Following Ron Goodspeed’s Sept. 14 swearing in as the new Brimfield fire chief, the township anticipates that administrative changes will help the department’s financial situation.
Prior to Goodspeed stepping into the position, former Fire Chief Craig Mullaly approached the trustee board at the beginning of August about resigning and becoming a lieutenant, citing personal and professional reasons for his...
Read moreSome food for thought.
This story estimates that elimination of the position of Assistant Fire Chief will save $100,000 per year. I am trying to make sense of this figure based on a comparison.
Not too far away, the City of Hudson maintains a 5-year plan:
Within the 5-year plan are details relating to the Cemetery Fund:
The Plan details historical actual and future budgeted numbers. The “actual” personnel expense for two full time employees for the latest full year (2024) prior to publishing the plan was $249,718. Basically, $125,000 each.
Maybe I am mistaken, but I am assuming that the two full time employees allocated to the cemetery are, functionally, landscapers. Ok, perhaps with some expertise with operating an excavator. Below is the expenditures section from the plan for the Cemetery Fund:
[The first column is for 2024 and represent actual numbers. The remaining columns are budgets for subsequent years.]
How is it that eliminating the position of an Assistant Fire Chief saves only $100,000 when landscapers in local government go for $125,000 each and even then are supported by an additional $40,000+ of contractual services? Perhaps additional overtime and other expenses come in to play to achieve a “net” savings of $100,000 in connection with the elimination of the Assistant Fire Chief position while still performing the unique functions?
You would not be off base to assume that I am concerned with the accounting at Brimfield. But that would be, unfortunately, wrong. And if you then assumed that I was concerned about spending in Hudson you would still be somewhat wrong, although still not off base.
What actually intrigues me about the comparison to Hudson is that the City of Hudson publishes numbers indicating it spends $125,00 each on cemetery workers and we don’t hear stories involving torches and pitchforks. It makes me think that there simply has to be a full-credit answer that totally explains everything and it has just gotten by me.
Since local government spending seems to be a recurring theme in the news, maybe we should do some comparing and contrasting. We might develop some situational awareness that could be of some value.
Or,…Or,… This dissonance I am detecting is evidence of that prediction of a “halcyon era of local government corruption” coming to pass that was made by former reporter and now “Hollywood” writer David Simon. In which case, anyone have some torches?
To my understanding, we still have the same amount of fire department personnel. Meaning that the only thing that happened was the Fire chief stepped down from a position, but he is still with the fire department. The assistant fire chief then became the fire chief. We did not loose a fire department employee. How will that save $100,000 per year? Craig may now be paid less, but Ron Goodspeed will get a raise. So did Craig take a $100,000 per year pay cut?
