Fresh Loaf

Well, not quite yet, but Michael Wagoner, president of the Berkeley Park Neighborhood Association, tells me that their local station at 1545 Howell Mill Road is scheduled to reopen on Thursday, thanks to Monday’s approval of a $541 million city budget that included a 3-mill tax increase.

Station 23 was ordered closed by Mayor Franklin late last year as city revenues continued to dip. The administration said then that the closure was temporary, but that didn’t seem to satisfy the neighbors, who gathered hundreds of signatures to persuade the mayor to re-open the station.

Fire Chief Kelvin Cochran laid out the benefits of the tax hike in an e-mail to Wagoner:

For citizens, the measure restores services that were reduced or eliminated due to furloughs by restoring personnel to normal work hours and work schedules. Atlanta Fire Rescue will have the capacity to staff Engine 23 and Truck 12. For employees, the tax increase benefit will restore 10 percent of their salary, which is a tremendous blessing and morale booster during these tough economic times.

Brownouts will decrease significantly with eliminating furloughs, but not completely. Attrition due to retirements and resignations are at an unusually high rate. Currently we have 56 vacant firefighter positions which contribute to brownouts. We have a 29-member recruit academy going as of June 1st and 27 additional funded vacancies. We are working on an aggressive strategy to fill vacant funded positions as soon as possible.

Here’s Wagoner’s take on the situation:

Although this is a great victory for our area and the City as a whole, it comes at a cost that many of us have trouble swallowing. We must stay vigilant with our elected, and soon-to-be elected, officials to ensure the new monies from this latest tax increase are utilized in an efficient manner.

As noted above, Atlanta Fire Rescue will only receive a miniscule amount from the increase, yet Mayor Franklin’s marketing machine made it seem that public safety was the main reason for the increase. We need to watch where the rest of the money is going.

BTW: For trivia fans, a kelvin — named for 19th century British physicist Lord Kelvin — is a unit of heat.

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Tags: Atlanta Fire Rescue, Berkeley Park Neighborhood Association, Fire Chief Kelvin Cochran, Fire Station 23, furloughs, Mayor Franklin.