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Pflugerville on Fire
Our first episode drops August 31! This podcast mini-series will inform you about the initiative to defund the Pflugerville Fire Department. Listen on all major podcasting platforms. Subscribe to get the latest episodes. We have some great guests lined up!
Pflugerville on Fire
Wayne Dolcefino: Uncovering the facts behind the effort to defund the Pflugerville Fire Department
Who should control the operations of the Emergency Services District—city council or a county-appointed ESD board? Join us as we tackle this pressing question with 30-time Emmy Award winning investigative journalist, Wayne Dolcefino. In this episode we examine the potential fallout from defunding ESD 2, particularly its impact on labor and the equipment essential for public safety. Wayne shares captivating stories from his career and past investigations and shares his perspective on the intricacies of public safety management.
Our conversation shifts to the financial struggles of maintaining crucial emergency infrastructure in Pflugerville, Texas. From the escalating costs of fire trucks and equipment to the challenges faced by emergency services in rapidly growing areas. We discuss the debate over whether city councils or unelected ESD boards should oversee these services, emphasizing the need for transparency and efficiency.
The episode concludes with a deep dive into the contentious taxation debate, focusing on the potential repercussions of removing sales tax funding from the fire department. We analyze the motivations of groups like Pflugerville Residents for Responsible Taxation and the broader impact on essential services. Tune in as we unpack the implications of repealing sales tax revenue for fire departments, providing a comprehensive look at the forces shaping public safety in Pflugerville into the future.
Watch the investigative stories Wayne has produced that hit close to home:
Rewarding Negligence
Firefight in Pflugerville
because I interviewed two of the people who've been most vocal against esd2 the citizens melody ryan, who's running for city council, and anthony winn. Both of them said we've never alleged any mismanagement or waste. Well, if you're not complaining about mismanagement or waste, well, if you're not complaining about mismanagement or waste, the only remaining thing is this question of who do you want to run it? You want city council to control it, rather than an ESD board, which is appointed by the county commissioner, who you also elect. That's the last piece in this, but none of that has anything to do with ESD2 or firefighters, and it should be the last thing you'd consider doing, not the first.
Wayne Dolcefino :If you want to change the way ESD boards are elected, this is the wrong enemy. I mean, if you're mad at the county commissioner, go to commissioner's court and complain to him. If you want to see ESDs elected, call your state representative, but defund, and I do think it is defunding. Call it. If you want to see ESDs elected, call your state representative, but to defund, and I do think it is defunding. Right, call it what you want. It's taking away money that would be core to their mission. Fire departments are all about labor and trucks, right, labor and equipment, but the amount of money it will cost to go down the road. These, yes, folks want to go down, and a shakedown is what I think they're really after. I think so. And look, I don't think people should be playing shakedown with public safety. I don't think you should put a price tag on public safety and I certainly don't think you should threaten the fire department to do more for less. I just don't.
Chris Wolff:Welcome back to Pflugerville on Fire. I'm your host, chris Wolfe. I promised an exciting episode at the end of last week and we are ready to deliver Drum roll. Our surprise guest is Mr Wayne Dolcefino himself. You've probably seen a couple of his videos that have hit close to home lately.
Chris Wolff:This guy is something else. He's got 30 Emmy Awards, five Charles Green Awards, a lot of other awards that we don't really know what they are, but, needless to say, ap Honors and Texas Association of Broadcasters Awards, three medals from the Organization of Investigative Reporters and Editors. And when he says he's got a lot of experience, wayne was working for ABC 13 in Houston for 27 years leading their undercover investigative journalism. This guy has investigated corruption, waste, malfeasance, fraud when it comes to government entities. If Wayne Dulcifino is snooping around, people start shaking in their boots.
Chris Wolff:I was a little starstruck, lacey and I met him, or we didn't meet him. We saw him speak at a Pflugerville City Council event and I almost wanted to hop up and ask him for his autograph right then and there, and he said that he was going to do some snooping around and it got a lot of people pretty nervous at the fire department because he's not always been kind to fire departments, but we got to ask him some really direct questions. He came on the show straight shooter. I know you're going to love the episode. The man is a walking talking soundbite. Fun fact he was also a radio DJ at our very own KLBJ here in Austin and he started Dolce Fino Consulting back in 2012. Hmm, bet you didn't know all that.
Chris Wolff:All right, so also before I turn you loose with Wayne, I want to let you know that we did get a fan question, which is fantastic. We want people to ask questions. Unfortunately, we can't actually write back. We have to say it on the show. So stay tuned for the end of the episode. We'll answer our fan question about what happens should the fire department get people to vote against repealing the sales tax revenue. Since they raise taxes, what are they going to do with the extra money? Answer coming your way at the end of the show. Stay tuned, enjoy it. All right, wayne Dulcifino, welcome to the show.
Wayne Dolcefino :I am so stoked to be here.
Chris Wolff:I love it man, you know, I have to tell you, I work with a group of inspectors that used to live in Houston. I got three former HFD guys and they said you're bringing Wayne DelSafino on your show, are you crazy?
Wayne Dolcefino :Yeah, I had a little tangle with the fire inspectors back. It's a long time ago now, but we did an investigation of them, some of them. Not your friends, I'm sure no. But we did an investigation of them, some of them. Not your friends, I'm sure no, no, maybe their grandfathers, who knows. But they were hanging out in tapas bars and then falsifying their records and some of the places they claimed they inspected had actually been closed for a couple years and there was like grass growing. They were claiming they were investigating Passing fires. They were investigating bars for overcrowding, and it's kind of hard to be overcrowded when you've been shut down for a year and a half. That's wild, and so we prove that all up. It's what you get when you actually look at the records.
Chris Wolff:Well, people told me, wayne Dulcefino is a knife that cuts both ways. So just watch out, because he'll tell you like it is.
Wayne Dolcefino :And that's exactly why we want you on the show. I've always tried to Look at the end of the day. Sometimes I get on one side or the other because I think the facts sort of support it. But I understand a lot of fights and I understand that there are often two sides and one side may just be misinformed or they may mean well, but just don't get it right.
Chris Wolff:Yeah, how long have you been doing this investigative journalism?
Wayne Dolcefino :So I've been. I hate to say it, because when you get old, those years add up. Well, I got assaulted a few weeks back and someone wrote why did you hit the elderly man? So apparently now I'm elderly, which was quite depressing. That hurts man. So apparently now I'm elderly, which was quite depressing, but 45 years. I started in journalism when I was 19 and I'm 67. So do the math, man 48 years.
Chris Wolff:So you've been at this, so you've seen, uh, you've seen corruption. Uh, you've seen government agencies.
Wayne Dolcefino :There ain't a story I hear anymore and I kind of don't know what the play is. Wow, I mean I can pretty much. I always had a gift when I'd go into a place to know who the crooks were. I don't know what that is, where that comes from, but I always sort of smelled the crooks. Right, you could smell the people that are innocent, you could smell the people that know who the crooks are but don't want to say anything, and then you could see who the crooks are and I can spot that fairly early in a crowd.
Chris Wolff:I first got introduced to you when you did the story on John San Marigo and that's the gentleman, the Pflugervillian, our community neighbor, who died in the back of an allegiance ambulance and I thought you really did a great job. You know you bring in, you tie the personal part, but you also tell a story and inform people, like what's going on.
Wayne Dolcefino :So we've been investigating ambulances around the state for months and months and in Fort Worth, but our first investigation was in Port Arthur with a Cadian ambulance and they just flat out falsified their response time records and we knew that, and we knew that some of the records they falsified were ambulance calls that took especially long and in a case like San Marino somebody died right, which obviously is and we found the people right and we found the father and the son and we interviewed them. When we heard about Allegiance, we looked at Allegiance and some other places and, by the way, acadian has, like, fought us every step of the way. They are so ingrained Some of these companies get into these contracts with these cities and they are so ingrained, call it good old boy, call it redneck mafia call it whatever you wantrained call it good old boy, call it redneck mafia, call it whatever you want, not getting them out of there, but they are, they're in.
Wayne Dolcefino :So getting a cadian out um, the people that helped me do that. Like the fire chief, he got whacked like right after that, I don't mean killed, like I'm right I'm from brooklyn, so I, so I use that could mean something different, it's interchangeable.
Wayne Dolcefino :But he got fired. But, um, so we came and and look, it was really important for us to find lynn samarigo to tell the story and to tell the story of of what happens in cities when they sign a deal with an ambulance company and they don't really want to know the whole truth. And that's, I think, for flugille residents, the other side of the story, right, some people on council wrote it off. Oh, just one bad paramedic. Move on right. Sorry, he died. Move on Right.
Chris Wolff:Well, yeah, he's fired, don't worry about it.
Wayne Dolcefino :nothing to see here In any disaster, anytime something goes wrong and you look at the one guy or the one woman, you say, okay, was it simply that? Or is it something about the way they train these people, or don't train them? That lets these kind of things happen. And I think that's where the people on city council, who said nothing to see here, it's just one, one accident, they filed the guy, he's gone, no problem. That's where I think they shortchanged the residents and subsequently we've learned that they've shortchanged them in a lot of ways on that contract.
Chris Wolff:I tell people all the time that's not an isolated incident, man, you know, and I always saw that from the operational side as a firefighter and a paramedic, but I never thought, you know, in the back of your mind I think most citizens are like oh, our elected officials absolutely want us to be safe. You would never think that they would cut corners in that area.
Wayne Dolcefino :You make the assumption that they did what any person with a brain would have done, would have said is this really an isolated thing? Some crazy paramedic who slipped through the crack, or, um, I'm not getting trained, right, how are they getting trained? Who are we sending to rescue people, right? Um, what do we really know about this ambulance company and how they operate? Have they had problems in other cities? Right, which is something we're looking at now in a lot of places that have allegiance. They just don't keep records, right, yes, For response time records, they go. What's a response time record? Right, they don't do that. Right, here, what they do is say give us response time records, but we're not going to actually look at the sort of the data. We're just going to take your word for it, that's your response time records.
Wayne Dolcefino :That's negligent, in my view. This stuff is too important to let somebody, a private ambulance company with a for-profit motive, tell you well, we did it in seven minutes. We get to wayne's house until 30 minutes, when you're supposed to be getting there at eight. Right, that's some really important stuff. All those should be investigated, right.
Wayne Dolcefino :What? What went wrong? What's going on here? And they said they waived the requirement and that was done by the city manager and her people, not by city council. They didn't even know and I think that is negligence. I'm sorry, that's bureaucratic negligence, and I think it was done. If I may opine, I think it was done because they don't want to admit they screwed up by going down the allegiance route, rather than just paying more to the government-run folks that have been doing a great job with everything else they do. I think that's why they waived it, because allegiance didn't want to do it, because they didn't want to snitch on themselves, right, and the city doesn't really want to know. No, I'm just crossing their fingers that they're in another John Samarigo around the corner, right.
Chris Wolff:Yeah, hey, we promised an ambulance. We'll get there and it will, and just people are supposed to take that. So that video led you to follow up and do a follow up video on the events that are happening. Our listeners know there's a measure on this ballot that's going to repeal sales tax revenue for the fire department. It takes 40 percent of the revenue out. So what did you that led you to investigate the fire department? What did you find out, wayne?
Wayne Dolcefino :So look, after I did my first video, I got like an earful from some guy named Terry Newsome mostly Terry basically saying you know, you know, the only reason we're using these, this less good end-to-end service, if I can use Brooklyn terms is because the other guys want too much money and they're the SD2, and they're evil and blah, blah, blah. And so we started looking at this whole fight that had been going on, which had gotten some local media coverage, but not a lot, and I think the average Pflugerville resident doesn't really know what to do here. And look, I get the residents' concern about taxes right. Pflugerville is the second highest tax area, but it's the second biggest city in Travis County, so, like duh, it's going to have higher taxes. It just is right, are there?
Chris Wolff:places with a lot higher taxes?
Wayne Dolcefino :Absolutely right. And is public safety expensive? Yes, as I said in the video, fire trucks. When the Pflugerville Fire Department started, it cost like $5,000. When they stopped using buckets and went to trucks right $5,000. Now they're like more than a million and they take years to get.
Chris Wolff:Yeah, even if you want one it's insane.
Wayne Dolcefino :But like inflation, you think inflation is bad. At home it's ridiculous in public safety. Um, you know a walkie-talkie one costs twenty thousand dollars. You can't go to. Best buy to get them yeah, it's, it's unreal and so so it was. So it was time for us to take a look at it and then not tell people how to vote, because I'm a little reluctant to do that, but sort of is that a fire truck?
Chris Wolff:There goes our guys. They see, my truck is here. I love it.
Wayne Dolcefino :But oh, they're honking because of that. That's great. But to basically guide them as to what, if I was them, I would do, because I've been in a head-on car accident, right. My mother had cancer and needed to be rescued. My head-on car accident I was pretty much almost dead on the chopper. Some volunteer dudes in Dale, texas saved me, right, who are obviously well-trained At least they were good at what they did. So I have total appreciation for a fire. I mean, I'll do investigations of your inspector buddies, but when it comes to fire guys and first responders, I am all in on them. I want them well-paid, I want them to have the best equipment money can buy and I want them to be as trained as we can possibly be. And if I have to sacrifice something to have that, just from a personal perspective I'm all in.
Chris Wolff:well, I love to hear you say that because I've got I've got 19 year old kids that are on some of my crews, uh, and they hear everything that you know this flutterville residents for responsible taxation are saying and they internalize that it's like this community is against us. Why would I want to continue to work here? And so when people like you know stand behind the firefighters, it means a lot.
Wayne Dolcefino :Well, look, I think that the politics and the control local control thing is getting in the way of what makes sense, right? If you think about it, flugelhorn residents have been part of ESD2 for what? Four decades, five decades a long time, right? How long have they had ESDs? And ESDs are weirdly set up by the legislature, right? They were only supposed to have a cap on how much they could charge in property taxes and it didn't really account for explosions in growth, right? So you have to come up with some alternative ways to fund it.
Wayne Dolcefino :If people would look at the Perriman report, and I don't know Mr Perriman, I don't work for him, whatever, right. But if you look at the cost per person of the service and you compare, let's say, georgetown to Pflugerville, and it's a lot cheaper for Pflugerville residents, right, than it is for residents in Georgetown to pay for fire service, so that, to me, is the best barometer. Sure, I don't like paying taxes, right? I mean none of us do, right. I don't like money goes to Washington, it goes a big, giant black hole. Who knows where it goes, right? But public safety to me is different in a lot of ways and it's the first thing I want to fund. And if I'm told as a resident look, you may not like that we have these different taxes, but when you add them up and you compare them to a city of like size, you compare fire to fire, you're paying less.
Chris Wolff:So what are you really bitching about? And so so, on the record, Wayne, you know we've got you down as a as a straight shooter and investigative journalist for 40 years. Did you find any mismanagement of money or nefarious activity on the part of the department or the board?
Wayne Dolcefino :So I did not go into depth into the financials. I mean, we looked at them and we met with the ESD2 financial person but I can say this I was intrigued and the reason I didn't in part was because I interviewed two of the people who've been most vocal against ESD2. You know, like the on the ground troops right, the citizens Melody Ryan, who's running for city council, and Anthony Wynn, and I asked them both that question. Who's running for city council? And Anthony Nguyen? And I asked them both that question Because normally in my world people come to me and say somebody is mismanaging money or somebody is stealing money or giving contracts to their kinfolk or that kind of stuff, and both of them said we've never alleged any mismanagement or waste.
Wayne Dolcefino :Well, if you're not complaining about mismanagement or waste, the only remaining thing is this question of who do you want to run it right? You want city council to control it rather than an ESD board right, which is appointed by the county commissioner who you also elect. Right, and that's the last piece in this. But none of that has anything to do with ESD2 or firefighters and it should be the last thing you'd consider doing, not the first right, if you want to change the way ESD boards are elected, and I go both ways on this. Okay, I'm a straight shooter who, in this case, shoots different directions. Okay, I don't like unelected boards. In Houston we have a port authority that spends a gobs of money. They're not elected. I don't like it. I don't like paying taxes to anyone who's not elected. I'll be honest with you, I'm that guy. Okay, metro board transit system. They got a $2 billion bond election not elected. I don't like it at all. Right, I've railed against it. But when it comes to public safety, I have had experiences in my journalistic career that tell me, let's not be so quick to rush. Okay, and I'll tell you real quick the experience.
Wayne Dolcefino :I investigated Cypress Creek EMS in Houston. I blew them up and they ended up losing the contract. Okay, after four or five years of a vicious ugly battle. Right, there was an ESD board above them. The ESD elections are always completely low voter turnout elections. Nobody knows where to go to vote. They vote at a fire station. No one knows where to go. So maybe 400 or 500 hundred people vote. Right, if you have the intent of controlling that election, it is very easy to them, right. So they control that turnout. They elect a bunch of Yahoo puppets that were over them who then looked the other way to all the corruption. That's what they did there. Some people on ESD boards are people that are really into fire stuff, and it's possible that the reason the commissioner hasn't changed them is because they've really done a good job, right.
Chris Wolff:It's in the interest of that commissioner to have board of commissioners that hold down that little part of the district so they don't get complaints.
Wayne Dolcefino :Yeah, if trucks were breaking down right, if people were dying unnecessarily, if the fire guys were taking 20 minutes to put their pants down, pants on and go down the ladder people are going to talk to their county commissioner, sure?
Chris Wolff:and that will create change right so, and the crazy thing about a board member is they can be taken out a wave of a hand right.
Wayne Dolcefino :They can't look, is it the perfect recipe? No, but what. The vote will cripple the fire department and it's being done as essentially, in my view, a shakedown. Right, it's a shakedown, you're right. It's like you go in the store and say you know what that loaf of bread is five dollars. I ain't gonna pay five dollars, but I'm hoping that when I walk out the door you're gonna run to run out after me and say oh okay, I'll send you the loaf of bread for $4, right, the HEB guy's going to come running out, right.
Chris Wolff:Not going to happen, Wayne, you and I both have older kids, so this may not. You and I aren't the demographic, but do you remember the story of the grasshopper and the ant? I do actually. Right, so you've got a grasshopper. That's like you know. Everything's great. What are you doing and why are you carrying all that stuff? And it's like man, winter's coming one day, I feel like you know, if you compare to contrast, you know our city council, with the board of commission, they're like the ant that's putting away people like you've got millions of dollars.
Wayne Dolcefino :Just run ambulances and people like we need these money, you know, in case and um. And then we have things like winter storm, covet 19 and council races in small towns are easily manipulated. Again, the voter turnout is low. Okay, um, I'm investigating in conroe right now. Uh, these, these outside water companies that want to sell water control now pretty much everyone on Conroe City Council right. They funded their campaign, it's not hard to do.
Wayne Dolcefino :In a municipality election, because it's believed that there isn't that kind of pressure that can be put on the commissioner as easily because they're a county elected official, not a city elected official. I know it gets a little deep and complex, but look, it's the. The old expression cut your nose. Don't cut your nose to spot your face right. Old expression. Don't cut your nose to spot your face right. This ain't a perfect system None of them are but I would vote if I was living in Pflugerville.
Wayne Dolcefino :I would vote against taking away the sales tax because I would not want to lose the investment I have made over the last three or four decades on trucks and on fire stations, under the theory that if I play tough, if I play like mob boss with the fire department, right, they're gonna say okay, please, let us stay, we're gonna. We'll do it for two million dollars less, right, and we'll give you ambulances too. Um, when the history tells you that the last time the city of Pflugerville played that game, what did ESD 2? What did they do? They took their ambulance that was here and said we're going to put it where. People are paying for it. So why wouldn't the same thing happen? And I'm not saying that ESD 2 would do that.
Chris Wolff:Like to spite people, but there is a financial cost to providing services it's a difference between a politician and a firefighter, and that's why I have such a hard time in the world of politics, like we're going to do exactly what we said we're going to do and why it's not a game. No one's trying to play anything. This is what we got.
Wayne Dolcefino :This is what we're trying to do yeah, look, if the, if the fire chief was like going out for steak dinners and margaritas every night, that might be a different story, right, if that was going on, sure, but there's no evidence of that anywhere here. This is just a department that, from what I can see, right in looking at their equipment and their willingness to explain things to me and show me records and anything I've asked for they've given me. I've interviewed the fact that you've twice.
Chris Wolff:Transparency stars from the comptroller's office.
Wayne Dolcefino :Some people complain that they didn't get records fast enough from the ESD. Look, I've been in battles with ESDs, esd 48. And, katie, their lawyers have twisted me in so many different directions, just trying to keep things from me. Okay, I get it Right. Government agencies don't like people in their putting. They just don't. It just is what it is right. But to take away the sales tax, firefighters get laid off, right, fire stations close and even if people say, well, they said they'd go bankrupt before and they didn't, and I say, okay, maybe the chief is right. 50% wrong, right, maybe, okay, I'll give you that. So it's 20% of the firefighters are gone and maybe one and a half stations we close. Do people in Pflugerville really want a fire station closed? They don't want that. And do they want it to be their fire station? Do they want the fire?
Chris Wolff:station? Which fire station? Pull it out of the hat.
Wayne Dolcefino :You want to have like a lottery where we put everybody's neighborhood in a pot and then say which neighborhood loses their fire station. People want firefighters there fast and they want them to know what the hell they're doing. And look. I also and I mentioned in the video did a story a long time ago about the badly maintained fire trucks in the Houston Fire Department. And fire truck goes to a scene and a cheap piece of equipment a couple of bucks it cost at the time was broken and they never fixed it. The damn fire truck couldn't spray water. Two little kids died. They burned up. I've seen the pictures of those little kids.
Chris Wolff:I say to myself you know what I want the best of the best, because you took the time to look at those pictures, wayne.
Wayne Dolcefino :I looked at them because I was very heavily involved with that family. In fact, I helped that family even get lawyers back at the time, right, who sued the hell out of the department. But I also, as a result, got several new fire stations and new fire trucks. Okay, because the result of that story was a better system. Right, it made changes, right. So I say, in the absence of waste or mismanagement, then this is folly. I would not take away the sales tax. I'm not a big endorser of things, but if I was living here, based on what I've seen so far, sorry, I wouldn't do it. And I think, if you do do it, where are you going to go? Are you going to start having your own fire trucks?
Chris Wolff:you're going to have two.
Wayne Dolcefino :Fregerville fire departments. You know how much it would cost to stand up a fire department.
Chris Wolff:You know how much more debt you know and taxes we'd all be paying.
Wayne Dolcefino :Yeah, and insurance rates would go up in the meantime because their fire trucks aren't waiting around the corner and ambulances are expensive. I just think really the old expression is the right expression Don't cut off your nose to spot your face.
Chris Wolff:And I think you know all of this is coming from a pretty small group. You know Fluvial Residents for Responsible Taxation. Did you look at that group at all?
Wayne Dolcefino :Look, I think the group, I think the citizens I've talked to mean, well, okay, they don't like paying higher taxes, they don't like all these different government entities charging them taxes, right, they'd rather have one tax bill. You know, like, I have a house in Dripping Springs and they have like Pernell's Electric, whatever they are, and they do everything. You got to use them, you're stuck. You got to use your own energy company, you got to use them. It's like the mob, right, you got to use that company and it's all. But they do everything, right. So, okay, I pay one guy that does all this stuff. So I understand those desires. But you look behind these few people and it is just a few people and you say, well, who's funding this? Really like well-financed campaign against the fire department. And you find these developers right.
Wayne Dolcefino :And look, I am not a huge fan of developers because they don't do virtually anything just because you know motherhood and apple pie. Okay, developers do things because there's a play for them. I'm sorry, they just do. And I'm sure there are taxpayers too, and I don't mean to insult them or their families, but I ain't stupid, okay, and I know what they do. I ain't stupid, okay, and I know what they do no-transcript neighborhoods that they want to develop. That's where the best stuff goes, right?
Wayne Dolcefino :Maybe people who lived in Pflugerville for 20 years live in an older neighborhood, older subdivision, and they're going to get left out because these guys are building master plan other communities, right with the explosion and stuff. I've tried to talk to both of them. Look, developers are shy, as you know, right? So I've called these two developers, timmerman and Tiemann. Timmerman and his family and company has like 42 grand in this thing and Tiemann has like 80 something thousand in it 81,000, I think that's 120 something thousand dollars out of the 135,000 dollars that's been spent. Okay, so like 90% of the money came from these two folk. Okay, I called them and I was all ready to hear their give me, give me this, give me the spin, give me the story, tell me what the deal is Right, because I always already here there.
Chris Wolff:Give me, give me this, give me the spin give me the story, tell me what the deal is right, because I always call everybody right. You got your chance. Tell us what's going.
Wayne Dolcefino :A lot of people don't call me back, but I call them, right? Neither one of them call me back, and so I say that's interesting, maybe they're just a little camera shy, but I want to talk to them over the phone. They wouldn't talk. I think it's incumbent upon the citizens to say I want to hear from them, right, not melody ryan, who's running for council, not anthony winn I want.
Chris Wolff:Without this money it would just be 20 people complaining about taxes in a room I mean it'd be a facebook group and I'm not.
Wayne Dolcefino :I'm not saying they don't mean. Well, I think they are confused by all the different taxes. Right, but the system that was set up was set up to have different taxes because as long as the ESD is capped and they can't float a bond, right, they can't decide to close a fire station tomorrow. Hey, we're just going to close a fire station. You folks on the east side, I know we opened it last year, but I'm sorry, we can't do it, they can't do that. So their funding mechanism, right, is a certain cap on property taxes. That's it. So, unless you want a fire department in Pflugerville that has like one truck and a dude in a pickup truck throwing water off the side, you have to keep up with the explosion of growth and for the demand.
Chris Wolff:And I think that sales tax revenue is a pretty elegant way to do that. You don't know where that money is going. You don't feel that when you pay your escrow.
Wayne Dolcefino :Yeah, and look, I don't really take a position on which way they should do it. Property taxes. I just assume pay one thing and be done with it. That's just me and maybe they should revisit the legislature the cap on the ESD taxes.
Chris Wolff:Well, as much as the state is growing, you're probably right.
Wayne Dolcefino :I will say this, though when Pflugerville approved the sales tax increase in 2014, right, I do think the people that I've interviewed Melanie and Anthony just are wrong about what that ballot measure said. People say, oh, that was for ambulance service, we should have a refund on that money and look what.
Wayne Dolcefino :What the ESD2 did is. What fire departments across the country are doing, and probably in other places too, is say, look, we believe in first responders, right? So if the fire truck gets there first, do you really want a whole fire truck full of people who say to the guy who's having the heart attack on the ground, right there, he's, like you know, gasping for air? And they say, darn, I don't really know what to do. I'm the hose guy, right, I carry the hose and I spray the water, right, and the other dude knows how to climb the ladder, right. That's where we're fired.
Wayne Dolcefino :We're fire guys, right, and we'll just have to wait another five or 10 minutes for the ambulance to get here. So the thought was and it was smart actually let's make as many firefighters as paramedics as we can so that when they get there first which they often do because the fire station may be closer the ambulance is not in the fire station sometimes, so we can start working on the heart attack guy and save your husband or your father. Do you really want to risk that five or six minutes? So that's what that election was all about and that's why you have training academies. That's why you make firefighters paramedics, so they have the medical training to do stuff the right way.
Wayne Dolcefino :And I've seen what I call the black book of screw-ups. That allegiance has done that the fire department sort of maintained over the last year, whatever it was. And I've got to tell you, if that was my mama and I knew they made those mistakes I'd be pissed off and I just think this is the wrong enemy. I mean, if you're mad at the county commissioner, go to commissioner's court and complain to him. If you want to see ESDs elected, call your state representative. But to defund and I do think it is defunding. Call it what you want. I know they don't like that term.
Chris Wolff:If you look at the dictionary, it's defunding right.
Wayne Dolcefino :It's defunding, it's taking away money that would be core to their mission. Fire departments are all about labor and trucks, labor and equipment. That's the vast majority of their budget, and so if you cut into 40% into someone's budget, you're cutting into people. I don't care how many people, whether it's 50 people or 80 people or 30 people, whatever it is, you're cutting into people. If you get rid of firefighters, you want to maintain trucks. You've got to start thinking about closing fire stations, or maybe closing them at 6 o'clock. How about that? Why don't we have fire stations in Pflugerville?
Chris Wolff:That's how they used to do it back in the day Open until 6 pm and then after 6,.
Wayne Dolcefino :If there's a fire at your house, you're screwed. Yep, how about that?
Chris Wolff:Wait, there'll be a company coming from across town. So, wayne, let me ask you, did you get into, like I know you used tried to get in with the city manager and talk to the staff?
Wayne Dolcefino :Now the city manager interesting Never has returned a phone call, right Never. And I think the city manager has some explaining to do about this. Look, if there is another death, well one's enough, right, Right, but this is a ticking time bomb with these private ambulance companies. If the city doesn't have a real control over their training, a real documentation of what they're responding to and why it was late, we may not even know that another john samarigo hasn't already happened. We may not know that the?
Chris Wolff:yeah, we don't know. I could tell you stories, wayne.
Wayne Dolcefino :Yeah, but you're right, we don't know that, yeah, right I mean, if lynn samarigo wouldn't, you know lowering up and doing all that kind of stuff, then we may not know how many people were in the hospital longer or suffered longer because the wrong medicine was putting them in at the beginning. Right, these are everyday decisions. Right now, somebody listening to us may be interrupted by a family member gasping for air, and they need emergency care.
Chris Wolff:I want the best trained people I can get and and I've said this on this show before Wayne, I've got nothing against Allegiance as far as the for-profit. They were way better than Acadian was. But there's just such a difference between having a crew that's managed by an officer in a firehouse that trains fire two hours a day, trains medical two hours a day. It's night and day difference what you get.
Wayne Dolcefino :Yeah, I would prefer having my ambulances dispatched by my fire department. And if they say they need the extra money to do it, that's not a hill, I want to die on right. If they say they want a bunch of tax money, raise sales taxes so they can have like a pickleball court, sure, I was in a city the other day where they wanted to spend $1.2 million in a small little town of like 500 people for a pickleball court and I was going like, really, are you nuts Right Now, that's something to fight about. This vote should go down just for that reason alone. If that's what they say is needed to do it the right way, then I say do it the right way.
Chris Wolff:Wayne, I personally can't wait for the voters. You know come early voting and come November 5th, because I'm really hoping that what we do is we get just a landslide of Fleurville residents that, at the end of the day, support their first responders and we can see that.
Wayne Dolcefino :Look, I do worry. I do worry that people get all excited about the idea of reducing tax, okay, but they're not reducing it. They're simply moving it over to city council with no guarantee that they're going to use it. They may decide to use it for economic development and cut deals with those developers Right, they may do that. And then what happens then? Then you're now stuck with with a worse fire department and still a private ambulance service that has some questions that need to be answered. So this isn't taking away tax money, folks. This is just saying, instead of john collecting it, we're going to give it to Kelsey Jean, okay, and with Kelsey Jean, she's not even promising us she's going to use it for that, right, and Kelsey Jean doesn't have near the equipment and other stuff that the other guy has I forgot his name.
Wayne Dolcefino :Whatever analogy.
Chris Wolff:I was drawing, I think we started with John, with John Right.
Wayne Dolcefino :So whatever John had Right, john may have 20 different trucks to do it and I've got nothing. Kelsey Jean's got nothing, but we're going to go ahead and give her the tax money. It doesn't make any sense, from a pure investment standpoint, of what you've already put in through this ESD-2. If this was 30 years ago and the ESD-2 had just started, I would have said, okay, make a move, but the amount of money it will cost to go down the road, these, yes, folks want to go down and a shakedown is what I think they're really after. I don't think people should be playing shakedown with public safety. I don't think you should put a price tag on public safety and I certainly don't think you should threaten the fire department to do more for less. I just don't.
Chris Wolff:Well, wayne, I know you're a busy guy. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I love your videos. We're going to link both of them in the show notes and we sure appreciate everything you do, because I don't know that this topic would have gotten the coverage had you not investigated it.
Wayne Dolcefino :Well, look, I hope our videos help educate people. There's some history in there, there's some context in there and I think when they look at all the facts, they're going to know what the. I didn't say in the video what people should do, but I think people get the hint. All right, it was a pretty well telegraphed hint, but I think they should get the hint what I would do and I would vote no.
Chris Wolff:Well, thank you so much, Wayne. Appreciate you, sure. So that's our show for this week. I hope you all enjoyed it. Man, another great interview in the can. Really happy that how this show has progressed and I want to let you know we're actually kind of starting to wrap it up over here at Pflugerville on fire. We're just a couple of weeks out from the election. Early voting is right around the corner, but don't leave, because stay tuned. We've got more great guests coming up next week and the week after that.
Chris Wolff:At the beginning of the episode I promised that we were going to answer a fan question, and so we submitted that to Jessica. The question was hey, if you guys are successful in defending the sales tax revenue for the fire department not defunding the fire department, but you already raised property taxes what are you then going to do with the leftover money? So we sent that to Jessica, and Jessica you know she's quite a professional she hedged. Ultimately, it's up to the board to decide. What the staff is going to recommend they do is what they always do. If they have a surplus at the end of the year, they put that into the next year's budget and they draw down from that money before they, you know, calculate the new property tax rate. So that's to say that if you know, we defend the fire department's income and they end up with a surplus because they raised property taxes, they're going to recommend hey, let's take the surplus and not mess with people's property taxes after that. So a big topic of debate, one that I'll give a shout out to Council Member David Rogers he's always hitting me up on is you guys are going to make a ton of sales tax revenue. And Jessica says we're not going to make a ton of sales tax revenue. So I'm a patient dude, let's see what happens, let's see who's right about where they come out at. Jessica is more conservative in her estimation, so she kind of hedges when, in her answer to this, she said we're not really expecting a lot of change in the sales tax revenue amount. So we'll see. The state of Texas, that my my producer, lovely and talented Lacey Wolf, works for the state of Texas, that my producer, lovely and talented Lacey Wolf, works for the state. So it'd be interesting to see.
Chris Wolff:I'm no expert, so I like to listen to people, I like to get all the facts. I like to then make my own opinion, and luckily I don't have to make an opinion on this until sales tax out next year and then I'll have a good idea who I should be listening to when it comes to forecasting these things. So I hope that answers the question. I hope you enjoyed the episode. I'm so happy to have all these listeners tuning in and stay tuned, because we've got another great one coming up next week. I'm excited to bring it to you. Thank you so much to all of our fans here at Pflugerville on Fire and hopefully, if you still have questions about the election, hopefully they've been answered by now. Get your neighbors talk to your friends, get them to like, subscribe and share the show Pflugerville on Fire. See you next week.
