This is in response to some issues that have been ongoing in Fort Fairfield.

We lost our town manager at Wednesday night’s meeting, and as far as I can tell, it was because one of the councilors was upset that our town manager had not yet picked a new police chief. This is no reason to fire a person.

Apparently, a chief was to be chosen by May and 27 days had elapsed, 17 working days. Since this is not the only item the town manager was working on, this was not an unreasonable amount of time. Are all of our coucilors going to throw tantrums when they can’t have what they want and start firing everyone? In the end, we still don’t have a police chief and we also don’t have a town manager.

Another issue has been the full-itme problems at our fire department. We voted last year to keep it full time, but it seems some want our fire deparmtent to go due to no confidence. This seems funny to me, since on more than one occasion he has been called for advice on who and what to send for mutural aid calls, as well as whast to do when a man jumped off the jumped off the bridge, what to do when a dog jumped off the dam at Monson Pond, and what to do when lightning struck a tree, just to name a few. I would not call comeone I felt was incompetent for advice on such serious matters as emergency calls.

As far as the fire chief taking time off to harvest or plow, I didn’t realize he had to take a trip to use his vacation time, comp time or sick leave. I know how many vacations the chief has been on in the last 13 years, since I am married to the man; it is exactly two. And I wouldn’t even dare try to give an amount to the hours he puts in nights, holidays and weekends, even when he is not on duty.

It was mentioned that maybe the volunteers were not as dedicated to the department as they were to the chief. I see no problems with the volunteers feeling loyal to their department head, and if you look at the book kept on who was at what scene, you would see the names of the volunteers a lot more than that of the two full-timers. A firefighter is a firefighter from the heart and soul, It is not just a job, it’s a way of life. Debora McLaughling Fort Fairfield