Non-events are news, too.
Simple operations of local government continue. The roads stay paved. Sewer systems work. Fire stations get upgraded.
Thursday night the Medford City Council approved an $8.4 million item to replace Fire Station 15.
That's it. That's the news.
Fire Station 15 in Medford is past the age of its useful life. It is too small -- about a third the size of the next-smallest station. It has only one bay for fire equipment, and it is too small to handle a ladder truck. That matters because the station services some multi-story apartment houses. The single bay and small living space does not leave room for the EMTs and para-medics who are part of most emergency responses. About 80 percent of emergency calls are medical related or inquiries about something strange and troubling to the caller. The caller dials 911. About 20 percent are reports of smoke and suspected fire.
Medford mayoral candidate Curt Ankerberg wrote a letter to the Medford City Council claiming he could rehabilitate the fire station for $2 million and that the Council members were bumbling idiots, dumbasses, that they lacked talent, took bribes, and were on the take while building "shitty projects." The centerpiece evidence for his claim was that the city made "a NO-BID contract."
Two problems: The building could not be re-built and it was not a no-bid contract.
The contract went through the normal public bidding process and generated four bids, from Outlier Construction, Adroit Construction, S + B James Construction, and Vitus Construction. Outlier Construction had the low bid, and city staff concluded they had the personnel and experience to do the project. The contract was approved by the Council, six-zero.
Claims like Ankerberg's can take wing on social media. "Crooked city government" is sharable, re-tweet-able, and interesting to contemplate. The wild, obscene claims of a conspiracy-minded provocateur draw attention because they are nasty and extreme. Ankerberg is a local version of Trump. Some people want to believe Ankerberg. Some people want to believe Trump's claims about Obama's birthplace, about 2020 election fraud, and about Haitian immigrants eating your dogs and cats. Flamboyant lies circulate faster than the ho-hum operation of government doing what it should be doing.
Why am I bothering to write such a boring, nothing-burger post? Because it is a caution to people "doing their own research" by listening to provocateurs, and to people who presume that everything that government does is stupid, ineffective, or corrupt. That's not true.
The stoplights cycle. The toilets flush and the waste disappears. The roads move traffic. And when you dial 911, people show up.
[Note: To get daily delivery of this blog to your emai go to: https://petersage.substack.com. Subscribe. Don't pay. The blog is free and always will be.]
12 comments:
A good rule of thumb and just general cheatcode for pretty much any issue is this:
Whatever Angerburger's position on something is, the opposite position can readily and accurately be assumed to be the correct one.
Too many people too eagerly swallow any BS on their social media that supports their preconceptions, regardless of the facts. Such ignorance can be deadly. That’s how they’re duped into believing vaccines are harmful, the election was stolen, and that Trump was sent by God to wage war against a cabal of satanic, cannibalistic pedophiles in the Democratic Party and the government.
Why couldn’t the building be rebuilt?
Can city employees sue someone for libel?
Angerberg reminds me of Rudy.
You can ask the city. Medford is pretty transparent .
What may add to the confusion is just the location, Station 15.
Medford does not have 15 stations. It has five or so. All are double digit numbers (starting with 12 I think).
I recall when they were single digits so hearing about Station 15 made me wonder if the department has expanded that much.
Age, and size. It was obsolete 25 years ago. Even bringing it up to code left no room for a Ladder Truck, and it the closest station to a large number of multi story Apartment and Condo complexes.
The station is near North High School. Stations need to be resiliant and workable even AFTER a disaster. They cannot fail in an earthquake. That is when they are MOST needed. And I am of an age where having EMTs close by is pretty nice. It is what I pay for in my taxes.
Having enjoyed three Ambulance rides to Emergency Departments in the last 5 months, Peter, you're not the only one who appreciates our Public Services like Fire Departments with EMT's on staff.
Obviously, we need our infrastructure and of course it costs money. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the issue isn’t just the fire station. The problem illustrated by Ankerberg is the onslaught if disinformation from malevolent whack jobs like Curt, J.D., The Donald etc. and all the chumps who swallow it. As P.T. said, there’s one born every minute. Now they've organized and become very dangerous.
Michael- often the cost of retrofit of rebuilding is multiple times of a ground up new build. Plus between safety (e.g. seismic) code upgrades, energy efficiency, and accommodating new technologies (for fire trucks I assume) - new builds are always a far better value for cost by any metric. Also retrofits are harder to control time and costs because the bids will always exclude “hidden conditions” which when discovered delay and add even more costs. This is not like reconfiguring bits of code :)
Bill Meyer also needs to fact check.
Post a Comment