Local politics, the county, and the world, as viewed by Tammy Maygra
Tammy's views are her own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Bill Eagle, his pastor, Tammy's neighbors, Wayne Mayo, Betsy Johnson, Joe Corsiglia, President Obama, Tony Hyde, Donald Trump, Pat Robertson, Debi Corsiglia's dog, or Claudia Eagle's Cats. This Tammy's Take (with the exception of this disclaimer) is not paid for or written by, or even reviewed by anyone but Tammy and she refuses to be bullied by anyone.

The CRFR district has some soul searching to do. While a big area of the district is without adequate fire protection. The Deer Island area pays the same approximate $2.98 per thousand assets value plus extremely high fire insurance/homeowners policies because of the deliberate closing of the sub-station. On a $200,000 home with an insurance cost yearly of $2,000 that would add about $1.00 per thousand assessed value bringing the cost of no fire protection of approximately $3.98 per thousand for nothing. People in Deer Island would get more satisfaction of flushing their tax dollars down the toilet at least they could see where it went.

The Deer Island taxpayers are simply being screwed by the CRFR.

I attended the CRFR board/ budget meeting Tuesday evening May 3, 2016. After listening to the Finance Director talk about personal pay raises which included her own left me steaming mad. Her pay raise will increase by several thousand bringing her yearly wage of $100,000 and the Fire Chief from $111,000 to $130,000 then chimming in that they could have given him $137,000. Like not giving him the other $7,000 was charitable of the CRFR.

What is interesting is that the CRFR had decided to give the finance director a huge pay increase when they tried for an increase of revenue from a ballot measure which failed. But it appears that the CRFR was going to increase these two upper management's wages any way. These two had received wage increases over several years ranging from 8,10,14,and 16% increases while the firefighters who actually do the work sometimes received 0% wage increases and then a little over 2% wage increase. The CRFR is top heavy with their administration. They still want to increase these wages when the CRFR plans to merge with Scappoose Fire Dept. with an IGA which is still in the works but have decided to share a Chief.

As I sat and listened to the statements made by the finance director I came to the conclusion that she cared less about whether the people in the district had fire protection or the fact that CRFR needed more firefighters, and the ones they had ---had not received the same or near the % of wage increases that she was offering herself and the Chief.

I then was pleasantly surprised when a board member called her on her outrageous wage increases when the people in Deer Island had no protection, he actually argued with her. With this a couple other board members chimed in and said they wanted to research the wage issue, which she then wanted to get the group to ok her budget which did not happen.

I am glad that the board and budget committee put a hold on the budget .

The Chief seemed agitated with the board member when he questioned the pay raises, in fact when the board member turned to speak to the Chief, the Chief scolded him for turning toward him and the public when he spoke. I and many in the public meeting found this very rude and uncalled for. Shame on you Jay Tappan. Not to mention the huffing and puffing the Chief did when members of the public made comments.

The taxpayers in the district should be outraged with the wages these two have gotten and are about to receive, they should be outraged with the lack of protection while paying outrageous taxes and fire insurance all because of the actions taken by CRFR. The taxpayers should be out raged because of the lack of fire fighters as well.