Greetings,
As the look, feel and information on the association website is updated and changed other features have been added also. One being this “blog” think of it as a place where I can post what I consider to be important, informative, funny, scary etc as it either comes to me or is brought to my attention.
With this in mind please consider the current legislative session. There are several proposals from the association either in process, dead or waiting to be processed. Some things we wanted we found out early were just not going to happen (property tax breaks for firefighters) so concentration began on the ones which could work. Some are going on with seeming ease and this mostly thanks to our legislators who are carrying them and those who are supporting them. Others are in “process” meaning that they need help, modifications, sponsors etc and legislative Chair Greg Gray has his finger on the pulse of these and will let us know what we need to do or when we need to do something. I know this has to be difficult when we as firefighters want to rush to the scene. But, Please think of it as an IC problem. Keeping people in the staging area to use when they are needed AS they are needed rather than freelancing everything. It would be a terrible waste to have used all of our firefighters early on and have none available when they are really needed to effect the outcome in a positive way. Hang in there folks and treat the legislative session like any other call and wait for the dispatch tone.
On the legislative note PLEASE remember to be kind to our legislators (yes even the ones you don’t like!) THEY are the ones who vote to approve or disapprove our requests. they must do this based on their information about what we want and what is possible within the resources available. Just like the IC sometimes they can’t make a “good” decision but must go with the “least bad” one. Let’s don’t beat them up or criticize their actions until we know the whole story. It’s kinda like one of our incidents, it always comes out different at the coffee shop than the fire scene…….right?
  Finally  (for the moment) let’s not forget that at the end of the day we are still the firefighters who are expected to respond to protect life and property and we have to keep ourselves and our brother and sister firefighters safe enough to do this in a manner that everyone comes home safe!