Meanwhile, Back @ the Ranch – Part 2
When a government sues its own citizens you have the spectacle of a taxpayer having to pay for for his defense and pay for the legal attack upon him. And what a sad, Kafkaesque sight it is.
Another disgusting passion play is when governments use your money to try to propagandize you for their scheme to take more of your money.
And so very recently the Fullerton City Manager Ken Domer paid to survey the local gentry about the state of the city.
Dear Resident: The City of Fullerton has hired an independent public opinion research company to conduct a public opinion survey to obtain feedback on key issues facing the City and identify residents’ priorities.
Thank you for participating in this important research. Please click here to take the survey or copy and paste the link below into your web browser.
https://opinions-survey.com/index.php/survey/index/sid/242328/newtest/Y/lang/en/token/3065BT818751
Your participation and responses to this survey will be completely confidential. The identity of individual respondents and their individual answers to survey questions will not be shared with City staff or officials.
Please do not forward the survey link to others or share it to social media as it is personalized for each recipient of this invitation to ensure that the survey link will only work once.
Sincerely,
Kenneth A. Domer
City Manager
City of Fullerton
It’s a good thing the City has so much money to play with.
Lo and Behold! The survey is nothing other than:
- An attempt to get you to prioritize the various messes the politician and bureaucrats have created, and,
- Ignore the biggest problem – a vastly expensive, often criminal, and completely irredeemable police department; and,
- Subtly offer a 1% sales tax as a way to fix the problems; and,
- Failing that, howdja feel about a .75% sales tax? And,
- Gather that prioritization information you gave them to fashion their propaganda campaign for the inevitable tax.
My advice is to ignore the survey except for amusement purposes and remember that we will have school district bond proposals on the ballot in 2020 as the insatiable maws of local government takes ever more and returns ever less.
Key issues and priorities. Bullshit it’s nothing but a trial balloon for a sales tax increase.
Key issues and priorities means salary increases, more crooked cops and guaranteeing bloated pensions.
That is all.
Shut the fuck up BOOMER
No new tax without first restructuring the fire department. Fullerton should do exactly what placentia just did and contract paramedic services to a private company and provide their new firefighters with a 401k instead of a CalPERS pension.
Look at the way these fire union goons are losing their shit over placentia dropping firefighters from their CalPERS contract: https://youtu.be/IIf7ZTI2JOs
They seemed calm and professional to me. I wonder how you will feel when Placentia firefighters are sent to assist Fullerton to help put out a fire that is approaching your home.
Ah yes the old if you don’t pay us “heroes” what we deserve, no matter if it bankrupts our communities., You better pay up otherwise your house will burn down and old ladies will die in the street. Peddle you’re “we are heroes and deserve” bullshit someplace else, you GED union parasite.
Oh my. I’m all a flutter from your insults.
GREAT!
You mean like the OCFA employee who shot his dog in the head then threw in it the dumpster at the Irvine fire station? Charged and arrested. Bailed out. And is still ON DUTY at OCFA!!! Transparent California reported that OCFA paid him $259,000 in compensation in 2018.
So what makes a government FF any more competent than a private sector firefighter or paramedic? At least incompetent private sector FF’s can get fired. Were government employees ordained by God to have a monopoly over public safety? And a FF job is far less dangerous than a cab driver or a construction worker. We only pay them outrageous salaries and pensions because their dirty unions own the crooked politicians who divvy up their pay raises and divert road maintenance taxes to pay for their pensions .
The entire FF service should be privatized. It would save the taxpayer billions of dollars and we wouldn’t lose one iota of safety.
Do you have examples of where privatizing firefighters has been successful? Honest question.
Also, since all of the cities have reciprocal agreements would that still be possible?
Questions from not a firefighter.
Rural Metro is a private firefighting company that provides fire protection services to large cities in Arizona among others. They provide high quality as good as their public counterparts for a fraction of the cost and they aren’t unionized like the corrupt union goons here in California.
The 13 cities that contract with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department have conducted a study looking into the annual rising costs of the department’s contract.
And not just in Arizona. All across the nation. In the recent California wildfires private FF services help protect the pricey properties of the rich and the famous. In fact, it’s said that Kanye and Kim Kardashian’s $50 million mansion was saved by a private FF crew.
Whatever gave you the notion that civil service delivers a high-quality product? Remember the Freeway Complex Fire that destroyed 300 homes? The FF’s failed to ensure the water source needed to fight the fire would be operational during such a crisis. And then there’s the Canyon 2 fire that took out another few dozen homes due to the botched operations of OCFA and tardiness in responding to flames off the freeway. Is that your idea of competence?
Didn’t Placentia have a reciprocal agreement? How did that prevent them from switching to a privatized program? Or are you trying to say that municipal FF departments would not respond to fire emergencies in Placentia? If so, they aren’t really concerned about safety. Are they? I guess it’s all about the money.
But then we already knew that. Didn’t we?
You just a stated that privatized firefighters were paid $50 million dollars to save one home.
Seems like those firefighters could have been helping contain the other fighters. But hey, the rich are safe so I guess you and your buddies can still all hang out in your mansions.
The reciprocal agreement is so that when Fullerton firefighters are fighting fires in other cities that they cover our city if there is also a fire. So we send our good firefighters who undergo constant training and receive Placentia firefighters who could possibly have less training.
for-hire firefighters protecting homes, usually on the payroll of an insurance company with a lot at risk.
Check your reading glasses.
The commenter said that the private fire service helped save the Kardashian $50m mansion. Being private – it means they were paid (amount unknown) with private funds – perhaps by the Kardashians or the insurance company. That’s what “private” means. They were under no mission to save a home that they were not being paid to save. Get it yet?
No intention of turning this into a class warfare thread. So not biting. ;^)
“So we send our good firefighters who undergo constant training and receive Placentia firefighters who could possibly have less training”.
What makes you think a government firefighter a ‘god’? Private firefighters are every bit as good and even better than public firefighters.
Do you think private firefighters would have lost 300 homes in the Freeway Complex Fire or dozens of homes in the Canyon 2 fire?
Scary how you evaluate competence.
Placentia isn’t getting private firefighters. They’re just hiring their own with less benefits.
As a new agency that won’t offer the variety of experience a larger agency would, Stark said, hires may see Placentia as a stepping stone to other departments, creating a revolving door situation. The same problem Fullerton has because of lower pay for both police and fire.
Experience?
You mean a team of 6 pushing a shopping cart down an aisle at Ralphs?
Of a fire truck crew working out at the gym on city time?
Or maybe a chef competition at a BBQ cookout at the station.
Or who gets the most shuteye at the station on the city’s dime?
Business Insider doesn’t even rate a firefighter job as one of the 30 most dangerous jobs in America.
The whole hero scam is a farce.
The rest of the country somehow gets along just fine without a trillion dollar pension deficit. How do they do it?
You sound like Mafia or Sinaloa Cowboy. You should be ashamed of yourself “hero” for trying to threaten and extort people like a common, organized criminal.
What, this isn’t enough compensation for you “heroes?”
https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2018/fullerton
You GED nitwits received 1500 applications for 5 openings in your “fire” department earlier this year. We could pay you dipshits half of what you currently get paid and there would be a line around the block of people waiting to join up. Revolving door? What’s wrong with that? Don’t like your already generous pay and benefits then hit the road. Your job will be filled by sunrise.
Why the insults? A revolving door of employees is tough on everyone. Staff are constantly hiring, training, repeat, repeat, repeat. They get good at their jobs and then leave.
Having good employees costs money. Ask around. Maybe your workplace has some good employees you can be referred to.
Having good employees does cost money. But having public safety “heroes” on your payroll will bankrupt you. At least in Placentia’s case training costs will be far less expensive than unfunded pension debt that grows exponentially over time.
True. And I’m sure there will be changes in the system. I for one want public safety employees around. America isn’t as safe as it used to be. There’s a mental health problem in America, and fire season is all year long now.
I don’t know about you but I don’t want to fight fires. It’s hard, unhealthy work and when fighting fires they often work 13 hour shifts if they take breaks at all.
“I don’t know about you but I don’t want to fight fires. It’s hard, unhealthy work and when fighting fires they often work 13 hour shifts if they take breaks at all.”
That’s the reason they use the prison inmates (slave labor) to do all the heavy lifting while the paid firewhiners stand around trading river stories while collecting double overtime.
Man, you’ve swallowed the bait clean down to your gut.
A revolving door? Don’t make me bust a gut.
Where else is a GED or HS grad going to pull down $250,000 – 350,000 comp a year other than at a police or fire department?
What are they going to do? Revolve out and get a job at Jiffy Lube?
You all realize that the average salary for new firefighters isn’t what your stating?
All new firefighters make well into six-figure compensations. Go to the OCFA website and look at their comp charts if you don’t believe me.
Most GED’s or HS grads are damn lucky to make $15/hr in an entry level job in the private sector. Zero pensions. Lousy health insurance. No future.
Ever notice when there’s a firefighter in the news he or she always happens to be related to some high ranking firefighter in that or another department?
Oral interviews are everything in the selection process. All in the family.
Yes, but several people are using 250,000 to 300,000 which is battalion chief and chief pay. A lot of families work in the same field as the rest of their family. It’s called tradition.
Is your statement below something everyone should aspire to?
“ Most GED’s or HS grads are damn lucky to make $15/hr in an entry level job in the private sector. Zero pensions. Lousy health insurance. No future.”
https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2018/orange-county-fire-authority/
Let’s ask how Gregory Bradshaw, OCFA Captain extraordinaire earned a total comp package exceeding $500k last year. Scroll down the list, hose jockey and see how long and distinguished the list is of GED assclowns pullingndown comp packages destined to bankrupt us all. I am hero and deserve.
By the way, you wrongly assume I’m a fire fighter.
So how much do you think they should get paid?
The same as any semi-skilled labor job.
$30/hr – 401-K (no pension) – and Kaiser health insurance policy.
Plus – 3 daily shifts – no more 24 hour shifts and sleeping on the job.
Oh, and as the OCFA website pay chart shows – many common firefighters or engineer ops make over $250k. Check it out of you don’t believe me.
If they want to go to the gym they can do it on their own time and dime.
https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2018/orange-county-fire-authority/
I am hero and deserve.
It has to be one of the biggest, if not THE biggest, scam cons of the century.
Despicable how much of our tax dollars are rat-holed on these posers who retire at 50 as multi-millionaires.
That giant sucking sound.
So it’s all firefighters you despise, not just the ones in Fullerton.
Wouldn’t three shifts require cities to hire more firefighters and thus increase costs?
I don’t think he or she despises firefighters. I think he or she despises the crooked cabal that has allowed the fire service industry to evolve into an inefficient kleptocracy – that is gutting the taxpayers. Obviously, when one profits off the gamed system he or she is part of the problem. But those of us who see the inequity and injustice in such a system realize that the ones who created it are the ones who are most to blame.
I see no reason why 3 shifts would require more bodies. At the very least there should be two 12 hour shifts instead of 24 or 48 hours shifts. They can sleep on their own time.
Does Edison have 24 hour shifts for their line crew? No.
Does the water agency have 24 hour shifts for their emergency crews? No.
So why should firefighters have 24 or 48 hour shifts? Easy. To game the system.
We call it dozing for dollars!
Typical red herring reply. We don’t hate firefighters and yes, we need and want them. But there is ABSOLUTELY no need for 24 or 48 hour shifts where you get paid to sleep. It ONLY benefits firefighters and was negotiated by heavy-handed union goons who extorted it from their beholden political cronies.
Police, nursing, utilities — none use a 24/48 hour shift and for darn good reason. Fire “heros” only fight to keep it because they KNOW HOW BENEFICIAL IT IS TO THEM AND THE COSTS ARE PAID BY OTHERS. It’s selfish and greedy. We don’t hate firefighters but WE DO HATE GREED, SELFISHNESS and CORRUPTION
Fullerton to begin enforcement of anti-camping ordinance to clear encampment on Gilbert Street
https://www.ocregister.com/2019/11/25/fullerton-to-begin-enforcement-of-anti-camping-ordinance-to-clear-encampment-on-gilbert-street/