January 4, 2011
To: The Jacksonville City Council
Paul Becker, Christina Duanne, Paul Hayes, Jim Lewis
Donna Schatz, Dan Winterburn
CC: City Administrator Paul Wyntergreen, Jan Garcia, Fire Chief Arnold
From: Whitman Parker
In December, 2010, I was involved in an email discussion with Hubert Smith during which time I challenged him to provide the City Council with a list of 12-15 able-bodied fire department volunteers who would serve as firemen/medics for a minimum two year commitment.
To date, Mr. Smith has ignored my challenge and has failed to produce the name of a single volunteer. The reason he has failed to do so is simple: In modern-day Jacksonville, Fire Department volunteers do not exist in sufficient numbers to make a volunteer-based department a viable option. For your review, I have included an article from this month’s “Applegator” newspaper detailing the dire straits the volunteer-based Applegate Valley Rural FD finds itself in due to a lack of volunteers.
Unlike Mr. Smith who has refused to provide evidence that volunteer firemen exist in Jacksonville, I conducted a non-scientific survey from 12/16/10 to 1/3/11. Thus far, more than 55 responses all prove that our residents and our daytime workforce are too busy and/or not interested in this sort of volunteer work.
The enclosed comments are from the same men and women whom Mr. Smith glibly and naively claims will volunteer – they include residents, merchants, business owners, day-time restaurant employees, managers, physicians, retirees, and other locals.
(At least 20 additional respondents did not wish to submit written responses but expressed the same view.)
Making claims that fire and medical volunteers are ready, willing and able to step up and serve is easy and amounts to little more than posturing to achieve ill-conceived goals. As you will learn after reviewing these surveys, Mr. Smith’s words amount to nothing more than wishful thinking!