Question read on Facebook

QUESTION: I heard that this new coverage system is saving taxpayers 3 million dollars a year in costs. There’s a lot of people lobbying the city to raise property taxes with this issue, but I don’t hear anyone acknowledging the costs associated with going back to the old system.

I REPLIED TO IT: Maybe in theory, they can't even know that for certain yet because they'd have to complete 3 financial years (1 old, then 2 years dynamic) to see for certain. And it's still theory in the end because you can't factor in purchasing the right equipment (or having to heavily modify the wrong equipment you purchased), the growth of the city, even the weather, all play into the money spent on emergency services overall.

The Mayor (and I imagine Council has to as well) and the paperwork compare us to Edmonton and Calgary which are (really) like comparing apples and oranges. We should be compared to other cities (like Lethbridge) of similar population density and size. Red Deer is uniquely in the middle, not a behemoth like Calg/Edm and not small like Airdrie or Fort Mac (which has its' own unique challenges with the mines and massive forests nearly, as we saw).

It's reported we have about 112,917 people in Red Deer in 2024, expecting to be close to 115,000 this year. Capstone as it develops will add another 5,000, maybe we develop Michener, that's another few hundred. Our city is growing and now is the time we need all of this sorted out, not 5+ years from now when it's too late. This current City Council is not the answer.

There was 1,900 OT hours costing $3.4M* in previous year, they have also cut $600,000 from the Emergency Services budget this year (while raising residential taxes 10.5%*). I've yet to read or talk to a single person who has said they want to pay 'more' property taxes. Last year it went up 6.25% was it, this year 10.5%, and the city had an $18.5M shortfall on their budget this year (aka deficit). It is, and has been, mismanaged for several years.

So we're $3.4M in overtime, gotta cut that! But then we waste $11.3M (Red Deer portion) on the rehabilitation of the CPR Bridge (so far 97% of the people I've spoken to oppose the project)? The math doesn't math!
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The overall concept of Dynamic staffing, which includes merging fire and medics (fire-medics) would work, but only if all stations are adequately staffed with 4+ firemedics per engine (not staff per station total). They should scrap the whole program and just say - 'look we're merging Fire and EMS, let's make this work and get AHS to pick up a good chunk of the tab as well (like they just did in Fort Mac when it went back to dynamic staffing)'.