Questions I Would Have Asked if Appointed to the Fire Board

If I had been appointed to the fire board I would have first asked why they didn't have a Facebook page to keep citizens informed on what's going on like most fire districts today. The LMRFD web page makes it difficult to read things like the board minutes and public notices.

Then I would have asked why the Fire Chief drives a fire truck home to Golden Valley? Why is he putting between 2200 and 3500 miles on an expensive Type 6 Brush truck that will need replaced soon.  (7 trips 4 days & 3 calls or 11 trips 4 days & 7 calls)

At 6 MPG if he drives 2200 miles thats 366 gallons of diesel at $3.32 a gallon thats $1200 a month.
At 6 MPG if he drives 3500 miles thats 583 gallons of diesel at $3.32 a gallon thats almost $2000 a month.

At 3500 miles a month he putting 42,000 miles a year on a vehicle that normally would run a couple calls a month maybe 200 miles or 2400 miles a year. At that rate the chief is putting 17 years on the truck ever year.. And a Type 6 Brush Truck is not cheap to replace. It's a very expensive piece of equipment with new Type 6 Brush Truck's running between between $80,000 to $100,000.

I would have asked why we didn't have volunteers running a BLS ambulance as a second out. That we ambulance revenue is down because we lose about $2500 in ambulance revenue every time we have to call River Medical because the LMRFD ambulance is on a call.

I would have asked why paramedic's call a helicopter for patients that KRMC can handle? The LMRFD loses over $500 in millage, and if a helicopter isn't called until the ambulance is loading the patient, many times it's a 30 minute flight time to Dolan. Thats 30 minutes to get to Dolan, load time, and 30 minutes back, or over an hour to get the patient to the hospital. It's 37 miles from my house on 9th and the ER doors at KRMC, about 30 minutes lights and siren.

So the LMRFD looses $500 and KRMC looses thousands of dollars in treatment billing, and the patient get's a bill for $25,000..... Everybody looses.... LMRFD, KRMC, and especially the patient who we hope made the hour trip to Vegas, gets there in over an hour rather than 30 minutes, and get's billed ten times as much as the ambulance ride they also get billed for.