The Observation Deck

interesting link

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/200 ... hall_x.htm

The payroll cost for that city of 100,000 is just about the same as that of Lakewood, Population 55,000.

It is pretty interesting. When ever road work is going on, you drive by and notice most of the workers spend most of the time just standing there. A full time fire department spends most of its time waiting for fires to happen.

It may be possible to pay them to do road and sewer work instead of waiting for fires to happen. When a fire does happen, there pay grade for those hours can go up or down slightly, depending on the standards.

Ryan, most if not all of our firemen are cross trained as EMS workers as well. So they aren't just waiting for fires.

I thought the joke was that cops ticketing parked cars were supposed to multi task as garbage collectors. I know I've heard this joke somewhere before.