Saugus firefighters forced to cancel Santa school visits

SAUGUS – Santa Claus and the Saugus Fire Department won’t be making the rounds at the town’s elementary schools this year, according to firefighter union president Bill Cross.But don’t expect Fox News to storm Superintendent Richard Langlois’ office like it did last year, as Cross said a lack of manpower from the fire department is to blame this year for ending the 50-year tradition.”He’s still coming on the 24th, but he’s not coming to the schools,” said Cross on Friday. “We have a little bit of a participation problem here. It’s not that guys don’t want to do it – It’s all done on everyone’s free time – but with the dates we got from the schools, we just couldn’t get enough guys to do it.”Cross, who’s been a firefighter for 19 years, said when he didn’t have kids he volunteered every year. But now that his kids, and his fellow firefighters’ kids are getting older, he said schedules are getting more hectic.”It comes down to a volunteer issue and we didn’t have enough guys,” said Cross.Cross noted that last year, when Langlois canceled the event and then reinstated it, it spurred a lot of firefighters to volunteer.”We had more help than we ever had,” said Cross. “But it’s all been done on a volunteer basis and it’s all paid for buy us. You need the bodies. We met with the schools ? and we told the superintendent we don’t want it to go away forever.”Cross said he’s looking at other options for next year, such as having kids come to the station or something after school.”As of right now we’re going to stop it and start fresh next year,” said Cross. “We hope to bring it back next year. It’s not the superintendent’s fault and it’s not even the guys’ here fault ? it’s just the way life is, crazy busy. We hope people understand.”Matt Tempesta can be reached at [email protected].