In the past few weeks, our members have significantly expanded our efforts to educate and inform the community of Lacey when given every opportunity. Our interest has been simply to interact with the city residents, provide an opportunity to learn about various needs and concerns of our citizens, and most importantly to tell a side of the city/district fight that has been suppressed. Our motto has been simply: “Tell the truth” and “the people are our boss”.
These motto’s could be panned by our critics as just simply being viewed as election rhetoric, but it really does matter to us what the customer or our citizen thinks and believes, and we welcome the toughest questions and criticisms. The reason our efforts have intensified as of late is that there was a concerted effort to try to remove fire fighters from the public view. This has been an absolute shame, because to try and separate the customer from the provider or in this case, the citizens of Lacey from the fire fighter/EMT’s of Lacey, is really an effort to undermine our efforts to be part of the community we serve.
Lacey firefighters live, work, and are a part of the community, with many of the members being part of this community for several decades. We are the community rescuers and responders who have laughed and cried with you, who live and work among you, whose children have gone to school with your children, and who have provided medical and fire aid when its clearly the worst day in that particular citizen’s lives. When you hear from a politician that ‘we can be replaced’ and it ‘would be easy to do’ is an oversight of our “community equity”. It’s our community, and the political whim of a few is not representative of community opinion, and we are grateful in the Lacey citizen’s recent feedback and energy. Interest in the issue has generally been very positive for the fire fighters if not overwhelming…Thank you.
We want to encourage you to continue to seek information, ask tough questions, and make it a point to get involved. Attend meetings at the Lacey City Council or fire commissioners. Ask us to come to your homeowner or social group meeting, and tell us what we can do for your business, school, or group. Above all, let any other political entities involved in this dispute (and especially us) hear what really matters to you when it comes to your priorities in public emergency service. “You are our boss!”
As a final thought, the label of “union” has been tactically applied in the media recently with the implied connotation that Lacey Fire Fighters are a hostile, self-serving, entity; the simple term for this type of rhetoric is “name calling”. Yes, we are a “union” and we are very proud of our organization, history, and heritage, but our efforts and accomplishments speak for themselves well beyond retaliatory rant. For our critics, please feel free to “union bash”, we feel the citizen/customer is much smarter than you give them credit for and will judge items in this dispute clearly on character and merit.