When Jared Lago reports for a 24-hour shift in one of Miami-Dade’s newest fire stations, property taxes pay almost all of his wages.
Lago, 25 and the three other members of the Dolphin Station 68 crew start work at 7 a.m. and don’t go home until the next morning. Hired in February as part of a department expansion in a station that opened last year, one of Lago’s first rescue calls was a health emergency at the nearby Dolphin Mall. An older woman at a restaurant had trouble breathing, prompting help from the Dolphin Station across the street in Sweetwater instead of one of two suburban stations 5 miles away that would have handled the call before.
“She was having a panic attack,” Lago said. “We gave her an IV and calmed her down.”…