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Re: Socialism? |
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Posted by Stephen Bauman on Sat Jul 31 18:03:00 2021, in response to Re: Socialism?, posted by mtk52983 on Sat Jul 31 17:42:01 2021. Police Departments are socialism?So are fire departments. At one time, insurance companies provided fire protection for their customers. Companies would set fire to homes insured by competing companies. A modern equivalent was towns disbanding their fire departments and contracting with private companies. Here's an account of what happened 23 years ago. https://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/13/nyregion/experiment-in-private-fire-protection-fails-for-a-westchester-village.html Experiment in Private Fire Protection Fails for a Westchester Village By William Glaberson March 13, 1998 Two years ago, this prosperous village in Westchester County drew national attention when it became the first municipality in the heavily unionized Northeast to hire a private company to provide fire protection. This week, three months after a $1 million home was destroyed by a fire, there was a verdict of sorts on privatization: Rye Brook decided to part with the private company and hire its own firefighters. ''It was not a success,'' the Mayor, Salvatore M. Cresenzi, said in an interview today. The story of Rye Brook's experiment with privatization, officials here say, is full of lessons for other communities attracted to businesses that promise efficiency in the delivery of essential services. ''I think people are going to tread very carefully on the privatization of public safety,'' said the Westchester County Executive, Andrew Spano. ''You have a responsibility to protect the citizens of your jurisdiction.'' In recent years, privatization -- the hiring of profit-making enterprises to run public services -- has been the most talked-about idea in local governments. There have been some successes, like the management of municipal sports arenas and convention centers. And there have been some notable failures, like the cancellation of contracts with a private company to run the public schools in Hartford and Baltimore. Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York City has talked about privatization, but he has yet to bring about any large-scale change in this area. With municipalities everywhere struggling to contain costs, business executives who have promised to show political leaders how to manage such core services as fire protection have drawn special notice. When Rye Brook decided in 1996 to hire Rural Metro Corporation of Scottsdale, Ariz., to provide fire protection, the deal was presented as a test of whether the idea could work in the densely populated Northeast. For decades, some Western cities and suburbs have used privately owned fire departments. But those areas often lack the firefighter unions and the long traditions of professional and volunteer fire departments that exist in the New York region. Executives of Rural Metro, a publicly traded company that is the largest of a dozen private providers of fire protection in the country, had described the deal here as an experiment with national import. In a 1996 interview, Martin A. Yenawine, a company vice president, was quoted in the Central New York Business Journal as saying, ''If it can happen in the New York City area, it can happen anywhere.'' But from the start, the arrival of the profit-making company encountered resistance that sometimes included protests, threats and vandalism. Officials here say there were many causes of Rural Metro's problems, including hostility from unionized firefighters across the New York region who conducted a campaign intended to make residents of Rye Brook fear that they were being inadequately protected by the company. There was also hostility from volunteer firefighters who saw the company as a threat to old social traditions in many small towns. For firefighters everywhere, the arrival of the company was a fundamental threat, said Anthony Pagano, president of the Yonkers chapter of the International Association of Firefighters, a union. ''People might say, 'Maybe it's better that we go cheaper,' '' Mr. Pagano said today. ''But, you know, bean counters are counting beans, while we are fighting fires. That's dangerous to firefighters.'' Perhaps the biggest challenge to the privatization experiment was the bitter dispute that the arrangement set off between Rye Brook and the neighboring village of Port Chester. The feud aggravated old divisions between the wealthy village of Rye Brook, most of whose residents are white, and Port Chester, with its more racially diverse and blue-collar population. Before Rye Brook decided to hire a private company, it paid Port Chester $725,000 a year to provide fire protection. The amount was almost half of Port Chester's fire budget. Although Rye Brook officials had not expected any short-term savings with Rural Metro, they had hoped to gain a more effective firefighting service by acquiring control of firefighters and having firefighting equipment within the village. In what Mayor Cresenzi said was an effort to sabotage the experiment here, Port Chester said it would not to respond to calls for help from the private Rye Brook firefighters. Mayor Cresenzi said that the resistance from firefighters and the difficulties with Port Chester were obstacles to making privatization work. ''We thought it was the best for Rye Brook,'' he said bitterly. ''Other jurisdictions said, 'No way,' and they tried to undermine it and make sure it failed. That's what we were up against.'' The Port Chester fire chief, William M. Barnes, acknowledged that he was ordered by village officials not to respond to calls from Rye Brook. He said there were safety and financial reasons, but he declined to comment further. Port Chester's Mayor, Christine A. Korff, did not respond to telephone messages that were left with her secretary. Kurt M. Krumperman, Rural Metro's regional president for the Northeast, said one effect of the debate was that the company had difficulty keeping the on-call reserve firefighters that it relied on to supplement the nine full-time firefighters. He said people who took the $5.50-an-hour reserve jobs were subjected to pressure from opponents. ''The fact is that we are a for-profit company,'' Mr. Krumperman said, ''and that was just not well-received in the communities surrounding Rye Brook.'' The reserve firefighters living near Rye Brook kept resigning because of the pressure, Mr. Krumperman said, and the company was forced to look farther and farther away to maintain adequate staffing. Mayor Cresenzi said Rural Metro had promised that at least 25 reserve firefighters would respond to emergencies. These nagging problems turned into a crisis during the fire at the $1 million house on Rocking Horse Trail last December. Six full-time firefighters responded. But instead of the 25 reserve firefighters, there were only three. Port Chester did not respond to calls for help. Mayor Cresenzi said that a crowd gathered at the fire, and that its members seemed to include firefighters from neighboring communities who were willing to let the fire burn to prove a point. He said he heard someone in the crowd say, ''Let the Jews burn,'' which he took to be a sign of the generalized animosities between the village and some of its neighbors. The residents of the house were not Jewish. No people were injured, but the contract with Rural Metro was fatally injured. The owner of the house filed papers indicating an intention to sue Rye Brook, Rural Metro and Port Chester, accusing them of inadequate fire protection. The company and village officials say that even a fully staffed department could not have prevented the damage because the 911 call was made when the fire was already well under way. But with anxieties here rising, the village trustees quickly gave the company 60 days to provide adequate reserve staffing. Last Monday, the company notified the board that it could no longer promise to supply the required firefighters and recommended that the village return to a municipal department. On Tuesday, Rye Brook announced that it would move toward a village fire department over the next six months. Mr. Krumperman of Rural Metro said the experience had taught his company a lesson about private fire protection in this area of the country, where hostility to privatization is high. ''You have to pay attention to those kinds of acceptance issues,'' he said, ''and how surrounding communities will relate.'' Instead of the ambitious plans it talked about a few years ago, he said, Rural Metro is now concentrating in this part of the country on supplying for-profit fire protection merely as a supplement to government-run fire departments. To some experts on privatization, Rye Brook's experience is an example of how economic efficiency may not always be all that people want from their government services. Robert W. Bailey, a professor of public policy at Rutgers University in Camden, said that in many community fire departments, there are social and union traditions that may be considered valuable, but that a corporate vendor may not understand. Officials should be skeptical of privatization of services like fire protection, Mr. Bailey said. Basic municipal services, he said, ''are associated with cultural and political values.'' |
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