Do you favor career fire and rescue for daytime shifts in St. Mary's County to ensure vital emergency services?

If you say that you want paid fire and ems in St Mary's County I hope that you realize the cost that goes along with it. I am a tax paying resident as well as a volunteer firefighter in this county, it just so happens that my career is as a firefigher as well. I understand the importance of volunteers in small communities such as ours. We save ourselve millions upon millions of dollars by utilizing an all volunteer system. A combined system would do nothing more than chase our volunteers away. Before you say that you support such a drastic change to your personal lifestyle and that of your community you should seriously consider looking at every piece of evidence available to you. Statistically you will see a decline in volunteerism in communities that began to hire paid fire and ems. What will a decline in volunteers cause? The hiring of even more paid personnel. Until you have reached an all career staff and a budget increase of several million dollars. In our current economic crisis that we are in, I do not see how anyone could or would support this. I offer you the opportunity to visit your local fire and/or ems station and speak with the volunteers there. If you feel compelled to help, take an application home with you and join. We are always looking for dedicated men and women to assist in our efforts of protecting our community. Thank you for your time!

I wouldn't care if taxes went up, if I knew that when I called 911 to report an emergency, a trained, competent, skilled, and proficient career Firefighter, or EMT/P showed up at my house in an appropriate matter of time, and not as it is now “HIT or MISS”, and lately it's mostly MISS!!!!!

I might be inclined to believe Shawn Downs' comment if it happened somewhere in real life. Charles county recently added paid crews to their rolls and it is working very well. The only change in emergency services the citizens have seen is better response times.

Taxes don't need to rise a whole lost in order to staff 4 or 5 paid medics a week during the day. The fire tax is assessed from our property taxes to provide for emergency services. Currently, the oversight of that money rests with the fireman's associations and the fire board. Unfortunately, that money is often mismanaged, used to purchase extravagant toys that are unnecessaary. Fiscal responsibility could pay for the medics with very little extra taken from our pockets, but the truth is guys like Shawn dont want us to know this. They prefer to scare us into believing all the volunteers will move to Calvert county or something.

This didnt happen in Charles county. The paid crew works well with the volunteers in spite of the efforts of many territorial vollies to thwart the process. The Charles county system is better staffed with paid crews and has NOT seen the reduction in willing volunteers as Shawn predicts.

As a matter of fact, the Charles county system is SO good, they spend alot of time running mutual aid to ST MAry's County. If Charles were smart, they'd be charging for that service.

My 2 cents

The time for paid service isn't right just yet. Agreeing with Shawn Downs our volunteer force is working. For example LPVRS is responding to nearly 4,000 calls and is ALL volunteers. Older/Younger member's are coming together to get an ambulance out everyday. In 5-8 years yes it will be time, but for younger individuals wanting to get paid can go to PAX, DC, Montgomery and other areas until it is time for St. Mary's County to become paid.

If we had a paid department in St. Mary’s county you would have someone who is responsible for the the spending, not like you have now where ever fire department buys what they want. Every fire house in the county has at least four pieces of apparatus in them now, Mechanicsville’s sub station runs about 150 calls a year and scratch on about 80% of those but Mechanicsville is in the process of buying a $600,000 rescue pumper for that station, and who’s going to question them ? Right now you have 7 different departments doing as they please with the tax payer’s money and no one being held responsible, if you had a paid dept someone could be held responsible for the spending

In regards to freewill spending, not all departments are like that. Most departments buy their equipment through fundraisers and public funding. Yeah, there are some taxes that help bring in the money, but the majority is through fundrasing. There are, of course, exceptions. Bay District being one and Leonardtown being the other. But really, who is overspending? Let's start with justifying spending.

Mechanicsville buying a $600,000 rescue pumper -- They're replacing a 30 year old engine that ran front line for twenty years or so at station 2. That engine is the first piece out on everything at 22. 224 is a 2000, but it's a pumper-tanker and is used for the most part on house fires and going to 2 when 24 or the tanker goes OOS.
Bay District buying a tiller for 3, an engine and tanker for 9 -- I don't think I should justify that. Developers keep building up in both first dues.
Ridge buying a pumper-tanker, new brush unit and command -- it's beyond time 41 is replaced, and the same goes for the brush unit.
Second District buying a new engine -- The same as Mechanicsville. Their front line engine has been in service for twenty years.
Hollywood buying a new engine and tiller -- Pretty much the same as Bay District.

Spending does NOT come at the price of the taxpayer. The fire tax hasn't increased, and if anything your getting better protection because of it. Charles County does only has a paid ambulatory service that is paramedic only. Volunteers still run BLS calls, which really are bogus calls. Headaches, stomaches, minor pains and aches are all the volunteers are really running, unless there is an accident or fire in their first due. Yeah, sure, you could pay and pay and pay, but it'll become just like the volunteer service. It'll become a job, and the response times will probably be somewhat similar to what the volunteers are getting out now. I'm inclined to agree with DFC Downs. Look at PG County. Most firehouses there are splitting between volunteers and career personel. The volunteers are getting their pieces out the door, and the county is in a budget crisis and are thinking of cutting back the paid personel.
Also, in response to FROM WITH IN, most of these departments are nowhere near breaking the bank. It's not rampant spending. Most firehouses in the county are staffed with what they need. Leonardtown, Hollywood and Bay District all have trucks/tillers/towers because of the amount of high-rise or semi high-rise buildings in their first due. Mechanicsville and Ridge have pumper-tankers and tankers because most of their first due is rural with no hydrant areas. EVERY firehouse in the county has some sort of squad or rescue engine due to the amount of accidents in the area. If anybody thinks volunteering is all about the rampant spending, not wanting to go to calls and stuff along those lines, I urge you to join the fire department in your first due.

First of all, great job Mr.Downs, factual information, you state your actual real name and offer to educate and welcome support. I'm a volunteer in Calvert and have been for 18 years. Everyday is challenge in the volunteer system and what people don't understand is that the volunteers are from within their communtiy and they want what others want and that is the best service provided possible. Sometime you have to sit back and think who in their right mind would continue to put the effort out that the current volunteer does and not get paid for it.
Moving on, for the "Viper" their is no differnce in a trained Volunteer vs. a trained career provider. In fact in a career system you are not going to find the departments getting 2 ambulances out at the same time along with a couple of engines. You'll be lucky to get a fully staffed engine along with an ambulance. For instance I'll use Anne Arundel county, go back 15 years and look at the statistics, they tell no lie. In a volunteer system a department gets dispatched fo a first due house fire, that department would get out 2-3 engines and an ambulance and approx would provide 15-20 trained members, take that same department, make it paid and you would get an Engine and an ambulance with minimum staffing of 6 people, that would be at any given time of the day.
For "from with in" funny you use an alias. Well you must be young, uneducated and new to the volunteer fire service. The money that departments run off of come from two places, county budget and donations. Well donations just don't cut it, those funds are used to supplement your county budget so that you end up with just enough money to function properly. Each department answers to the commisioners and audits are performed. I don't think it is realistic to make the statemenmts you have, ihave not seen and bags of cash dropped off lately. If you want to make sure money is being spent wisely, get involved and becomr an officer or sit on a committee.
For David Morris; well put brother!