11-21-2018, 02:47 PM
(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.
Amalgamation by stealth is more a more likely course to follow like has happened in other areas (e.g. co-location of the region's call centre and Kitchener's call centre, co-ordination of snow plowing (roads at least), etc.).
Good prediction. I agree in principle that one fire fighting service should be able to provide that service Region-wide at lower cost than multiple services would, but the main cost driver is labour, and unfortunately eliminating fire fighting jobs is a decision that municipalities in Ontario practically can't take. Recall the City of Windsor getting rid of a single superfluous fire engine ten years back, and ultimately being forced to pay its firefighters for "lost overtime." 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.