That $100,000 figure includes all of their benefits, so it is skewed quite a bit. That area is VERY VERY wealthy, and if they want the FFs to live anywhere near Oak Brook they are going to have to pay them a higher than average salary.
What does the area being "very very wealthy" have anything to do with it? Does the McDonalds worker get paid twice the minimum wage starting just because it's a wealthy area? How many other jobs aren't compensated at a greater rate just because of the area? Should fire fighters have to be immune to commuting?
Ok, so the $100k/employee (I'll give that last employee a raise) including pay, benefits, and overtime. How much overtime? How many more people can be hired after cutting overtime? Looking at the numbers provided by the link, it looks like they are just under a 2:1 vehicle staffing ratio, which makes it a good argument that the department is understaffed. How many people can be hired by cutting overtime? Similarly, what is included in the benefit package?
The fact is that there's still a mental boundary that anything over 100k/yr is de facto rich, and even living in a higher class area, $100k, be it combined or just take home including overtime, shouldn't be struggling. Sure, you might not be able to live in Hollywood, but it's definitely enough to get you out of South Central (insert your local upper class/lower class areas). If they hired a few more people, slashed over time, and got the average reimbursment under 100k, I'm willing to bet that there would be much less argument, despite paying around the same amount, if not more.
The next problem is that the fire service as a whole has done a good job of marketing themselves as "blue collar workers." Go onto Hulu and watch season 3 of
The Academy where they follow Orange County Fire Authority's academy. Watch how often the academy chief declares fire fighting to be "blue collar." Sorry, but if I was in charge of anything, especially in a high class area (which most of the areas where OCFA serves definitely is), my employees aren't "blue collar workers" but "highly trained professionals." Sorry, you can't claim the magical mantle of being "blue collar" while demanding a "white collar" wage. Want to be blue collar? Fine, then don't be surprised when people blame you for higher taxes in the same way that people are blaming other blue collar unions (read: auto unions) for bankrupting companies.
Which brings up the next issue. Emergency service employees are their own worst enemy. Fire, EMS, and police all have similar issues in this sense. There's a reason why one of the blogs that I read linked to the 'Firegeezer' blog included a request to avoid attending meetings until the IAFF has discussed this. The last thing the union and trade organizations wants is some idiot (and... sorry. Read the comments section on anything online critical to police, fire, or EMS and you see the department idiots online shouting some t-shirt slogan with bad grammar and spelling) walking into the meeting and making matters worse by confirming the feelings that these guys really aren't worth much more than minimum wage (and... yes... people who post crud like, "sounds like a bunch of rich jackass's to me, they need to leave emergency services alone. that guy prob. never got to sit in a fire eng. when he was a kid, prob to busy getting his *** kicked by future firefighters" most likely doesn't deserve much over minimum wage. Quote is from "Scott" on the blog linked by Aidey) is not going to help anything. In fact, it will make it much much worse.
What needs to happen is to go on the offensive. They need to prove that they are worth that much money, not whine that everything would be fine if they just instituted a property tax.
