even though they are on “duty”. The City has tried to cut their hours to a normal workweek, 40 hours for you, for them 53 hours. On top of that, overtime is a management decision and should not have been in the contract at all. Last, overtime abuse was the principal method used to the abuse sick leave.
8. Pages 8-10. Fire department personnel have tripled their wages over the last six years. They have also changed the retirement multiplier from 2% to 3% which has resulted in Cindy Richenberg receiving a $63,000 annual pension for a person less than 50 years of age, instead of at $40-45,000 pension if the multiplier had not been changed. For those of you on Social Security, the current retirement age is 67 and will soon go up to 68. Reducing the compensation and benefits of the fire department must happen, or in about ten years, the City will be bankrupt. They should not complain about redressing pay increases that are not sustainable by the City. Eliminating the three hours of mandatory overtime will go a long way toward putting an end to their sick leave abuse. We hope that they give back more than the pittance of $400,000. Getting rid of the three hours of overtime alone will save more than $500,000.
9. Pages 11- 15. This is the “pennies per day” argument: it does not cost you much so stop complaining. On that basis, Port Orange firefighters should have their pay tripled immediately. They have almost three times the number of residents. They want you to ignore the fact that the IAFF has successfully turned a reasonable blue-collar job into one that pays two or three times the average wage earner’s salary in Volusia County. Where in the real world they would they command such wages. They cannot justify these pay scales by attempting to equate their services as worth just a little more from each taxpayer. It is a specious argument, just like claiming that the firefighter who dies of a heart attack while eating dinner in the firehouse is a hero.
10. Pages 16 and 17 are “loaded” questions. Here are the answers
The City saved about $140,000 in 2007 and 2008 by cutting out sick and overtime abuse.Even if our ISO rating went from four to five, it would make no difference in fire Insurance rates. Your insurance rates will not change. There would be absolutely no change in fire, med/EVAC, or Public safety response. Edgewater is not unsafe by any stretch of the imagination, and on top of that there is no statistical difference between county fire stations manned by two firefighters per shift rather than three. Seven County fire districts seem to get along with only two per Shift. Silver Sands has not suffered and has a fire station within five miles of each house and fire hydrants closer than 1000 feet apart. we believe Silver Sands is one of thousands of areas in this country with only two to a shift.You should take all of the cuts in budget because you fed so well at the public table during the fat years. You have much more fat to give up than any other group in the City.For your information, you should be aware that the Union representative did not provide a copy of his presentation to the City Manager. However, he attacked him throughout the presentation for positions he has taken during contract negotiations that were clearly in the best interest of the City and its taxpayers. We asked for a copy on Monday, and the City Clerk made one available, to the City Manager and then to the Shadow. Can you believe the disrespect shown to the City Manager by this good ole’ boy union president? The Shadow does, and particularly when they have at least a three to two vote advantage on the City Commission. Keep in mind the City Manager is the one who stopped them from abusing sick leave, and has been negotiating with them to eliminate three hours per week of embedded overtime and a 3% pay raise, not the Mayor and Commissioners. You cannot expect too much from a person who shows his disdain for elected officials and the public attendees by wearing a baseball cap when he made his unannounced presentation. The Union (IAFF) must be worried that ordinary citizens may be getting the message about their sweetheart contract last time, and will bring pressure to bear on the Commission. We hope so!
GIVE US ANOTHER YEAR IN OFFICE
The campaign is on by the Commission to vote themselves another year in office. It started with Ann McFall, our elected Supervisors of Elections, telling them at the beginning of the month about the need to simplify the election process by going to even year elections. It would save money to boot. At the last meeting, it was noted that she had been around and that it was on the table. Of course, one could do this by reducing the term and let the voters decide, but every time they have moved a date in the past, and we believe there have been four such changes in the last 10 years, they have lengthened the term by from five months up to a year. The pressure on them this year will be immense because not only have they done nothing to cut taxes in the first six months in office but have given the City Manger the task of finding the money to pay for fire and police department wages and management. Plaskett and Richenberg in specific language told the City Manger to find the money and the hell with spending reductions for these departments. The audacity of doing nothing about the Municipal Golf Course and authorizing an airport noise study at City expense because some of the people who bought cheap houses near the airport claim they are now bothered by the noise is a thumb in the eye for the taxpayer.
O.K. Back to the Election Day. We did not anoint them to act as our monarch and just give themselves another year in office. They took this up at the beginning of last summer and dropped it when opposition arose from the taxpayers. Nevertheless, here it is again, and again, it is not to reduce the terms to conform but to extend the term. Nobody would object if they, the three of them run next year, ran this year. Grasty and Richenberg have a three year track record and we suspect Sally's political machine is still intact. So why not just all run this November which meets McFall's request and would not offend the taxpayers by arrogating to themselves another year in office.
Unfortunately, their modus operandi is to put off this decision until the middle of the summer when whatever they want to do will sneak through on the agenda with little notice. It is done that way in the City of Charm.
GASOLINE INVOICES
We are providing a LINK to the March Invoices for fuel purchases. We hope this is the last month they buy PLUS gasoline for the main fuel tank. We will request and print the next invoice for your inspection.
DROP
An op-ed article on the ridiculous DROP program (Deferred Retirement Options Program) in the News Journal the other day shows that other newspapers around the state are taking aim at the total subversion of the DROP system, both undermining its original intent which was to keep a few good employees on the payroll a little longer after they reached retirement age, and the absolute chicanery of hiring them in their old jobs after they collected all the extra money. The Orlando Sentinel ran an editorial a week or so ago. Bravo. Tell our elected officials to go to Tallahassee and demand that this program be ended. Maybe they should go tomorrow since it only cost us a few thousand dollars for their last trip, and just one firefighter walked off with an additional $48,000 last year for saying she was so indispensable that she opted for the program. The City had no say.
SEE LINK
AIRPORT BUZZARDS
Face it, it usually costs more to buy a house that is not at the end of an airport runway, and you expect a cheaper price because you agree to put up with the noise. Furthermore, a successful airport will be nosier than one that is not. It is a business, and if it is expected to make money, it will grow. If those that moved into the airport noise footprint over the last 70 years want some noise abatement and need a study to convince the FAA and others how to achieve that objective, let the complainers pay for the study. Set up a tax district if they insist, like the City did to stuck it to the residents of the Calore Canal for dredging the mouth of a tidal creek (now mostly silted up again we are told). If the airport noise level can be reduced without lowering its ability to generate revenue everyone would be for it, but do not spend taxpayer money on the study, because the people complaining of the need to reduce noise levels have no right. Spend their money if they want a study.
Why should the taxpayer pay a nickel? Certainly, Habitat for Humanity could use the money, and one of the Airport Board members is, or was its president. Would not a $205,000 contribution to Habitat by the City be a better use of taxpayer money than a study to assuage a few disgruntled homeowners near the airport who knew the airport was there when they bought their houses? We hope the Commission refuses to fund this useless “study”. So they had a show and tell for all those who want to hamstring the effective use of the airport. Any proposal to limit airport revenues present or future is unfair to the taxpayers who have supported it, whether it made money or not, over the last 70 or more years, it should be defeated. The Shadow believes the City should encourage jet operations if they curtail touch and go of single engine planes during the day. We seem to remember that John Travolta landed his twin engine jet at Spruce Creek Fly In at night.
If they took role at the complainers' meeting held on Wednesday two weeks ago, those owners should be included in the special tax district
WASTED WATER
We have a statement on good authority that the Utility Commission fixed the auxiliary chlorinator located at the storage tank on AIA near Hiles Street in November of last year. After the chlorinator was repaired, the water in the line South to Bethune Beach was no longer subject to the same degree of water quality degradation. For some reason, and it could be as simple as not telling the employee who was dumping millions of gallon of acceptable and potable water, that it did not need to be dumped. We were told by the people in Bethune Beach that the dumping of 11 hours a day continued until April when the Shadow blew the whistle. The Utilities Commission spokesman stated to the press that the hours for dumping were less and that it wasn't at full volume, but since the salinity of the shallow aquifer affected the bait and shrimp holding tanks as well as the clam farm, we are more inclined to believe the Bethune Beach observers.
We are not holding our breadth waiting for the Commission to demand that Mr. Rodi, CEO of the Utilities Commission, clarify this issue or even to tell us whether it is true, given that the UC put on a dog and pony show to explain away this faupax. Do not expect that the feckless City Commission will even question the accuracy of the information presented by the Utilities Commission, or to supply any further explanation. Do not waste your money placing a bet on the City asking if there ireally is a need for another $10 million bond issue to build a new unneeded holding tank if they are not required to supply more water to Beachside because their current production is in line with current reduced usage. Anyway, our read of that bond is that they never needed the tank but wanted the money to use for operating expenses, similar to the way in which they have apparently been using the fuel adjustment money.
Given the magnitude of the water wasted, which we think was a multiple of what they admitted; we continue to believe that an independent investigation should be insisted upon by the City Commission. However, we know that they will not even inquire, Diesen might bite them.
