My suggestion for a compromise between Borough Council and Fire Company

Since neither mediation nor negotiation happened, I am playing mediator here and making an open suggestion for a compromise.  Item 1: What the Borough Council and Mayor seem to want more than any other result is for the fire chief to be someone else and for regular reports of fire incidents to be reported to them.  Item 2: What the Newfield Volunteer Fire Company seems to want is to be left alone to run the fire company as they always have.  Item 3: What the residents of Newfield want is fire service at the same cost it historically has been.  Item 4: What the town needs if it is to continue to have its own volunteer fire company is a new fire truck.

I can not do anything about the Item 4 as that will raise the tax rate and no one wants that.  I hope a compromise addressing Items 1 and 2 will go along way to making Item 3 happen.

My points for the compromise are:
  For the Newfield Volunteer Fire Company:

1.  Prepare a succession plan for a new and different fire chief of their choosing to be installed in 6 months in order to give the new chief time to learn what procedures are, start what ever additional training is needed, and practice with the company in the role of fire chief.
2.  Provide written reports going forward and back to Dec 31, 2012 that make it easy to file incident reports on the national fire incident reporting system.
3.  Provide a write up of the procedure used to thoroughly vet new volunteers before they can be accepted into the company so it can be treated as public record, with any sensitive material such as passwords deleted.
4. Provide an affidavit signed by all members that they will not seek to nor re-elect the current fire chief for a period of three years.

  For the Borough of Newfield Council and Mayor:

1. Repeal the current ordinance and re-instate the the original ordinance governing a fire department.  This will return to control of the fire company, its membership, officers, and finances to the company as it was before 2013.
2. Amend the original ordinance to include written reports of fire incidents to be provided quarterly in a format and detail that is suitable for reporting on the national fire incident reporting system.
3. Provide the fire company with the contact information for reporting whatever details the insurance company needs on members and drivers directly.  This protects any sensitive information of individuals.
4.  Provide an affidavit signed by all members of Council and the Mayor that they will not seek to nor enact a new ordinance about the fire company for a period of three years.

Compromises require trust and there is little of that currently available so I have included affidavits for both sides that at least gives some time for trust to be restored.

The people of Newfield can still win in this situation but time is running out.

How much will it cost Newfield Borough if Forest Grove is contracted to provide fire services?

The newspaper reports that Borough Council is trying to start up a new fire company and if that fails it will pay Forest Grove Volunteer Fire Company to provide fire services for Newfield.  Nowhere do I find any estimates of what it might cost out of our real estate taxes nor any estimates of how much our house insurance fees might rise.  Forest Grove is several miles away from the center of town and thus response times are longer; every minute counts in a fire and insurance companies take than into consideration.

Somehow it seems it was more important to Borough Council members that they "win" by removing the fire chief and thus the fire company than the cost to the taxpayers.  I wonder if any grants that might be won by the police department if and when the new fire company starts reporting on the National Fire Incident Reporting System will offset all the additional taxpayer cost.  With only 45 calls in a year, I wonder if it makes any difference at all.  Could it be we get few grants because we have so few residents/voters?

Hippodrone Concept

I have been trying to come up with a new concept for an indoor recreation activity that appeals to all ages and is not just another video game.  I am fascinated with the miniature and micro drones that are available as play toys, so my first thought was as of a big unused warehouse space where you could rent one and pretend you are Snoopy flying against the Red Baron.  Not a lot of imagination in use but it would teach whoever was flying to think in three dimensions.

Well, the next idea was to divide the big space into different worlds like a reef under the ocean, the moon, a World War I battlefield, or a mythic world where dragons lived.  Anyway, the idea is to basically have a simulated landscape to interact with.  Then, the drones can be airborne, undersea water craft, or even move on the landscape.

The simulations played out could also be exploration of the simulated landscape, or a construction project, or a battlefield scenario like helicopter rescue.  This is already done completely in the virtual worlds of video and multi-player online role playing games, of course, but people still enjoy indulge in laser tag so there is some desire to physically interact with a game.

You still need to interact/control the drone through a handheld interface but I can imagine the feedback can be adjusted for the conditions in which the drone is "flying", e.g..; a microsub encounters different friction through water then a helicopter in air.

I am also imagining that the "pilot" can walk around the simulated landscape to view the action (think motion sensors triggering a sea creature folding up and retracting into the sea bed)  and plan various routes.  The handheld could also provide a drone's eye view of the landscape if it is equipped with a camera, or other sensors.  Or, it could be a completely closed landscape like a human body and then the scenario is a version of the film Fantastic Voyage.

This is probably a dumb idea and certainly it would be expensive unless you could figure out how to easily manufacture the landscapes.  Anyway, putting it out there in case it stimulates someone else's imagination for family entertainment with miniature drones.