>> dump the current retirement system and replace it with something taxpayers can afford.
Like what? Social security? Do you really want 67 year old firefighters responding to your burning home?
Soylent green.
We can work that out. No structure fires for elderly firefighters...only dumpsters, grass or turkey fryers.
No, I'd expect that any raising of retirement age would lead to pragmatic shifting of the work and filling jobs. 67 yo's might more likely be the administrators, supervisors and fire chiefs. Although they become less agile, they have points that become significant strengths: judgment and experience. With early retirements today, those strengths are lost.
We have laws that make new construction very fire safe.
The majority of fire fighter responses are no longer fire related.
They can easily be replaced by EMS.
This is the big Union lie about fire fighters.
Fire Fighters are paid for a hazardous job which no longer has meaning. Pay them for what they do not what they say they might do.
Spoken like a true government worker or pensioner. There are a lot of creative ideas to fix the problem. Such as let them retire after 25 years and start collecting retirement pay at a normal retirement age, such as 65.
If these people in the fire departments can't live with a dramatically reduced wages and slashed retirement pensions, then they should go get jobs that pays more.
They're choking the tax payers off...Enough!
What I want is them not retiring at 45 with lavish taxpayer funded packages
A defined contribution plan, instead of a defined benefit plan.
With the unionized PC gender-neutral "firefighters" we have around here, I'd just as soon they stayed in the station and let me deal with it. Really, and I'm surrounded by forest and chaparral. Those kids are dangerous.
The reality is that "firefighters" don't fight fires around here anyway, they "supervise" prisoners who do the real grunt work. You should have seen them during the Summit Fire, sitting at staging areas with lines of trucks collecting overtime, laughing and cavorting, hitting on the womyn. Then they take home a fat pension for a "hazardous" career sitting on their butts writing rules and filing for grants. Seriously.
Give me the days when private fire companies raced for the opportunity to fight a fire. In the old days they were under contract with the insurance companies, but could just as easily be by subscription verified by third party providing a performance bond. The current model needs to be rethought completely.
Sure, as long as they put out the fire.
most fire calls really are medical emergencies....not blazing fires...that the number of actual fires is tiny compared to the calls that go out?....I think the answer is "yes"....
its funny how we can't have men working into their late 50's or early 60's answering fire calls yet thousands and thousands of nurses work up to 65 and beyond drawing up IV meds, performing cpr, moving and transferring bariatric patients, etc....
cut the pensions out completely...establish 401ks that the govt contributes a certain fair amount too....the more you save and invest, the better you'll do...LIKE THE REST OF US...
Something more like the military system. Retire at half pay at the end of 20 years. Or give them premium pay when they are at their physical peaks and off-set this with much lower retirement pay.
They stand, and watch, and keep people back so they don't get hurt.
Actually, the standard in much of rural America is to simply let it burn. That's also the standard in much of urban America.
“Do you really want 67 year old firefighters responding to your burning home?”
Check your stats, but firefighters are more emergency med techs that firefighters.....Probably 30-40 emergency calls for every fire.