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Professional credibility Unfortunately the By-Laws Committee and many current members of Clay County Fire & Rescue Squad Inc feel as if ours has been damaged by a few members who like worrying our founders and the community, while these same members have already "retired" from fighting fire, providing medical care or learning new rescue techniques but still enjoy the art of Micro- Managing our Department 1970's style. We are "Proposing" changes to the By-Laws which will modernize and streamline the operation of the Department with an emphasis on planning for the future, not staying in the past in the name of tradition. Tradition has resulted in many older Firefighters dying of lung cancer because they did not wear breathing apparatus while breathing cancer causing smoke. At our modern Fire and Rescue Squad we wear the breathing equipment and have been for many years! We believe that Clay County Fire & Rescue Squad Inc is a single entity, and should be supervised by ONE set of officers, with one CHIEF Officer ultimately responsible answering to the Board of Directors, the membership, and the Citizens we serve. To think that we are still a Department that has to raise every bit of our money from fund raisers would be an underestimation, just look at our new Rescue Truck and Boat. We are thankful to be funded appropriately because people volunteer less and donate less. We create a budget by which to best spend our "customers" money in the most appropriate way and therefore do not have to ask for additional donations each time an improvement is needed. To think that anyone within our organization would let any ONE person spend money "unreviewed" is an insult and a lie. There are three layers of review before the Chief will be able to spend any funds at all; It must be in the budget!! In the event of a multi-day fire or search (70 people searching for three days equals a lot of food!!) or if replacing a couple of the several hundred dollar a piece Fire truck tires, the Chief will be able to spend up to $1000 but will be accountable for that. The notion that the Chief would appoint "most" of the officers is still another twisted figment of someone's imagination, 16 would be elected, 4 would be appointed by other elected officers and the Chief would appoint only the Training Officer. These members do not like the idea of one person "running" the Department; they forgot we have a President running the country and a Governor running the State.
These members think that a complete audit is in order, we agree, but guess which members were against giving a copy of our budget to the County Manager a couple years ago? Yep, the same ones wanting the audit by an outside agency. This is only one suggestion from them for fixing the problem, the other suggestion is to "leave the parent department alone", there is only ONE department, just like when a man and woman marry it is a union!!! The motto of the future leaders of the Department is "Let's Roll", in honor of 9/11/01 and it is also an abbreviated version of "Lead, Follow or Get OUT of the Way", we just have a few members with no real passion to do ANY of those three!!
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