Email to the Editor: Cost of Fire District Mobile Home Evidence of Poor Financial Management

Every week we hear new information about the corruption that is found within our new fire district. The fact that they were found guilty for conflict of interest laws is more proof the fire commissioners are not acting in the best interest of the tax payers. Fire district fraud looks like a common practice, you can find information about this on the state auditors web site. I have said all along, Fire Commissioners should not be union fireman. They might be good fireman but a good salesman does not make a good sales manager. Our new fire district would make a good example of how not to run a business in any college course, and being a fireman you would not know this because going to college is not a requirement to be a fireman. It's is my opinion the structure of how fire districts operate should be changed to make them more accountable and responsible with tax payer money. Having the fox in charge of the hen house does not work folks.

We all want good fire service, we also want good police service and good schools. When you have one of these services acting like greedy fools it takes away from other services. Wait till the public sees our new $307,000 mobile home in Cumberland. Tax payers could have built them a very nice house . And what did we pay for that big garage out back of the Cumberland fire station full of old unused equipment? Didn't the fire chief say they rented space to store equipment in town?

I would like to thank April Chan for breaking the story about the State auditors office finding the district guilty for buying a mobile home from the wife of fire commissioner David Hannity. A mobile home that was sitting empty and for sale that nobody else wanted and sold to the district for $85,000. The same person who said in public we have figured out how to make money and we are going after it.

The state audit on this purchase was done in 2010, and the story has just now been uncovered. I have never lived in a fire district so this is all new to me. What I have learned would make any private business owner disgusted with the current decisions being made by our new fire chief and 3 people voted into office by the public. Tax payers should demand fire district meetings are held at night not in the morning when others are at work. I guess my story on overtime abuse will need to wait for this story to circulate. Still waiting for the Courier to publish my story on transport abuse.

Mike Qualls