City council has decided to keep the seven-minute, citywide firefighter response time goals in place for all of the city following a proposal that would have seen response time goals increased to 10 minutes in Calgary’s newest neighbourhoods.
“Council very clearly confirmed today that we believe in emergency response, we believe in one target for the entire city (and) that there cannot be a two-tier system,” said Mayor Naheed Nenshi following the decision. “Even while construction is going on, people are still working there every day and they may well be working there in a high-risk position for fire or medical response.”
The proposal would have seen target response times increased until a community had developed the required tax base to support the service.
“We’ve got to be reasonable about this,” said Nenshi. “You can’t wait until a fire hall is built and fully staffed before you build the first house in most neighbourhoods. Council gave administration a bit of flexibility to work with new neighbourhoods on a strategy to get to that citywide target over a period of time.”
Chief Steve Dongworth and the Calgary Firefighters Association had voiced their opposition to the proposal.
