We recently came across an online discussion about the Village's decision to cut two of its paid firefighter positions. While the discussion unfortunately devolved into trash talk between Long Island's professional firefighters and volunteers, there were some interesting comments and predictions for the future of firefighting on Long Island.

Garden City and Long Beach are unique among Long Island fire districts in that they both employ paid professional firefighters whose work is supplemented by volunteers. The beauty of this system is that, unlike fully volunteer departments, the response time to a fire is greatly reduced because the paid staff drive the trucks to the fire, and are met there by the volunteers.

In a perfect world, the volunteers and the professional staff would respect each other and work together against the common enemies - fire, destruction and death. But people are people, and as such there are always going to be conflicts between the two groups. Unfortunately, the current budget woes seem to have added some animosity to the mix.

We hope that eventually the two sides bury the fire axe and continue the long tradition of working together for the good of the community.

As someone in the discussion pointed out, the blended department may be the wave of the future for the rest of Long Island due to demographics and fiscal issues. Wouldn't it be great if they could look to Garden City as an example?

Meg Morgan Norris

Publisher