The People Demand It!

You won’t hear this at any other Erie news outlet:  Richard Gibbons is out as CEO of Emergycare.
Apparently, he “resigned” as of yesterday.  Gibbons oversaw Emergycare during a time of paramedic shortages. (reread this post from September)  According to several sources, Gibbons was escorted out of the Emergycare building at 1701 Sassafras Street yesterday.  His […]

Your nine-year-old dies in a drowning incident at a City of Erie park.  Your 15-year-old nephew is shot to death in a shooting incident, and you’re caught in a mob at the shooting scene, and you get elbowed in the face by a cop and lose a few teeth.  So what do you do?
Sue the […]

I found this story on firehouse.com, concerning career v volunteer fire department staffing in Lockport, NY - just outside of Buffalo.
While reading it, I immediately thought of the “maybe we will get a career fire department, or maybe we will stay volunteer, or maybe we will have both” situation in Millcreek Township.  I also thought […]

Here is a link to a story on GoErie.com today about Lake Shore, for those of you who may be interested!
Also, here is a video from Mikey Z showcasing the Belle Valley Fire Department in 2008.  Thanks Mike for passing it along!

Here is last year’s BVFD video as well, enjoy!

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted.  My computer finally had it’s nervous breakdown, and took a dirt nap on me.
But that’s no excuse!  I did travel to Erie for Thanksgiving, which was nice since there was snow on the ground.  I ate turkey, visited with the fam, and a few friends down at the Plymouth […]

I’m not a big fan of raising people’s taxes by any means.  However, for critical lifesaving services I think it is justified.
The Millcreek Township Supervisors are raising the Emergency Services Tax from ten dollars to 52 dollars according to yourerie.com.  The Supervisors state that not even 40 percent of township residents donate to the volunteer […]

When the new Erie County 911 Center was built, certain Erie County Council members decided it wasn’t necessary for the place to have lightning arrestors installed to protect all the expensive electronic equipment, such as computers and radios.
Apparently, there are rumors swirling about the 911 center going offline completely according this story yourerie.com.    From […]

Mayor Sinnott held a townhall meeting Wednesday afternoon, according to WJET.  The meeting was at the Sarah Reed home.  According to Assistant to the Mayor Laura Schaaf:
“When we hear that there are problems with speeding, or street signs or tree limbs those are things then that I go back and make sure that we take […]

There is this little snippet on yourerie.com about the Erie County budget being published in electronic form.  I’ve said before that Erie is usually ten years behind most everyone else, in this case the County is only about five years behind, so I guess a kudos is in order!  From GoErie:
Erie County government’s 2009 budget […]

Dale Hannah has been doing excellent writing recently on the Erie Police Department’s staffing woes.  Read them here.
But another staffing problem has another sector of public safety stretched thin.  This story from WICU tells of a paramedic shortage at Emergycare.  But the story tells some outright untruths.
It starts out…
 Emergycare may remove paramedics from being stationed […]