Completely wrong. This has been in place for years.

Sounds like the Mayor of providence needs to find some money and increase the fire dept's fleet. I'm sure if a big tragedy occurs in the city of prov they will get the help of ep and Johnston. This is to eliminate small calls.

Did someone forget to tell Bruce Rogers that he's not a real mayor and that absent a vote of the city council has doesn't have the authority to direct services. This action, while it may be appropriate, is more properly within the purview of the city manager and the fire chief.

I applaud Mayor Rogers even more for his efforts. Those other mayors are being paid quite a big salary. Further more we need to continue to change how we do business going forward or we will go back to where we were before the budget commission got involved.

It's ABOUT TIME they woke up and grew a SET OF BALLS !! I work for the PFD and am HAPPY TO SEE THIS ! because Providence has been abusing the Mutual AId Compact for MANY YEARS and USING it to AVOID putting on more rescues that the FD desperatley needs! Can you IMAGINE if it was the other way around !??? Providence would have hung those cities and towns OUT TO DRY many years ago! THE SH*T IS HITTING THE FAN and I hope it goes right in Pare and Tavares's Faces !

Now maybe concentrate on the sad fleet of Rescues the City has on the road!? One frontline truck w/ a blown motor. One reserve that catches fire on a reg basis. Most w/ no working A/C in summer months. Starting IV's in the trucks via flashlights because the interior lights are burned out. The City garage can only shine up a turd so many times!!!!

The busiest Rescue in the City is running w/ a Seekonk reserve Rescue because we can't keep any of ours on the road for an extended period of time before something lets go!!

So this is what regionalization looks like..it wasn't that long ago but Mayor sissiline from Providence was saying that regionalization for the fire service was a great idea. Of course it was for Providence since the East Providence, Johnston, and regionalized metro-Providence Fire-Rescue Department. Now the mayors in EP, Johnston and N. Providence just had a taste of what a regionalized fire department looks like and the view from the rear "ain't so good".. What it means is that Providence gets a rescue grab that the rest of the surrounding cities and towns pay for.

Huge win today for E.P. As hard as I have been on the Mayor for all hisd short comings, I applaud him for this win....

it is about time if providence does not want to pay the other towns then this is what it gets you can not take from another city and say the chase is on for money we are all broke and need our services for us. ep is responsible for the maint of there fleet we did over 550 responses to prov. and they cant help by actually paying there bill if we have fleets in other towns we are left short i am a tax payer of east prov and i do not want the services i pay for to go to providence!

Where is Pawtucket on this issue?

pawtucket is probably called more then the 3 of these communities. But the city that tops the list is cranston, they have a truck the spends more time in providence then in there own city. I dont know why they arent speaking up, could be because the mayors or cheifs are buddy buddy.

This was long overdue. Cicilline was responsible for the decline in the fire department under his watch. Now you have broken down vehicles, a third world population that insists on runs to the hospital for a cut finger and the like. The "Mtual Aid" pack was designed to assist a community with their rescue personnel overloaded for a short period of time, not constant backup. What is happening now is these supporting communities are wearing out their vehicles responding to Providence and Providence is not returning the aid. It is unfair to the taxpayers of those communities to constantly do this. Providence is running out of gas and this is just another example of the strain. I support these three Mayors with this decision - long overdue!

Just curious. Does anyone know what the numbers are for emergency runs between the city of Pawtucket and East Providence?

EP did over 11k last year. Not about Pawt.

Pawt resonded to close to 13k last year.

14k. I stand corrected.

What is not being mentined in this responses is "mutual". When cities and towns share their services with each other, it is by mutual agreement. Providence has reneged on that agreement and that can be placed, one again, at the feet of Davy boy Ciclline. He would not fund the fire department during his watch as Mayor. It was not until he decided to run for Congress that he gave the store away to the firefighters. But the department continued to be neglected with their equipment. Now Pare has to make the tough decisions regarding who gets the rescue, who gets priority over another. The administration put the residents of Providence in that situation and they will have to find a way to get out of it. It is not the responsibility of the surrounding cities and towns to continue to bail them out. They have been more than patient.

I guess I need to clarify my question. It has been stated that EP has responded to Providence 562 and Providence has responded to EP 44 times. I know that Pawtucket rescue responds to calls from Rumford. I am curious as to the total of mutual responses between the cities of EP and Pawtucket.

While this is the correct stand to take, lets not give our so called "mayor" credit for this. Technically he has no more power than anyone on the city council. This would need to be an initiative from the city manager and voted on by the entire city council to implement. We (unlike the other cities towns mentioned) are not a mayoral form of government. The direction of this action is the correct one to take...but don't be fooled by a fool, who will try to use this as a feather in his political cap during his run for reelection. He has no power to implement...I would think that this is a no brainer for the rest of the council to approve.

Why is this the right thing to do? The fire dept bills when they go to Prov. At last week's budget commission meeting, they said that they were taking in more money than they first thought from billing. If they're taking in more money, how can they be losing money?

Every run generates a bill. Wheather it's paid or not is a different story.

If you have no insurance you are still obligated to pay. I prefer the Rescues to stay in our city too. But we do call mutual aid also. What would we do if the surrounding cities decided to keep their rescues in their towns? What would we do the ? Seekonk comes to our city more than we go to them.

EP went to Prov over 500 times. Prov came to EP less than 50 times. Thats seems a little lopsided. Our numbers mirror those in NP, Johnston, Warwick, Cranston, Pawt, etc. Seekonk has just added another Rescue to keep up w/ their calls as not to depend on Mutual Aid too much. As far as obligation to pay. When you're homeless w/ an addiction problem living on the streets or have no address, It's tough to get compensated from these patients w/ no way to collect. The patient is not asked for insurance info @ the time of the call. A 3rd party billing co. has the responsibilty of collection. The City also has to start allowing the funds generated through this billing to be put back into the Trucks/personnel earning it for the them. The last council/City manger had diverted all monies earned to the general fund. If you can't afford to maintain/replace the fleet that earns the money, you won't have that source any longer.

Doesn't the fire chief have a say in this? Does he feel the trucks are adequate? Maybe he doesn't feel the rescue trucks are that bad that they have to sink money into them.

He doesn't write the checks. One front line truck w/ 200k miles sits @ City Garage w/ a blown motor. The remaining 2 frontline trucks have between 145k and 200k on them. The 3 - 2nd string trucks are in the garage on a rotating basis do to constant breakdowns. @ several points in the last month, Seekonk was gracious enough to let the City use their reserve truck because the understaffed garage couldn't keep up w/ the problems. We won't even talk about the Dept of Health placing the trucks out of service from time to time due to their requirements the City can't keep up w/. Bottom Line. The City has to take care of it's own issues that are not being or are slow to be addressed before we are expected to bail out what is lacking in another City.

amen, The people should vote for the mayor not the city council...While he is busy taking credit for this he should consider cutting his position out of our city government to save us some $$...He serves no really purpose!..Just A figurehead....
The city manager is more than capable.

I heard that that the city gave back 3 and a half million dollars the fire dept got to hire more firefighters. Fall River got a grant for millions to hire firefighters and another for millions more to keep them working. This city is worried about saving hundreds while they're throwing away millions?

Right on the mark w/ that statement Kevin! 15 vacancies w/ more to come! Now guess who will foot the bill to hire??

The Firefighters wrote the grant to hire and to alleviate OT and to eliminate the cost of training a new class of recruits while money is tight. The City initially refused the grant outright. The Feds put a hold on things just to make sure the City was "Sure" this was the right decision. The funds were available for almost 2yrs. Neither the Council,City Manager, all knowning Budget Commission acted on the funds. So you can thank the "Brain Trust" @ 145 Taunton ave. for flushing that wad of cash down the drain.

The Loss of the SAFER grant is negligence and should be a HUGE campaign issue for anyone running for EP City Council. It was around 3.5 million dollars awarded in May 2011 and its gone to other cities who were able to get off their hands. The useless city manager said that unless the grant could be reduced to only hire five firefighters, he was against it. Speaking of which, I'm not sure how much the city manager's salary + benefits are, but since we have a budget commission that makes all financial decisions, wouldn't it have made financial sense to lay this guy off until he can, maybe, come back and make decisions. I say he has the greatest job, no decision making ability and responsibility at a great rate of pay. At least the firefighters working OT put in the hours and have to earn their pay. I say the City Manager should have been placed on unpaid leave until the budget commission is done. Apparently, we (EP) have monies for a high paid - do nothing manager position.