Where are our childhood heroes?
To the editor:
What does it take to turn a long-respected and admired profession into a poster child for greed, collusion and indifference? I guess we found the answer from our own Clark County firefighters.
With some of our firefighters taking home $180,000 in wages and benefits, you would think they would be ecstatic with this greatly inflated salary package, especially when a majority of their time is not spent fighting fires. But sadly, their profession is no different than the countless others that have aspired to the ideal that greed is good.
While many Nevadans are out of work and barely making enough to feed and shelter themselves, more than 240 firefighters who were already making a great living managed to abuse a sick-leave system, pocketing thousands of dollars for no better reason than they could.
When I was growing up, like every other young child in America, I admired, respected and dreamed of being a fireman. We would try to dress up like firemen and pretend we were battling large blazes and rescuing people from the burning buildings.
Did we think about how much money we would make being a fireman? No. Did we think about how large our pensions would be? No. In its most simplistic form, we thought about how cool it would be to fight fires and rescue people.
I guess the simplicity and the nobility of these dreams are what we all thought was the essence of a fireman.
This still may be what many firefighters aspire to, so let's not turn our back on them or the citizens who pay their salaries.
Everyone involved in this scam should be held accountable and either reprimanded, suspended without pay, terminated or brought up on criminal charges.
We owe this to the taxpayers of this county and to the honest firefighters who still hold dear the ideals that as young children we all believed.
I'm looking forward to the day I can again drive by a county fire station without disdain and utter the words, "Thank you."
Richard Palyo
Henderson
Deck stacked?
To the editor:
I wonder if Sheriff Doug Gillespie's reluctance to investigate the sick-leave abuse by the county firefighters could be because of concern that his troops might have also abused the sick-leave benefit at Metro? Has anyone looked there?
And when or if Metro finally decides to investigate, I'm not that confident that the investigation will be thorough enough to result in any charges against their brethren, the firefighters.
Dick Shaw
Las Vegas
