Estes Park is blessed with many people willing to give their time to a variety of worthy causes by becoming volunteers. We can look at those cleaning up the highways, volunteering in the National Park (thousands), churches, hospice, Ducky Derby, Red Cross, the arts and numerous other venues of which there are too many to mention.
If one thinks about it, how would we even recognize our community if there were no volunteers? How many events would be cancelled? How would our parks look? It is rather a scary thought.
In the true sense of the word, hundreds of people give their time and energy toward service to others and they should be commended. So, from the Estesparkian, thank you.
There is another group that is special and goes by the name Volunteer. That would be the fire department. The brag is that there is only one person on the payroll, that being the Chief. These folks give hundreds of hours as volunteers and provide very capable and prompt service. Special thanks goes out to them for all of their hard work and the hours and hours of training that it takes. We should remember this when we see a vote for the fire district.
But first we need to gather a bit more information. Speaking with dozens of people from other towns, we’re told that these volunteers, at least in other towns, aren’t volunteering without pay. They say that in their town, the volunteer fireman get paid for every call, but are called volunteers because they aren’t technically on the payroll. This is a curious turn of events if it is true here in Estes Park. That would mean that each call out of the district is being paid for by local tax payers and not the County. Each call to the non- tax paying Y is paid for by the locals. Does that seem fair? Maybe someone can comment here with that information and educate us all. Isn’t it important that we all know these things?
