To the Editor:
Well, I see that Greenfield firemen are on their way to getting all of the toys they want. At the last City Council meeting council members gave first reading approval to a really large increase in our property taxes to pay for the construction of a new fire station on the east side of the city..
If you live there you might think that’s a good idea until you learn that you will later be paying for yet another new fire station in Maxwell (yes, all of Center Township is in the Greenfield Fire District). The Fire District already owns the land in Maxwell.
And wait till the new connection to I-70 is built at CR 200W, which will lead to the fire department insisting that a new fire station is then needed on the west side.
So it’s clear that if the fire department gets what they want we will increase the current number of fire stations from two to five!
And the construction of the fire stations and the buying of new fire trucks is the cheap part of this. Staffing stations with firemen and rescue personnel is the super expensive part. It requires four full shifts to cover every day and weekends. And each of them can retire after 20 years with a full pension, and their replacements will then be paid salary and health care on top of the pensions of those they replace.
Luckily there is a city election coming up now so we can still beat this back.
I trust that the Reporter will ask about this on their candidate questionnaire.
Len Jackson
Greenfield
