6 Quotes by Ron Fink

If the City Council were to vote tomorrow to increase the fire department staffing to the national average, they have nowhere to put it. They don't have anywhere to house new firefighters and equipment. Everything is resource related.

Our intention is to provoke debate at the City Council level and to give some direction to public safety commission and city staff on how to resolve these issues that we've identified.

That doesn't leave a lot of extra money in the budget to support the types of things we're talking about. The things we're talking about would cost a lot of money sustained over time and that will be difficult for the city council. The city council is not going to be able to pull a rabbit out of their hat. It's going to take voter support.

I've never seen them this bad, this early in the thing. Usually this is toward the tail end of the second week, but we haven't had this kind of weather, except for the last couple of years, been pretty tough on ice sculptures.

The need is immediate, but in reality the earliest we'll see something on the ballot is 2006 and that's pretty aggressive.

The national standard of arrival in an emergency situation is four minutes. The typical response arrival time in Lompoc for the fire department is more than five and a half minutes and that's 65 percent of the time.