New York, NY – Mayor Michael Bloomberg is defending a proposal to close 20 city fire companies as a budget-cutting measure.
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On his weekly WOR Radio show on Friday, the mayor said firefighting has changed over the last century. He says most houses today are not made of wood, have sprinklers and “hopefully” smoke detectors.
Bloomberg says that since the 1940s, 20 firehouses have closed in Lower Manhattan. And despite concerns, he says, response times and fire deaths are at a new low.
On Thursday, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver was among those criticizing the planned closings. According to the Daily News, he says it’s an inappropriate budget negotiating pawn.
Bloomberg says sacrifices have to be made somewhere.
The city has six weeks to finalize its budget.
In fact, we should close 90% of all firehouses, to free up money to pay for various really important things that the city has to pay, like salaries for city workers’ pensions
I mean, very few buildings completely burn down every week or so, and it costs a lot more to maintain the firehouses than to let a building burn a little bit more while waiting for a fire brigade to arrive. There’s no reason, for example, why a fire brigade in Flatbush can’t deal with fires in Staten Island, for example.
” let a building burn a little bit more”
So you are not the least bit concerned about saving life, are you, Kanyeshna #1 ?
The 70th Police Precinct station house at 154 Lawrence Avenue should be closed. Mayor Lindsay tried to have it closed in 1967, but neighborhood groups balked. However, the time has now come to close that outdated station, and combine that precinct with other precincts.