Save money..lay off firefighters

The 'tree huggers' in many parts of this country would rather see a forest burn to the ground than hear anything about management of the forest, if it means cutting down a healthy tree, and giving the Forest Service money in exchange for money to maintain roads, cut brush, and provide jobs to those desprate to earn a living cutting trees and clearing roads into the forest.

While "Burn to the ground" may not be their intention, leaving a forest alone will cause it to burn to the ground.

Proper forest management means that you have a lumber company come in and build safe roads, clear trees to make it worth their efforts to build those roads, and paying for the trees that they are harvesting.

Proper management does not include the 1930's style clear cutting, but that has not been done in many years. Now the lumber companies not only face state regulations, but realize their very survival is dependent on planting more trees than they harvest.

Fred.

Reality is that Alaska's budget is so dependent on the price of oil that significant cuts to all areas of the budget are needed.

As an Alaskan resident for most of my life, one thing that I can offer an opinion on is the stated concern in the article of "....hurting McGrath's fragile economy." When did it become the job of taxpayers to support the economy of far distant locations?

There are merits to the debate about whether cuts to the fire service should have been made somewhere else, but that the insinuation that the state budget is the ultimate fallback for local economy has always (and continues) to be just not right.

Rant being over, since I'm acquainted with two of the people mentioned in the article, and having flown from Los Anchorage to McGrath more than a few times, I can attest that there will be increased logistical challenges to manage the SW area from the Southcentral location in Palmer. Going to be a long summer for those boys, although there was recently rain in the Los Anchorage area that helped the current fire conditions in the bowl anyway.

darsben wrote:
Every one is for fiscal restraint UNTIL it is something THEY think important.
If you are conservative you should be applauding this downsizing of government

I agree. In the meantime, let the fire burn out of control while the paper pushers do their thing. :W

Every one is for fiscal restraint UNTIL it is something THEY think important.
If you are conservative you should be applauding this downsizing of government

bgum wrote:
It appears that they will be paid only when needed and from a different pocket. If you can get them that way it saves paying them to sit around. That is the direction business leaders are going these days.

They have this by us already. It's called an all volunteer department!

It appears that they will be paid only when needed and from a different pocket. If you can get them that way it saves paying them to sit around. That is the direction business leaders are going these days.

Talk about robbing Peter to pay Paul.