After reading about the town budget and seeing the mind boggling MCSO budget increase of 13.6 percent over last year, compared to all of the other increases like Rural Metro at 2.6 percent and the Administrative budget DECREASE of 17 percent, I’m reminded of Illinois with its underfunded state pension obligation of over $150 BILLION, and no remedy. I understand taxpayers are on the hook for these annual increases as our elected government made these promises and we have to pay for them, but why don’t we do something to reign in the annual cost of these contracted services.
Do we need a staff of 36 deputies? Remember Sheriff Joe lives here and was probably responsible for this overstaffed division?
Do we need four detectives with a captain? What does a detective do in Fountain Hills? One or two murders since 1974?
Do we need two fire stations staffed 24/7 located about three miles apart?
Along with the Rural Metro EMT service, seems like redundancy. How many snakes do we call them to remove overnight? How many fires did they extinguish in 2018?
If we cannot justify having our own police and fire departments, then at least staff what we need, and can afford. I would like to see a real incidence report showing the number of fires in 2018.
How many crimes solved, by the four detectives?
How many life threatening emergencies were resolved by the Fire/EMT after 5 p.m.?
We are stuck with the poor management of the Arizona public safety pension investments and crazy bonus payments to retired police and firefighters as uncovered by the Arizona Republic. We need to look at what level of public safety we need given our limited budget. Let’s contract, but only for what we need. This is Mayberry, Arizona after all.
