Hail To The Chief

Ollice "Chuck" Hubbard was appointed fire chief by the Ann Arbor City Council in June. He's assumed control of a department that's been shrinking in size in recent years and faces threats of more cuts. "It's always a challenge when you start reducing, so we're going to make the best with what we've got," he said. "This is going to be a trial and error situation. Anytime you start cutting any resource or anything like that, there's going to be negatives and positives. So we're going to look into different ways to structure ourselves so it's safe for the firefighters and we can also provide a good service for the citizens. It's going to be a challenge." Read the story.

Putting Out Fires

The president of the Ann Arbor firefighters union told Mayor John Hieftje and the City Council Monday night he believes deep cuts to the fire department over the last several years have led to an increase in response times on fires — and subsequently, a higher fatality rate. "In the last 20 years, 15 citizens lost their lives to fires in Ann Arbor. From 1991 through 2005, in 14 years, three people were killed by fire, or an average of 0.2 lives per year," Schroeder said. "But since 2006, in six years, 12 people were killed, or an average of two lives per year." Going from 0.2 lives per year to 2 lives per year is a significant increase, Schroeder said, and it coincides with a 29 percent reduction in the number of firefighters on the job. Read the story here.

Comfortable

Mayor John Hieftje says he's feeling OK about the job cuts Ann Arbor has made in its police and fire departments while he's been in office the last decade. "We've been pretty comfortable in reducing police numbers," he said, pointing out crime is going down and the University of Michigan now has 54 of its own officers. "And we're studying the fire side, looking very intently at it," he said. "So we're pretty comfortable with what we're doing." After several years of making cuts, Ann Arbor officials are considering eliminating 37 more positions in public safety over the next two years — 25 in police and 12 in fire. Read the story here.

The Ladder

Ann Arbor firefighter Tilvis Bolen gathers his belongings from a ladder truck at the fire department's headquarters downtown after returning from a call on Wednesday. He says he's sad to see four of his peers lose their jobs.

Fire Chief

Dominick Lanza poses for a portrait inside his office on his second day as the new fire chief for the city of Ann Arbor. One of his first tasks involves disciplining a firefighter who recently drove a city fire engine on a suspended license.

City Council Retreat

I bunkered down in a small conference room with the Ann Arbor City Council for eight hours on Saturday and listened to City Administrator Roger Fraser offer a grim financial outlook for the city, which must trim its budget by 30 percent over three years – starting immediately – to confront falling property tax revenues and declines in state revenue sharing in Michigan. The words "reduced" and "impact" projected onto the city administrator's head in this first photo are indicative of what's ahead. The guys in the middle photo are firefighters who watched on as Fraser talked about the need to immediately lay off 14 firefighters. The last photo says it all.