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NY Village Sues Neighboring Village Over Fire Protection
Last week’s decision by the Village of Port Chester, New York to eliminate its paid fire department has run into a new obstacle: the Village of Rye Brook filed suit yesterday claiming that Port Chester is under a legally binding contract to staff its fire station through 2018.
Rye Brook’s suit was filed yesterday in New York State Supreme Court alleging a valid fire services contract has existed between the two villages dating back to 2013, and will remain in effect until 2018. Under the agreement Rye Brook pays Port Chester $1 million per year in exchange for Port Chester firefighters to staff its station for a 12 hour overnight shift. Rye Brook is asking the court to order Port Chester to honor its commitment under the agreement.
If Port Chester has 300 Volunteer Firefighters as they claim, why did they think that needed to be supplemented with 8 paid staff in the first place? It couldn’t possibly be a little fudging by the politicians could it? Nah, they wouldn’t do that, that’s lying, it would be dishonest. Illegal too.
Maybe I’m overly cynical, but would that be 300 volunteers the day of the annual dinner dance in August, or 300 volunteers at 0300 in a blizzard-caused power outage?
One million dollars for one firefighter on a 12-hour shift? Assuming every night, that would be 4380 hours per year, Dividing that into a mill, it works out to $ 228 and change per hour. Now, I *KNOW* firefighters are overpaid (coughcoughbullshit), but that still seems steep, even for Port Chester and Rye Brook.
The contract was not just for the one firefighter, it was also for a command structure as RBFD has no officers and automatic response from the volunteers from PCFD on all calls.
From the mayor of Rye Brook:
“Earlier today the NYS Supreme Court issued a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) requiring the Village of Port Chester to restore the staffing of the Rye Brook firehouse with a career (i.e. paid) firefighter starting Friday evening, May 13. Next Friday (May 20) the court will be considering the Village of Rye Brook’s application for a Preliminary Injunction. Rye Brook has received a request from the Village of Port Chester Mayor to meet, and based on the issuance of the TRO we intend to honor that request.
We thank the Rye Brook firefighters and the Port Chester volunteers for their hard word during this difficult situation and we look forward to sitting down with Port Chester to work collaboratively on this issue. “
That makes a little more sense. Thank you for clarifying.