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Scully stirs the Bonny Doon pot |
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Written by Press Banner Letters
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Friday, 12 September 2008 |
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A letter to the editor from Ken Gilbert in Bonny Doon
EDITOR, Once again, Tom Scully of the Bonny Doon board of directors has managed to “stir the pot” and get his name in the paper (“County may switch dispatching for fire volunteers,” Aug. 29). It is true that a dispatcher at Cal Fire made a mistake during the dispatch of resources to the Martin Fire back in June. There were two fires reported within four minutes that day. And this is not uncommon. The dispatcher, a human, dispatched fire equipment to a wildland fire on Highway 35, and four minutes later a “report of smoke on Martin Road” came through the sheriff’s business telephone line, not 9-1-1. NetCom made a “pre-alert” to the volunteers and Cal Fire. One of the Bonny Doon volunteers who received the “pre-alert” responded with a fire engine to Martin Road. That volunteer would later say that “even if all the volunteers would have been dispatched, it would not have changed the outcome, because of the extreme fire conditions on Martin Road that day.” Eight volunteers from Bonny Doon were on the fire the first day. Scully likes to report things that benefit his position as a member of the board, which is trying to form its own fire protection district. That board has spent more than $7,000 of the Bonny Doon volunteers’ money toward forming a new district. The Bonny Doon board says it wants to give the residents of Bonny Doon a faster response time to emergencies. The Bonny Doon board has never asked Santa Cruz County Fire Department to staff one of the Bonny Doon fire stations with a paid staff of firefighters. Nor has the board told the people of Bonny Doon that that would be an option. Ken Gilbert, Bonny Doon
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Like Tom, I support a Bonny Doon Fire District as appropriate for our community. Almost all of my neighbors feel the same way.
It is unfair that other areas that may not wish to tax themselves for fire fighting services use Bonny Doon resources to support their own areas. I recommend that those areas form their own district and tax themselves for the level of protection that they desire.