I read, with a great deal of interest, about the unionization of Municipality of North Cowichan’s volunteer fire department.
The MNC volunteer fire department has a union. That is very strange. It is apparent that bureaucratic empire building at MNC was more important than running an efficient fire department. Decisions in the past, supported by costly hired consultants, recommending a centralized administration, has backfired and has created the present mess. It was also suggested, at the Oct. 4 council meeting, that our fire department is getting involved in service call-outs that are not necessary for a fire service to attend, which clearly is a waste of taxpayer dollars when MNC firefighters only get paid when they are called out.
Having not learned from the present experience, the MNC council has decided to hire yet more consulting services to delve deeper into the problem that they created, and that will likely end up being the beginning of yet another bureaucratic mess resulting in even higher costs to the taxpayers of MNC.
Why not try going back to the organization that existed before the mess began? Why did MNC council try to fix something that was not broken in the first place?
Don Swiatlowski,
North Cowichan