By Eric Landau | Fountain Hills
At a recent meeting, I unsuccessfully tried to persuade the Town Council of the need to accelerate our fire department's ability to join the Valley’s regional automatic aid system, rather than wait until January.
Right now, we rely on mutual aid. It’s not the same. It involves the commander requesting additional help from outside departments only after arriving and sizing up what turns out to be a major incident. Automatic aid sends the closest units right at the outset. A call at Eagle Mountain could routinely have Scottsdale units responding with our own. That provides a faster response by equally capable fire crews, irrespective of jurisdictional lines. If you come upon an incident in south Scottsdale where Tempe units are on scene, that's automatic aid.
Departments benefit from having a battalion chief available to respond. Management of a major incident can require many chiefs to cover all the tasks. Sadly, current plans defer promoting three FHFD captains to the necessary BC positions until January.
Many speakers at that Town Council meeting urged acceleration of that schedule so Fountain Hills could benefit at once rather than delaying until 2026. But alas, the usual five naysayers had their way and refused to fund those positions now. Only Councilmembers Kalivianakis and McMahon voted to move up the three captains, who already receive extra pay anyway when called upon to function as battalion chiefs.
One can only hope that the council majority's shortsightedness doesn’t cause delays in service with catastrophic results for any family or business. FHFD should have automatic aid in place now, like other Valley departments have had for years, not wait until next January. The five naysayers need to learn the old maxim about being penny wise and pound foolish.
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