Our Dallas Fire Stations, their needs, and Christmas

i think my wittle head just exploded Originally Posted by tntangie

FUCK YOU ANG- I am going to be takling in wittle and wannas all day. Can't get the sound of that voice out. tweety. -_-

It's simple. The city needs more revenue and an efficient operating system. Originally Posted by cookie man

I disagree that the City needs more money.

When you have John Wiley Price and his cronies raping the city coffers to line their own pockets on crap like the ripoff exposed by WFAA last summer is just the tip of the iceberg.

http://www.wfaa.com/news/investigate...126810698.html

News 8 has learned the Dallas County Health & Human Services department may have overpaid for the purchase and maintenance of the equipment by hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Here's the crucial part of that article dealing with costs that scream fraud and corruption

"There was something that just kind of raised my antennae and trying trying to figure out why such an exorbitant cost on that," said Mike Rambo, owner of Satellite and Wireless Solutions of Royce City.
Rambo not only knows what satellite systems cost, he said he sold that same particular system to Wai Wize, which then sold it to Dallas County.
"I was involved originally in the transaction with Wai Wize when I was at SkyPort as director of sales down there," he said. "I actually sold those trailers to them."

And Rambo knows exactly what those trailers, fully equipped, sold for. He showed News 8 documentation reflecting the suggested price for each mobile unit to be just over $12,000.

He said the actual sales price was $28,304 for all three, plus about $8,000 for a fixed unit that sits on top of the Health and Human Services building. That's $36,000 worth of equipment, which it appears Wai Wize then turned around and billed Dallas County $152,000.

Subtract the retail cost that should have been 36K from what JWP's close friend billed and you get $116,000 of over-payment.
Keep in mind that the County Commissioners, controlled by Democrat JWP for a quite a long time, are the ones who control the actual purse strings for Dallas and so any one attempting to blame the GOP in this thread for the lack of funds needs to go read up and maybe even go put in some open records requests of your own to just why this City has plenty of money yet basic services such as Fire and Police seem to be unable to do maintenance of their stations.
Dallas has so many under-used office buildings, including rental ones that are vacant yet still on leases that it would amaze you. Wonder just how many hundreds of thousands of dollars that could easily be properly used for actual current needs but because SOME people simply want to increase taxes to bring in more revenue instead of actually demanding true audits of how the tax dollars are spent.
So don't try and blame the GOP for this mess here in Dallas. Let alone try to claim that the Fire Department simply needs more revenue to be raised.

It's a fact of life Laz that each year budgets get raised...thus more revenue. Out of that budget the money needs to be distributed as fairly as possible. Politics and special interest groups always seem to abuse the public interests.

Addressing Kayla's main point. It's not a bad idea to get involved with your local fire department. It helps build a good sense of community.

I live in the suburbs and my firemen are non-union civil servants. I don't understand why the Dallas firemen are union. Another thread I guess.

LL, the case in point you are using is factual and the media has done one of the things they should be doing - exposing malfeasance. Good for them and I wish they did more of it.

But (yeah, there's always a but), I know that the multiple government agencies (yep, "government" isn't one, giant monolithic thing) who have been taken advantage of or whose budget was gamed by some cronyism are not the only large entities who have been ripped off by unscrupulous practices. Like no large, "efficient" business has never been run into the ground by officers raiding the kitty (see Enron, see AIG)). Like there has never been a kickback paid or received in the private sector. And, no one has ever been scammed by "businesses" going door-to-door looking to sell Granny a house full of windows, a roof, whatever, received a hefty down payment and hit the road, work undone.

Things happen like this because there are people who are willing do these things. Some of these instances involve government and some involve the private sector. Being "the government" doesn't breed this behavior. It's a question of being efficient in guarding the cookie jar. Cuts in budgets in either government or a private business that make it impossible to adequately fund the "watch dogs" is going to spell trouble every time in any place. Hell, even when the guards are up there are cons and crooks who can beat the system anyway.

Influence peddling exists to a greater extent in the private sector than in the public sector. Why? Becasue the private sector is much larger than the public sector. Don't go there - unless you want to use the City or County of Dallas' budget as your frame of reference, not the federal budget - two different things. And even then, it's a stretch.