Winter Draft 09

The Winter Draft Meeting for the K.B.F.P.D. was held last week. A little more contentious than the past couple of years, but nowhere near as bad as it was when Capt. Ladykiller was still on the job.

( A review of the process can be found HERE)

As usual, there was some pre-meeting posturing going on, with a couple of free-agents needing homes and a couple of veteran players needing a change of venue. Two of my team members wanted to go to larger - market teams. One went to where he wanted to go, the other got his second pick.

That had me scrambling to fill a medic spot and a firefighter's position. I snagged a firefighter coming off another shift. His transfer was an involuntary one. The chiefs are trying to balance out the number of vacancies so that when we hire some more folks, each shift will have the same umber of rookies. I didn't hear about this guy coming into the market until a few hours before the meeting. Another senior captain had his eye on him, as did I. this caused a little conflict, but an amicable resolution was attained.

I picked up a free agent medic who is just coming off of probation. He has no seniority and little status being a boot and all, so that was an easy grab.

As I now have two members who are not qualified to drive the apparatus, this year will be spent training these two to become operators. A lengthy but fun process.

Although we filled all of the spots, there still a little uncertainty. Onr of the vacancies is currently being carried on a unit that cannot have a rookie on it. When we do hire, this spot will have to be filled by a player to be named later, thus moving the vacancy to a "boot firendly" unit.

The other fly in the ointment was a surprise retirement by one of our capatains. This caused some movement of a few captains, affecting a few firefighters who were looking for different supervision. There may be a few changes still in the works, it may affect us. Time will tell.

Thanks for reading,

Schmoe