NCPR Blog Editorial and Comment Policy
Editorial Policy:
The NCPR Blogs domain contains a mix of content from various sources. Featured blogs that are under the editorial control of NCPR are marked as NCPR blogs and NCPR assumes responsibility for all content posted.
NCPR has no editorial relationship with any other regional bloggers featured here and makes no claims regarding the veracity, balance, or suitability for young visitors of any independent blog.
Blogs from NPR and other public radio sources featured here are under the editorial control of the respective networks or programs where they originate.
NCPR selects features on the basis of quality and relevance to our regional audience and presents them here as a public service. Blogs are only featured here with the permission of the hosts and/or authors.
NCPR reserves the right to discontinue any feature at any time. For more information contact [email protected].
Comment Policy:
Non-NCPR blogs, including public radio blogs from other sources, all operate under their own comment policies.
NCPR blogs welcome comments from all visitors who want to participate in discussion. We do not require registration and log-in to comment, but first-time comments posted from each new combination of name/email will be held for review by the blog moderator. (The email address of the commenter is not visible to the public). Once one comment has been approved, all subsequent comments on that blog from the same name/email combination will go live without pre-moderation. An exception to this rule is any comment that contains more than two live links. These also go to the moderation queue because multiple links is a prime indicator of commercial spam masquerading as comment.
Language and behavior guidelines: In its blogs, NCPR adheres to the same guidelines we use on-air regarding obscenity. Comments containing words not allowed in broadcast by the FCC will be removed. In addition, NCPR will remove instances of hate speech, racial and ethnic slurs, and allegations against named individuals that might potentially give rise to action for libel.
NCPR encourages civil discourse and discourages personal attacks. Comments that consist primarily of name-calling and negative personal characterizations may be removed from the conversation. Rule of thumb: do not say anything in a comment that you would not say in an on-air call-in. Since NCPR is ultimately responsible not only for what we post, but for what you post within our site, NCPR reserves the right to remove any comment for any reason.
A remark about the decreased satffing of volunteers in the north country. I was a former fire chief and AEMT3 in the late 1980’s. My old friend Dan’s comments got the old blood churning.
This was a problem 30 years ago as well. Yes, I agree politicians have to create a good training system with as few hours as possible for both EMS and Fire. EMS certificates should go from 3 year certificates to a license and have continual education just as a LPN or RN does, this will eliminate time and money in classroom and lead to more career minded EMS staff.
When I was a chief the town would contract to our fire company $5000 for fire protection and $10,000 for EMS. When local municipalities pays thousands of dollars for trash and a small pocket of cash for fire and EMS protection. The thought of having a paid firefighter for each fire company does not seem that much more expensive.
We used a automatic mutual aid for structure fires when I was a chief and the dispatcher would tone out 2 or 3 departments on the first call. It worked really good for the day time during the week.
New York State should be able to give tax benfits for all volunteers at a minimum level and the volunteers that are more active should get a bigger tax break. Shortage levels always come down to time and money. If the local municipalities do not have the money then I guess they do not have the time to protect there citizens.
I really miss being a volunteer firefighter/paramedic, between injury and relocation has taken the big part of my life away. I still remeber the great days and for some reason the bad days do not seem to be quitre so bad. Take care and be safe, Joel.