Guest Editorial by Peter Stebbins

    At a recent Fire and EMS Business Meeting held on April 1st, Robert Brown, Chief of Limington Fire and EMS, announced that he had submitted his resignation to the Selectmen the previous week.  It was with great sadness that the department members learned that the Selectmen are not ready to work with a full time Fire and EMS Chief.  Over the past year Chief Brown's department funding, previously approved by the townspeople during Town Meeting, had been intentionally withheld by Selectmen, therefore, disabling his ability to fulfill Federally mandated and general budgeted requirements for the department.  One recent example is failure by the Selectmen to approve a Purchase Order for film, a mere $5.00, that was submitted to the Selectmen earlier this year.  The film is carried on Rescue, and it is used for documentation at medical calls that turn out to also be crime scenes.  To this day we still do not have the film.  This constant pettiness over expenditures created unnecessary tension between the Select Office and the Fire Department.

Fire Department seal from the T-shirt of a volunteer

    The straw that broke the camel's back for Chief Brown came, during his recent vacation, when the Selectmen went behind his back and appointed a full slate of Officers without his knowledge or approval.  Questions posed by department members regarding the qualifications of these individuals, the process and the criteria by which they were chosen, and a basis for the Selectmen's decisions concerning their appointment have been repeatedly ignored!

    What does this ultimately mean for the Town of Limington?  Chief Brown's Paramedic licensing level allows the Town to maintain a drug box on the Rescue unit.  The drug box is used primarily for heart issues and / or severe trauma injuries.  Without a Paramedic, the drug box will be removed from the Rescue Unit by Southern Maine EMS.  Those calls will, therefore, have to be referred to mutual aid; i.e. Standish Rescue, Limerick, etc.  Time is usually of the essence! And calling for mutual aid will not aid in life threatening issues.

    The Selectmen promised members of the Fire & EMS dept when they hired Chief Brown that "new and good times" were ahead for the department.  As I see it, the future holds demoralized members, longer response times for Rescue, and fragmented department policies and procedures only to be redefined and implemented by someone who does not hold Firefighter I training or EMS knowledge.

WAKE UP LIMINGTON.....

    What is it going to take for the Selectmen to leave the Fire and EMS Department alone?  Our budget is approved at Town Meeting.  At least allow the Chief to do what he was hired to do.  The Chief is leaving because the Selectmen in their infinite wisdom refused to let him do his job.  Consequently, as a result of the Selectmen's inappropriate decisions the townspeople's lives and safety will be put on the line yet again.

Editor's note: The resignation is effective at the end of the chief's contract.

All stories by Dick Jarrett

    Thanks to the efforts of cable representative Forrest Tripp, volunteers, Saco River Cable TV, and Aldephia Cable, Limington meetings can now be broadcast live from the Limington Municipal Center.  Normally, government cable channel 5 shows recorded announcements and meetings to all of the surrounding towns served by SRC-TV.  With the new setup, as soon as a video camera is plugged into the transponder at the municipal center, the live feed overrides the recorded programming and the signal is broadcast live.  However, the live Limington signal is only transmitted to Limington households.  The surrounding towns have a similar setup where their town halls can transmit live signals to their respective towns.