How much does a life cost and what price would you put on it?
I'm asking this question because after viewing the video from Tuesday night's Middletown Township Committee meeting, I was left slightly stunned after hearing Deputy Mayor Tony Fiore's public comment regarding a recent stabbing that took place in North Middletown at McMahon Park.
During Committee Comments, Tony Fiore addressed social media criticism about an alleged delayed response time by Middletown police after the stabbing in McMahon Park last week. The delay was blamed on the Monmouth County 911 dispatch operator not being able to identify the location of McMahon Park. Fiore then assured those listening that there really wasn't a delay and that police were on the scene in less than 4 minutes after the call came through.
Fiore then continued to state that he asked for some statistics and found that since Middletown turned over it's own 911 system to the County in 2016 via a shared- service agreement, the township had saved a "few million dollars". He said that since that time there has been 101,000 calls to 911 that the County dispatch had received, of those calls, 93,689 were actual emergencies and of those calls, ONLY 16 were delayed due to a wrong address or the need for additional information or clarification from the 911 dispatch operators. He then stated that those 16 delays represented less than .07% of all calls and gloated, saying that he thought that it, turning our 911 call center over to the County, has been a good deal.
I say Bullshit!
If 1 life was lost or 1 person suffered unnecessarily due to delayed response times from a 911 call center, which resulted in a life long complications, than it isn't worth the money saved.
How can you look into someones eyes, who lost a loved one or suffered needlessly, with a straight face and say it was worth it? You can't ... but I'd like to see our deputy-mayor attempt to explain it to someone who has experienced such a loss or tragedy.
I'm sure that if he or someone he cared about, was affected by a delay in response time after calling 911 for help, because the dispatcher on the other end of the phone was unfamiliar with an area or gave first responders the wrong information, he'd be the first to want answers and accountability from those involved. And I bet afterwards, he wouldn't think it was such a good deal.
Update 2/27/19:
It was brought to my attention last week, that the incident that I had mentioned above, the stabbing at McMahon Park, may not have been the social media incident that lead Tony Fiore to make his comments that have been posted in the video. More than likely it was a different account of a recent event that taken place at McMahon Park a day or so prior to the reporting of the stabbing by the Asbury Park Press, which had a delayed response from 911. The social media post was apparently
taken down sometime after initial posting but thanks to a forward thinking individual, there was a screenshot taken, which I have posted. I apologize for any confusion.
Two be fair to the 911 operator who was involved in this incident, I will give the benefit of doubt to them, the name of McMahon Park was misspelled in the social media post as "McMann". If the caller spelled out the name of the park to the 911 operator wrongly, then I can understand the confusion but not necessarily the delay. Any police officer or dispatcher in Middletown should know where a McMahon/McMann park is without hesitation. The name of the park is pronounced, as far as I know and others are concerned as, McMann, there is only one. If that was the case, then all the dispatcher needed to do was inform local authorities of the incident at "McMann" park and send the help that was requested.
15 comments:
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics”
Mike, you seem to be assuming that the 16 delays were caused by human error on the part of the dispatcher or some sort of flaw with the system. How do you know that? Maybe they were caused by the person making the 911 call giving the wrong information, possibly in a state of panic. Furthermore you are also assuming that those 16 delays would not have occurred with the previous system. How do you know that?
Tony’s statistics given without comparing them to the service that we had previously are completely useless. It’s like comparing apples to……well, to nothing. It’s just word salad intended to give the impression that the right decision had been made to switch services without giving any real evidence to support the claim. (BTW, the math is wrong)
Did we save millions? I don’t know, maybe. But Tony saying it doesn’t make it so. He also claimed to have lowered our taxes but I don’t know a single person who is paying less now than they were paying previously.
Maybe switching services was the right thing. But nothing Tony said sheds any light on the issue. It is just self serving, cherry-picked useless information.
Straight up it costs less to pay the County than it did to employ the dispatch crew the town formerly employed. When you count the savings in pension, insurance, replacement equipment and software, etc.,the savings are tremendous.
A lower increase in taxes is the same as "saving" taxes. Yeah, we all pay more than previous years, but not as much as we would have.
Just more assertions without any actual evidence to support the claim. Again, show me the actual numbers and let's compare current costs to what it cost before.
In this article:
https://www.app.com/story/news/politics/monmouth-county/2017/10/16/middletown-nj-election-murray-fiore-maguire-hitton/756987001/
Fiore is patting himself on the back for being a part of "Middletown's first municipal tax cut in 2017".
I love your logic. So you are telling me that a "tax cut" is the "same as" as a tax increase. I'll tell you what. I want you to work for me so that when I give you a pay cut, you believe it was a raise because I didn't cut your pay as much as I could have. Then eventually, after enough of these "raises" you will have to pay me to work for me. Just think of all the "savings".
It must be wonderful to live in a world where words can mean whatever you want them to mean.
The cost savings are not that straight forward. The Township (us) pays an annual fee to the County 420K for dispatch services and $55K for IT support and maintenance services. This includes any software and hardware upgrades in the system. This is per the original contract and is subject to a 2% increase annually.
Agreed, we could be paying more in taxes. But, the Township is not providing the same services it used to and we are still paying more. Take a ride around town, on the township roads, and see the conditions. Instead of being proactive, our officials are being extremely reactive to issues in town. We, as a township, need to get out in front of issues instead of waiting for something to happen so it can be fixed.
My point is that just as the Tony apologist had to use verbal gymnastics to turn an increase in our taxes into a "savings", I suspect Tony is using the same twisted math and logic to say that we saved millions by switching to the county 911 system. I can't take him on his word because apparently we have a different understanding of what certain words mean. When a "cut" in taxes results in me paying more taxes, call me crazy, but I call that an increase not a cut.
I just have one question, did anyone hear the call? Also, it was ironic that the Middletown resident could not even type the proper spelling of the park. Hmmmm....
There are contrasting complaints posted here. On the one hand, the complaint seems to be that we pay too much in taxes. On the other, we want more money spent on road repairs, which would... That's right, raise taxes!
Oh, and we get the absurd complaint that we should want to pay more in taxes for dispatch services than we need to. Why? Well... Just because the County must be worse at dispatch than the Township was because the Township Committee is in favor of having the County do it...
Shared services and even mergers of municipalities are going to be an ever increasing way of life in Monmouth County and around the state. It's the only way to save money that makes sense for municipalities.
And yes, that means that the "savings" will mostly be seen in lower increases in taxes than would have been necessary without the cost savings. Try to understand the concept - LOL!
"the complaint seems to be that we pay too much in taxes"
That is called straw man argument. No one said anything about paying too much in taxes.
"we should want to pay more in taxes for dispatch services than we need to."
Again, arguing against something that was never said, simply a fallacious argument.
I do understand the concept of saving money by reducing costs. Why can't you seem to understand the concept that saying that our taxes have been cut while everyone pays more in taxes is a misleading and inaccurate statement.
Perhaps it is my fault for tip toeing around what I am trying to say. Let me be blunt, I think Tony Fiore willfully lies in his public statements. Like equating a cut with an increase. When he says that we have saved "a few million dollars" in the few short years since the change to the county system, I don't believe him.
Let's look at his statement. He claims to have "cut taxes". Merriam-Webster defines "cut" as "to reduce in amount". Did anyone pay a reduced amount of taxes? No. Therefore the statement is false.
Maybe we did save millions, maybe we didn't, but until I see the actual numbers I will presume past to be prologue and assume Mr. Fiore is not telling the truth, or he is using his own convoluted, rationalized version reality in which up is down and down is up.
Perhaps coincidentally or not, your obvious lack of understanding of how to engage in a logical argument points to someone who curiously thinks exactly like Mr. Fiore.
We don't need to spend more on road repairs. We need to do some planning and repair the roads. If we are "saving", then there should be more funds available to do road repairs. This would make the township safer by allowing EMS to get to emergencies quicker, cause less damage to EMS vehicles, thus "saving" even more for more road repairs, thus making the township that much more safer,...
We may be paying less for 911 services, but in the long run what is safer? Should we pay less and take the risk of poor response times? Maybe the County Sherriff should keep to the agreement and have dedicated staff of 6 to handle only Middletown calls. This would reduce response time because the staff taking the calls would be familiar with where Middletown is.
The County Sherriff may have 6 dedicated for Middletown. That gives the Sherriff 2 people for each 8 hour shift. There may be too many calls for 2 people to handle, thus others on the phones are taking Middletown calls and they do not have the knowledge to properly reply to the caller or forward to dispatch. So, in the long run, who is paying?
This system may be less expensive, but we pay with our safety and sometimes our lives.
Someone above says that he won't believe that we have saved money by going to the County for dispatch until he "sees the numbers..." Well, I say the same to those who make he false claim that we are paying "with our safety and sometimes our lives..." Show us your proof. The numbers cited by the Deputy Mayor would appear to put the lie to that claim.
Let me ask you: at the time we switched to the County, how many of our own dispatch team lived out of town? How many had less than three years service in Middletown? The claim that these people "knew" Middletown better is laughable, especially since the County offered them positions with the County in dispatch.
County dispatch utilizes a state of the art GPS system to locate addresses and then passes the call along to our local fire, police and EMS, all of whom "know" Middletown.
I'm not quite sure what is behind these complaints, but it ain't safety...
"Someone above says that he won't believe that we have saved money by going to the County for dispatch until he "sees the numbers..."
Yet another strawman argument.
Actually, no one said anything of the kind. I sure hope you are not Tony Fiore posting anonymously because it would be sad to learn that the complete lack of reading comprehension exhibited in the responses to my post is being posted by one of my representatives.
What I said was, many times now, I will not accept Tony Fiore's claim that we saved "millions" until I see the numbers. This is getting old. Isn't there anyone reading this who can understand the language well enough to respond to my actual posts?
Post the damn numbers. It's not my responsibility to invalidate your claim. It's your responsibility to support your claim with numbers because the claim was about a numbers, specifically, "millions". The longer the obfuscations continue without evidence, the less I believe the claim.
"The numbers cited by the Deputy Mayor would appear to put the lie to that claim."
No. The numbers cited by TF represent the stats since the changeover. They have no comparative value because he does not state what the stats were before the changeover.
He may characterize the current service as "adequate", "good" "excellent" or "poor" but he can not use comparative terms like "better", "worse" or "improved" until he does an actual comparison.
Here, let's make this simple. You can say that you caught more fish today than yesterday because you caught five fish today. I can choose to believe you or not but without knowing how many fish you caught yesterday I would be taking you on your word. Based on his record, I am not willing to take Tony Fiore on his word.
Anon at 1:48 --
Actually, no one owes you an answer on anything. Middletown is a part of the County's dispatch program. You don't like it? Run for Township Committee so that you have a say in the matter.
You seem to believe that you can cast doubt on the facts without any facts of your own. The TC and the Township doesn't have to spend any time gathering information for you. You can request the information that the Deputy Mayor was relying. Do that and then get back to us here, okay?
"You seem to believe that you can cast doubt on the facts without any facts of your own."
If asking for some kind of evidence is casting doubt, then so be it. You seem to believe that you can make claims without providing any meaningful facts of your own. Then when someone asks for evidence you shift the burden of proof to them.
Sorry, that's not how it works. The burden of proof lies with the person making a claim. It does not lie with everyone else to disprove it. Attempting to shift the burden of proof is what people who are representing an indefensible position do. If the shoe fits, wear it.
"What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence".
CH
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