Volunteer, on-call firemen is way to go

After the recent town hall meeting during which LaSalle council voted down the second fire station by a 5-2 vote, councillors talked about hiring more full-time firefighters.

I decided to look at other municipalities and compare the way they run their fire services. It turns out we pay a lot more here in LaSalle for our services than towns around us already.

The Town of Amherstburg has a fire chief, deputy chief and fire prevention officer. The rest are all paid on-call volunteers. Amherstburg has a greater tax base with commercial, condominium and highrise buildings.

The Town of Tecumseh has a chief, deputy chief and fire prevention officer. The rest are all paid on-call volunteers. Tecumseh has a large amount of commercial, industrial and highrise buildings.

The Town of Kingsville has a chief, deputy chief and fire prevention officer and the rest again are all paid on-call volunteers. Kingsville also has a large commercial and industrial base.

LaSalle has a chief, deputy chief, fire prevention officer, training officer and six duty firefighters — for a total of 10 full-time employees. If you look at the call volume, there is no justification for the increase. LaSalle, for the most part, is a bedroom community.

I don’t understand why our taxes should go up for something we don’t seem to really need.

The other three municipalities give their volunteers a green flashing light for their vehicles, which allows motorist to be aware that they are going to an alarm. These green lights are approved in the Highway Traffic Act. Why don’t we have them here in LaSalle?

It seems to me having the green lights for the volun- teers would be cheaper than having to pay more full-time firefighters and, in turn, would keep our taxes down. Morella Donnelly, LaSalle