The beatings will continue until morale improves.

After reading the above memo from Len Greaney to RFD Chief Gary Wentzell, its clear Mr. Greaney doesn’t like the Fire Department very much. He brow beats them as being greedy (“RFD does their job for money”, lazy (“No one volunteered”) and creating a “barrage of grievances and letters asking for impact bargaining”. He says “everything is about money, money”.

Mr. Greaney talks about being upset that our Professional Firefighters want to be paid for their work. I don’t know about what most readers think but getting paid for the work you do isn’t exactly a foreign concept. Is Mr. Greaney getting a paycheck for being the town manager? Perhaps he should volunteer as the town manager to show that he has developed a sense of “service over reward”.

This is the truth about the RFD. In 2006, the RFD members knew there was a tight budget situation in town. The members of the RFD agreed to pay and insurance concessions that amounted to well over $90,000 out of their contract. That's $3,000 to $4,000 per firefighter. What RFD asked for in return was an agreement from the town to keep four men on at all times. It wasn’t about money, it was about safety, theirs and ours. Mr. Greaney’s characterization of the firefighters is misinformed and unfair.

Mr. Greaney clearly knows that we need to have four firefighters available to respond to a fire scene. There are laws that say that unless there are four firefighters on scene, they can’t enter a building to fight a fire or save anyone trapped inside. In essence, they can’t do a whole lot of anything except watch it burn and listen to screams.

His solution is to make other towns responsible for the safety of the residents of our town. Mexico has already complained abut the cost of mutual aid due to the number of calls they have responded to in Rumford. Our town leaders need to work with other towns, not dictate to them and characterize them as slackers who “don’t do their share”.

With Len Greaney, it’s clearly not about safety, it’s all about money. While we want our town manager to be responsible with money, we want him to balance that with safety and public service. We want him to care about the safety of the people of this town and of town employees.

Mr. Greaney treats our professional firefighters with contempt, despite the sacrifices they make on a daily basis. Maybe it’s his new strategy to “build the best fire department in Maine” as he promised when Chief Wentzel came on board. Maybe characterizing other towns as slackers and telling them what to do is his idea of sharing town services.

As a tax paying citizen of this community I expect our town manager to be more professional than that. He clearly doesn’t have the experience to be a town manager. He’s aligned himself too closely with one section of the community, the TRR crew, instead of being a leader for the entire community. He treats our employees and our neighbors with contempt. It’s time for him to step down and for a search to start for a “real” town manager. A town manager that is experienced, objective and professional.