By Daniel Chacon
The Gazette
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The “Fill the Boot” fundraiser for the Muscular Dystrophy Association is getting a helping hand from interim Colorado Springs Fire Chief Rich Brown after all.
City firefighters will be able to collect money for Jerry’s Kids for a maximum of two hours a day for a couple of days around Labor Day while they’re on-duty, Brown said Wednesday.
About three weeks ago, Brown broke a decades-long tradition at the Colorado Springs Fire Department and decided not to allow firefighters to participate in the “Fill the Boot” fundraiser while on-duty. In the past, local firefighters have collected money in their boots both on- and off-duty.
Brown said he had been reconsidering his decision and was prepared to announce that he would allow firefighters to raise money on-duty for a limited number of hours when The Gazette broke the story Monday.
“I was fully prepared to relax it a little bit until this story leaked,” he said.
“We were going to change it. I just didn’t get a chance to do it,” he added. “There’s a lot of things going on, and I’m trying to get my arms around stuff as the interim guy.”
Brown said neither Mayor Steve Bach nor his chief of staff, Steve Cox, the former fire chief, had anything to do with the decision to prohibit firefighters from collecting money for MDA on the clock.
Brown said city firefighters, who he described as some of the most giving men and women he’s known, were spending too much time on the “Fill the Boot” fundraiser. They were very competitive about it, he said. In fact, local firefighters raised about $150,000 in 2008, more than any other department in the state and No. 11 in the nation.
“In the past, some of our guys would spend a lot of time out there in those areas collecting, and I didn’t want to do that this year. I wanted to kind of throttle it back quite a bit, scale it back as much as I could this year,” he said.
Brown said city employees are under a lot of scrutiny right now because of budget discussions and that public perception factored into his initial decision.
“I want to make sure that our priorities are straight,” he said. “Our priorities are always this: Respond on calls, and if we’re not responding on calls, either do inspections and/or train.”
Brown said he was trying to balance the department’s priorities with helping charity. The fire service nationwide has “somewhat adopted” the Muscular Dystrophy Association as their primary charity, he said.
“I had a lady leave me a message yesterday,” Brown said. “She must’ve been 80 years old. She wasn’t chewing me out, but she’s pleading with me to let them go do it on-duty again."The “Fill the Boot” fundraiser for the Muscular Dystrophy Association is getting a helping hand from interim Colorado Springs Fire Chief Rich Brown.
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