An Open Letter to Ms. Braunfeld and the Residents of Great Neck:
On behalf of the officers and members of the Vigilant Fire Company, I apologize that you continue to feel as if the emergency alert siren is unnecessary.
I hoped that following your original letter in January 2012, my response was sufficient to explain why it was still a necessary. At that time, in April 2012, and again in May 2013, I also wrote to you personally and offered you the chance to sit down for a face-to-face conversation.
To date, you have yet to respond to any of my personalized correspondence, and therefore I am responding to you here, as you clearly read my previous letter to the editor.
In response to your current letter, I can’t fathom how the siren (which actually blows less now than it did when you purchased your unit in 2006) has reduced the value of your unit.
Even if you were theoretically correct, and the siren lowered the value of the surrounding real estate, it would have meant the value at purchase would have been lower by a similar amount.
Also, I have never heard of a bank telling anyone that they couldn’t refinance real estate due to a siren blowing. I would be more than happy to write a personalized letter to your mortgage banker about how ridiculous this is and ask them to reconsider.
We would like to think of ourselves as a customer facing business with the residents of Great Neck as the consumer.
To that point, I invite Ms. Braunfeld or any other resident with questions or concerns to get in touch with me directly. While we are all volunteers giving our time to the community, I believe that we should use any opportunity to connect with the residents we protect.
I can be reached via email at jforst@gnfd.org, on Twitter @GNVFDChief, or feel free to call the firehouse at (516) 487 1086 and ask for my voicemail.
I look forward to answering any and all questions.
Joshua Forst
Chief of Department
Vigilant Fire Company
