Firefighter pension meeting draws angry crowd

ENGLEWOOD - About 70 residents gathered in the shade of Englewood Firehouse No. 4 on Wednesday morning to tell their firefighters they loved them — but they hate their pensions.

"This is absolutely ridiculous," yelled Englewood resident Richard Doonan, chiding the third proposed bump to firefighters' pensions in as many years.

Scarcely attended in better economic times, the meeting of the Fire District Board of Commissioners swiftly erupted with angered debate — a foreshadowing, perhaps, of what is to come in public employee pension bouts boiling up in Florida.

Locally, Sarasota and the town of Longboat Key are also feeling pressure from citizens bent on trimming pensions for public employees.

Dubbed "Wisconsin micro" by one attendee, citizens butted heads with firefighters in their own house.

They came to oppose a plan to add soon-to-be retired firefighters into a Deferred Retirement Option Plan, which would effectively increase firefighter pensions, which some have argued are already lucrative.

If passed, the plan would have offered to its most senior personnel — those eligible for retirement — a guaranteed 4 percent annual incentive to stay and work for five more years.

But the plan was stripped from the meeting agenda after public input.

http://www.heraldtribune.com/article...ws-angry-crowd

Citizens are really getting fed up with Firemen and their pensions.

Citizens are really getting fed up with Firemen and their pensions.

The average Joe Bucket pays higher and higher taxes, WORKS 40 hours + --a week-- just to keep his job, has normal benefits, and takes lots of job related risks of death and injury as well. That Joe is totally fed up with FD employees being paid to sleep on the clock, paid to watch TV while on the clock, and FD milking run and time stats to make the featherbedding look legit. FD has fleeced the taxpaying golden goose for too long and the time has come to cut staff and reduce compensation.

The FD spends way too long at scenes where they are not needed at all, or no longer needed just to up their stats. They have had their own insiders write work-rules to feather-bed and enable too many of them to work so little that most of them work a full time second job because they do so little during their fleecing of the FD job.

Time is up. Also, get off LEOAFFAIRS site you sloven shirkers and go to work doing something that is of value for your overpaid compensation.

[FD Bro']

Citizens are really getting fed up with Firemen and their pensions.

Whine, whine, whine, whine, drone, whine. Whine, whine, whine, whine, drone, whine. Whine, whine, whine, whine, drone, whine. Whine, whine, whine, whine, drone, whine. Whine, whine, whine, whine, drone, whine

Wow! Like a penetrating stab wound, that really hurts. NOT!

Dude, you're like a broken record. And like all broken records, there's nothing to listen to.






FD Bro'

.....Joe is totally fed up with FD employees.....

STFU you jug eared yoohoo. Go procreate with Penny.

Citizens are really getting fed up with Firemen and their pensions.

The average Joe Bucket pays higher and higher taxes, WORKS 40 hours + --a week-- just to keep his job, has normal benefits, and takes lots of job related risks of death and injury as well. That Joe is totally fed up with FD employees being paid to sleep on the clock, paid to watch TV while on the clock, and FD milking run and time stats to make the featherbedding look legit. FD has fleeced the taxpaying golden goose for too long and the time has come to cut staff and reduce compensation.

The FD spends way too long at scenes where they are not needed at all, or no longer needed just to up their stats. They have had their own insiders write work-rules to feather-bed and enable too many of them to work so little that most of them work a full time second job because they do so little during their fleecing of the FD job.

Time is up. Also, get off LEOAFFAIRS site you sloven shirkers and go to work doing something that is of value for your overpaid compensation.

And your the first whining azz citizen "taxpayer" who dials 911 and expects a full response when you burn your dinner or smell smoke at 3 a.m., your the first one who dials 911 in the middle of the night when the wind blows tree branches against your house and your bthe first one that will take for gfranted the people cutting your dying body from a mangled car or the ones plugging the bloody holes in your body while the police are shooting it out with your ex-husband who has abused you for years...and on and on and on......

.....sorry charlie we're just the necessary evils of society who you hate to fund and complain that exist, but are the first to call when you need help. Next time call your elected representatives in the middle of the night and see what kind of response you have.

Go back to your jumbo TV, the basketball game is coming on.......or do you have to grocery shop for the soda and chips?

Steaks will be off the grill soon......being a fire fighter is a really tough job. Gotta polish that Truck again tomorrow.

[FD Bro']

Steaks will be off the grill soon......being a fire fighter is a really tough job.

Do you really think you're the first person to tell me that? I've had council persons from here to the Pinellas County line intimate that very same notion to me until we got them in a Fire Ops 101 session. http://www.iaff.org/et/fireops101/index.htm.

We don't beat them, abuse them or even try and kill them and we give them liberal breaks between round-robin sessions and they still fall-out on us! One St. Pete City Council member went so far as to tell us that even though we all live in Florida where it's pretty hot and humid, he'd never had a drink of Powerade in his life. Well, he was guzzling it. He also told me that if the city council ever brought-up cutting it from the budget again that he'd make sure that that never happened. And this all occurred before noon time.

Is it a tough job? At times it is very demanding, both physically and emotionally. Listen, I've been *****ed-out by everyone from drunks to people whose house was just saved from burning to the ground and the only thing they could make comment on was the fact that I used a sledge hammer on their front door!

Keep your 2080 hour a year job and I'll keep mine at 2912 with all that it entails. I enjoy taking care of people when they're lives are in the breech and I enjoy the camaraderie of my Brothers and Sisters. My wife and kids love me and respect me and my elderly neighbors feel more secure when I'm around.

Stranger, there's nothing you're ever going to say to me that's going to make me feel guilty for doing the job that I do.

Like many of my Brothers and Sisters in green, I'm living the dream!







FD Bro'