The firehouses will not be closing. As part of the same City Council budget agreement that saved 4,100 teacher jobs the 20 fire companies that were being threatened with closure, including the Ghostbusters firehouse, have been saved. Protesting works!
And it wasn't just firehouses saved. Though the budget is lean and mean and not quite pretty—"Make no mistake about it. This is not a good-news budget," Bloomberg said—it managed to also save the city's at risk senior centers. Further, when it is finalized some of the funding that has recently been cut from day-care services and libraries could be restored.
"We had tough choices to make," City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said last night. "Thank God we managed the good financial times of this city well. We're in a much better place than we could have been in."
What is nerve wracking about this news, however, is that this is not the first time that the Bloomberg administration has threatened to close firehouses to fix gaps in the budget and it is starting to feel like the boy who cried wolf. Which is to say, don't be surprised to see the threat of firehouse closures when the budget comes up again next year.
