Dear New Rochelle Residents, Business Owners, and Home Owners:
The New Rochelle Firefighters, would like to thank all of the residents and business owners for their support over the last several months as we faced potentially devastating cuts in our manning and personnel.
The UFFA recognizes that the citizens of New Rochelle face hard economic times. The UFFA also understands that we cannot allow our City Leadership to use hard times as an excuse to destroy the New Rochelle Fire Department and the quality of life in our beloved city. In hard times, the citizens of New Rochelle need and deserve strong, principled, and courageous leadership. The last minute budget deal forged on December 7th, 2009 by the Mayor and City Council placed one of the most professional and effective fire departments in the region in danger of sustaining crippling cuts. These cuts would have resulted in a projected savings of about 28 dollars per household. It illustrates a failure by City leadership to perform a proper “risk vs. reward” analysis. The New Rochelle Firefighters view this as political “sleight of hand” designed to make council appear fiscally responsible when, in fact, their actions were anything but responsible. The tactics utilized by the City made it clear that they would prefer to force layoffs in 2010, not in the election year of 2011.
On December 31, 2009, New Rochelle Firefighters answered the call (once again) and agreed to defer their salary increases for the calendar year 2010. This is an interest free loan to the City of New Rochelle from its Firefighters. New Rochelle Firefighters took this action for two (2) overriding reasons: (1) The safety of you, the public; and (2) The safety of our fellow firefighters. If we were stripped of any more personnel, a firehouse would have closed. Closing any firehouse would have been catastrophic. It would be more difficult, if not impossible, to achieve timely and necessary functions of firefighting needed at the onset of an incident. Your safety also would have been at risk. In addition, if a firehouse closed, the city’s ISO insurance rating would also be negatively affected. The net result of an ISO change is an increase in annual insurance premiums for every homeowner and business owner in New Rochelle.
The picture painted by The Mayor and City Council over the course of the last several months was simple: Firefighters need to sacrifice their raise and layoffs will be avoided. The truth is firefighters were told that EVEN IF they deferred their scheduled salary increase for 2010, there was STILL NO GUARANTEE that jobs would be safe! The city expected the Firefighters to give up their raises without any guarantee to maintain current staffing levels. This was simply unacceptable from a safety standpoint! The Firefighters feel that the recent actions by our Mayor and City Council illustrate a willingness to compromise on Public Safety.
Although the City told its residents that they were not interested in Firefighter layoffs, their actions showed otherwise. The City failed to maintain the required staffing levels in 2009 pursuant to a previously received Federal Grant. This failure caused the city to forfeit the balance of monies due it under the grant. These monies could have saved jobs. Seven open firefighter positions went unfilled in 2009 and were eliminated in the 2010 budget. This is BEFORE the City proposed layoffs of six more firefighters! And let’s not forget all the new high-rise buildings in downtown New Rochelle. With the cuts already made to the department, the New Rochelle Firefighters have less than adequate manning to effectively fight a fire in a high-rise structure. Even the smallest incident in one of these buildings would strip the city of all on duty fire personnel, thereby leaving the rest of the City, especially the entire North End, unprotected.
The Citizens of New Rochelle need to ask their elected officials WHY the city is in financial distress. The City leadership cannot continually look to their public servants to assist them in balancing the budget. New Rochelle must do away with poor planning and huge tax abatements to developers without any guarantee that such development would generate new sales tax or other revenue. The city must make it clear that public safety is a priority, not an area to be “cut” when times get tough.
We respectfully ask every person in New Rochelle to please remember that next year, in 2011, Firefighters will not be in a position to save our own members or assist with balancing the budget. Our fear, and the fear of many New Rochelle Citizens, is the City will once again attempt to terminate several firefighters and compromise public safety. You pay enough in property taxes. Please contact your city council representative and the Mayor and demand accountability for these decisions.
We thank you for your continued support and wishes you a SAFE and healthy 2010.
And Yonkers just hired 36
And Yonkers just hired 36 new men, how’s THAT happen?