Ruth Oosting: Atwater doesn’t need a fire marshall
Atwater may have fallen into a pile of money – not enough to fix the audio on the televised city council meetings, but enough to hire a fire marshal.
What, you ask? Little Atwater is spending in excess of $100,000 to hire a fire marshal. Along with the salary comes a truck and equipment costing $53,000, and you and me, as residents of Atwater, will be paying for this for Cal-Fire.
Los Angeles, with 4,800 firefighters, has one fire marshal. Atwater has 14 firefighters. Even Smokey Bear knows there is no need for another big-city fire official in Atwater. The job of a fire marshal is doing inspections, something firefighters do now. But firefighters also fight fire; the fire marshal won’t.
Both city councilmen Larry Bergman and Jim Vineyard are retired Cal-Fire employees and should have recused them from voting, yet they have voted on every Cal-Fire request presented to the council. The thought was that Measure H money can pay for everything; in truth, the Measure H money is gone and the general fund is in trouble.
Atwater residents, join me at city council meetings. You need to see up close how our city officials waste taxpayers’ money.
Ruth Oosting, Atwater
This story was originally published February 16, 2016 at 2:07 PM with the headline "Ruth Oosting: Atwater doesn’t need a fire marshall."