Firefighters are firefighters, not necessarily shade tree mechanics

To the editor,

I thank The Daily Sun for covering the May 24 Gilford Budget Committee "public hearing". I don't know if I was counted as one of the 14 taxpayers who bothered to show up to get some more informed impressions of the status of the selectmen's recent fire truck proposal. Probably not, as after the first 20 minutes there seemed no intent by the Budget Committee to determine whether there would be a meeting or not, and I left to pursue a more productive enterprise. I awaited in vain for someone to introduce a motion to adjourn, but after 20 minutes there had been none. It seems clear to me that some of the members of the committee where more intent on debating the merits of having the actual meeting that they were having rather than having the meeting. That is, the public hearing for the benefit of the public that had been scheduled.

You take a two or three-year-old to the grocery store and they choose to put five or six items in the cart. Before checking out you let them choose two or three items they can have and put the rest back on the shelves for another time. By the time they enter pre-school they come to understand "What Mick says".

I have already at two previous public meetings "I bothered to attend" as a concerned citizen, stated what my position is on replacing "a piece of junk".

I am something of a shade tree mechanic myself. I once went to pick up an old Ford Escort from a dealer and when they handed me a +$2500 estimate for the cost of making it inspectable, they also inquired as to whether I wanted to leave the car to be "junked" there. After a few days of shade tree work and the $400 for parts I returned and had my car stickered. I later sold that "junk" car for $800, $250 more than I was asking before I had it stickered and $3,300 less than I had paid for it. For my purpose the car was junk but still had as junk a residual value more than the garage was calculating. That did not stop me from replacing it with a more expensive and reliable late model Forester.

It has been observed before that firefighters are firefighters and not necessarily shade tree mechanics.

Thank you for staying for the rest of the circus and reporting on the "public hearing" meeting finally adjourning and now to be continued....

Tim Sullivan

Gilford