Robbing Peter to pay Paul? That's my 'chief' concern

When Lebanon Fire and EMS Chief Dan Meehan sat down at the selectmen's table earlier this month to discuss his roundly rejected $450,000 budget, one selectman quipped, "OK Dan, gimme 12 percent," referring to a hoped-for percentage paring of the department's bottom line, the most incendiary of which to voters was the chief's own doubling of salary and benefits.

But when all was said and done, selectmen had made no suggestions of efficiencies or cost-cutting, only thanking the chief for his time.

As the board was about to go into executive session on a separate personnel matter, I asked Meehan "What do you say to the folks who overwhelmingly rejected your budget on May 10?"

Selectmen were quick to step in, saying this wasn't the time to ask this question.

So I asked the chief to call me tomorrow to discuss it, to which he verbally agreed, but guess what? Still guessing?

Of course he didn't call. The self-appointed media liaison of Lebanon Fire and EMS won't even offer an olive branch to the 6 out of 10 Lebanon residents who for some reason believe explanations would be far more appropriate than a doubling of his salary and benefits.

But let's get beyond the chief not doing something when he says he will and talk about the bottom line, the numbers, the facts and figures between the rejected budget and the one that should be rejected on June 25.

First let's take a look at where he took the lion's share of money to reduce his budget by a paltry 7 percent, $10,000 from the day budget and $15,000 from the night budget. That cuts the day budget 12 percent and the night budget a whopping one third.

Does that mean he's going to be cutting the pay of our call firefighters and rescue personnel? That's not right.

Or does it mean he's going to be handling those 10-hour night on-call shifts himself. And many of the day shifts as well.

As they say it's one or t'other.

Some of the other budget "savings" (ahem) comes from training (that's not good) and cutting down on maintenance of breathing equipment that keeps our firefighters safe. I just don't get it.

Our these numbers real? So you're not going to maintain breathing equipment? Or was that one of those "fudge-it" budget numbers. Another line item that went down was Fire Supplies, which went from $1,500 to zero.

So we're cutting breathing equipment maintenance, fire supplies, training and development, salary for day staffers and nighttime on-call responders, but the chief's pay and benefits double. What a world. What a world.

Good to see we have our priorities right.