WE TOLD YOU SO!!!!!

What a wonderful and productive day the Lord gave me. :D Last night I got a voice message from a little birdie, who called me back, giving me some very juicy info on Haman and the township. Best of all, while I was out, I was given this very intriguing message. This message was not only in line with my anonymous birdie, but something so vital, that I had to share with all of you.

We want to say to all the members of the Bensalem Fire Service that we told you so! When they came to us and told us they needed the President and Chief of each fire company at a meeting in 2011 without telling us what the meeting was about, we knew there was a problem.

At that meeting, they told us that they were taking $12,500.00 from each fire company to help pay for the paid fire company. Even though they told us prior to receiving the SAFER grant money for the paid fire company that we would NOT be losing any funding.

They violated township code and the requirements of the SAFER grant. The paid fire company is NOT a combination fire company. In fact, the Director of Public Safety refers to them as the seventh fire department.

The Mayor has taken to listing the fire & rescue tax as a separate entity when he publishes the budget breakdown. Much like the school taxes and county taxes are displayed in his budget. Unlike the school and the county, the fire departments and rescue squad are NOT TAXING entities. They cannot tax independent of the township. This is another example of the shells and marble game. It is an attempt to confuse and mislead the public. And so far, it has worked!

Now, the Director of Public Safety and the Deputy Director of Public Safety called our fire departments to yet another meeting with no agenda prior to the meeting. Guess what they are proposing now!

They want the fire departments to support a new ordinance that will create a fire service administrator position in the township and increase the fire-rescue tax one mill. Sounds like more money for the fire departments, doesn’t it? Well, you would be wrong! Consider the following

1.      They are creating a committee that requires all fire companies to submit their purchases to the committee for approval. Sounds great? Well, there are six fire companies with equal votes, so that seems fair, until you find out who composes this committee. The committee will be composed of the following people: the paid fire battalion chief as a member (a second vote for the Nottingham Fire Company), the Police Sergeant who is part of emergency management (a third vote for the Nottingham Fire Company) and the head of the Bensalem Rescue Squad (a fourth vote for the Nottingham Fire Company)!!. When it was brought to the Mayor’s attention about the conflict, he stated “we changed that”. When pressed as to what it was changed to, he replied “we don’t know yet”. You expect the rest of the fire service to go along with that? Well, so far they have. Now we understand how slaughter houses get the cows to follow each other into the execution shoot!!

2. They told us they would not be taking our $25,000.00 as predicted from each fire company in 2015. However they followed that with they will no longer pay for our Workmen’s Compensation insurance and the liability insurance on our fire apparatus! We will also have to pay for mandatory physicals out of our funds. This will amount to an almost $50,000.00 loss of revenue for each fire company with no end to the taking in sight! And this billing starts in 2014 BEFORE any tax increase!

3. Telling us that they won’t take anymore means nothing. They said in the beginning they would not take funding from us for the paid fire company. They said that the paid fire company would have an engine on site within the required 5 minutes and ready to operate 90% of the time. THEY LIED. They allow the engine to leave town during our lowest manpower times which INCREASES the danger to the general public.

4. They refuse to address the continued violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (sections CFR 29 553.100 through 106) You CANNOT be a paid member of the same municipal fire service that you volunteer in. Apparently, the Mayor thinks that Bensalem is a separate country from the rest of America.

5. THE BEST PART IS they want the fire service to blindly support the ordinance change, while they REFUSE to show the ordinance to the fire service, or the general public of Bensalem, before it is implemented. We guess the Mayor is taking a page from Nancy Pelosi with Obama care. “We will have to pass the ordinance before we know what is in it!

6. We understand that Union Fire Company is beaten down and won’t say a word. They are too afraid to speak up. But the rest of the fire companies have no excuse. Well, Nottingham does. Their Chief and Deputy Chief are paid firefighters for the township. If they fight it, they won’t get paid.

7. The Director of Public Safety and the Mayor have now created fear among the fire service members in Bensalem!! Now, they want us to back something that they refuse to show us which will result in the creation of yet another township job (the undefined fire service administrator) which they are taking $100,000.00 off the top of the tax increase. If that’s not enough, they want to create another committee where four of the votes on the committee come from a fire company that has a long history of financial miss management!

8. All we need to see about the township’s vision of the fire service, is the inability to support a paid fire department, that the fire service in the township had little (excluding Nottingham Fire Company) if anything to say about, and the $5,000,000.00 plus waste of taxpayers’ money that they claimed (according to the Director of Public Safety) “was the state of the art fire training center in Pennsylvania” which is now known as the “Bensalem great white elephant” (LOL), at the exit ramp of the turnpike. They continue to throw bad money after bad with no end in sight!!!

9. They claim the fire service in Bensalem has too much equipment. It may be true. However, the township has created a government that is too large and not sustainable. That’s even with the addition of $11,000,000.00 from the casino! What about all the extra vehicles running around in the police department that are not needed? Do the Director of Public Safety and the Deputy Director of Public Safety really need $40,000.00 SUV’s to ride around in? What about all the cops on motorcycles? If they put them back in police cars and eliminated the unit that would eliminate one sergeant, and save the township over $100,000.00 right there with no loss of protection for the public!

We doubt the fire service will have the guts to stand up and ask more questions and DEMAND written answers! The public needs to know, and it needs to know NOW!! The public needs to watch the fire companies and see who publicly or privately support the ordinance change and tax increase. When the public sees one of the fire companies doing this, stop in and ask them about the ordinance. If they tell you anything about it (except for Nottingham) they are lying. They have not seen it!

Your Majesty, Haman, and Nabal!! You three think that you’re really SNEAKY don’t you?? You really think that you’re going to do this, and no one will know, especially the people of this town?? Well, the brave and honorable fire fighters are now on to you and your deceitful ways, and Guess what?? So will the WHOLE town!!!  As Mr. Jaws would say……………

GOTCHA!!