Letter to the Editor

I have lived in Raytown all my life, I worked here as a firefighter/EMT for 20 plus years. I am retired now and I am very upset with what has happened to the fire service and what they are doing to the citizens of this community. We the citizens pay our fire taxes to the county for fire protection for Raytown and yet they are running calls for Kansas City fire.

 

I ran into some of the guys the other day and found out our firefighters are running calls clear down into the plaza! I was shocked to hear they run calls for KC. all over the metro area, leaving our town unprotected.

 

So if our guys are in KC and we need a ALS “advance life support” pumper to run a heart attack call we the citizens don’t have it! and now we have to wait for a BLS “basic life support” pumper to come from KC to help our ambulance service.

 

This is crazy! whose brilliant idea was that? must have come from the fire board because the men aren’t happy about it! also I found out that the board has asked the men to take a 5% pay cut to keep their jobs, ok where has all the money gone too? I guess the fire board has spent it foolishly. Like when they asked us the citizens for more money to remodel the stations and instead of remodeling they knocked them down to build new ones. that is not what they were asking the money for.

 

Now because of the larger call volume the guys are running for KC fire we the tax payers are paying for more fuel for the trucks and maintenance. KC fire isn’t. so is this the reason the men who don’t get paid that well, had to take a pay cut?

I feel we need to get a new fire board whose interest is in what’s best for the citizens. thank goodness the city still has the ambulance service! we may lose our house from a fire but at least we still have the best ambulance service around.

 

Dave Wehner