Re: Oak Bay pushes for talks on regional policing, News, Jan. 11, 2012.
It’s refreshing to see that all of the mayors of our region are planning to get together and discuss such major issues at policing.
Maybe, at the same meeting, the mayors can also push for talks regarding the region’s fire protection services.
As a View Royal resident, and knowing that we are about to construct a brand new fire hall, it would be nice to know what the overall region requires. It doesn’t seem efficient to just go ahead and build a fire hall without any comparative review of the inventories and cost ratios for all of the fire departments in the region.
Don’t get me wrong, these are crucial services that we cannot live without, but are we efficient or are we duplicating services and inventories?
I hope the Town of View Royal is making informed decisions such as the one at the Dec. 13 council meeting with the approval to purchase a new fire engine for $544,000.
We have 13 municipalities, all with fire departments and it would be nice to know where View Royal is in comparison to all of the other fire departments before we start to build.
I do believe that it would put taxpayers’ minds at ease to know there is no duplication — I just don’t believe that one should go into debt in times of economic uncertainty — whether you’re a person or a municipality.
Sherry Baird
View Royal