I'll say it again for the benefit of Edgerton Fire Department radio #1932 (efd1932) --
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What a bunch of crap - don't pull on taxpayers' heartstrings with a sob story about families. Everyone but the Fire District saw this coming...100% volunteer fire departments went the way of horse-drawn water wagons and pump kettles.
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The arguement you folks made, opinion, was that you all were not "anti-union" but rather "pro-volunteer." In fact, if you look on-line and find the settlement you made with the "Edgerton 3" it included language that stipulated the fire district would remain all-volunteer.
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I live 100 miles from this issue and 20 minutes of Googling tells me this was a set-up - the Fire District simply wanted to get rid of the union, #1, and 3 guys that apparently had personality conflicts with the guy Mr. Linsley, #2.
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If I am wrong, then why not settle the lawsuit, without the union, as was done, and move those guys into the postions you all are now budgeting $160,000 for?
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And lastly, privatizing the EMT/Ambulance service was supposed to save money, not double the taxpayer outlay in 1 year.
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Who is running that mickey mouse show over there, Mr. Linsley still?
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Perhaps that young Mayor has the cahonies to call for merging with the Milton Fire Department. As I read all the Gazette articles onthat issue, they seem to have a much better understanding that volunteer fire departments don't work in urban/commuter areas in the 21st Century.

first off you have no idea what your talking about long time ago. It was NOT the fire department fighting for those 3 people to get there benifits and such back it was those 3 people. Also only one of those 3 where attending meetings and calls during that time. As for the communities that depend on the fire department it is not a joke this is one of the best things that could happen to them. Now there will be faster response times for the FD which means the patients will have someone there to take care of them faster or when the engine rolls there will be a fire command viechle on scene to tell the engine company what is on scene so the brave volunteers will have a little bit of a heads up before they get on scene. so as for you why dont you try and become a firefighter and see how hard it is or time consuming before you run your mouth about things you dont know.

or think about it this way:

Your house is on fire your 2 year old is stuck in there room and your out of the house already. Who are you going to want there as fast as possible? Correct answer is the Fire Department. Your not going to go in the house when its on fire but the firefighter will and by having full timers at the station means they will be there a lot faster.

For anyone that actually knows how much time the volunteers put in, not only with calls, but with all the other stuff that they do, the amount of money that they receive is only a fraction of what they should be paid. $12 an hour for the volunteers is nothing for the time they miss away from their family. A lot of the volunteers are young with young family, do you really think they are missing out on their kids growing up for $12 an hour, no they do it because they love helping their community. It would be wonderful to get a full-time chief and administrator/deputy chief in there that is QUALIFIED, unlike the three, to elevate some of the stress and time the volunteers have. As far the money set aside for the two positions, that is minimum compared to how much it will help out the volunteers. It is about time they get some adequate help down there. For those of you that don’t know how much time most of the volunteers spend on calls, practice, meeting, fire inspections, paper work etc..., I challenge you to ask a volunteer how much time they spend on fire department stuff and what things in their families lives they have miss out on because of it.

For anyone back there who has not followed this story full of incompetance, union-busting thugery, personality conflicts and wasteful spending of public tax dollars, not to mention a lawyer from my hometown who milked fees from the Fire District all the way to the State Supreme Court, knowing they had no chance, none, for the Court to even accept hearing this case, then I suggest you read the Gazette archives before commenting here.
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This is the biggest joke, and an expensive one, ever leveled on the taxpayers of those communities dependent on that fire district.