Enough to Make You Sick (2).
By Jim Conley • Apr 22nd, 2008 • Email This Post to a Friend •
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I’m still steamed over the City Weekly smear job concerning “red flu” directed at Brookline Fire. It’s what you’d expect from a hackneyed town government, and a hack job newspaper section.
The suggestion behind “red flu” is that those with hoses are bilking the system. In reality, they’re using the sick days they are entitled to. If the town administration doesn’t want them using sick leave, then they ought not give them any.
[An aside: If you want to find evidence of bilking, hang out at the DPW gas pumps. You might be surprised who's gassing up on the town's tab.]
But what’s most instructive is that the PR campaign concerning firefighters is that it is always themed around a bleed on the system.
Why don’t we hear about the 3 or 4 firefighters who risked their lives last year to pull a brother from the fire at St. Mary’s, a fire that claimed the life of a visiting college student? The object of this rescue fell through three floors (literally) before he got out.
Or how about the firefighters who spent a night last week in a burn unit after catching a ball of fire on Harrison Street?
It’s clear to me why we don’t. See, to publicize the heroic injuries of firefighters means that you can’t later accuse them of sick leave abuse. It means that people will elevate a firefighter’s status to the point where taxpayers might prefer to pay them more than $600 per week.
That’s why they get smeared by Brookline town hall. To do otherwise would mean a force they can’t control. And it would raise questions as to why we’re paying an assistant town administrator to advance this canard. Especially when we could be using that money to fund sick leave for firefighters.
Jim Conley is publisher of On Brookline.
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great to see someone who has an open mind……maybe an editorial or op ed is needed in town halls paper aka the tab
Sick time and other benefits the town and the fire union have agreed on in collective bargaining are never listed in the line item budget.
So it’s really not a jakes fault for using a benefit (sick, personal or vacation) that the town has failed year in and year out to properly fund in the budget.
They expect to pay for it with the payroll of the vacant positions that always exist every year. Those positions create the overtime that the town blames on the unfunded sick time.
Fully staffed and fully funded just makes too much “CENTS”!