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With a little more than a day left before the city is set to close four fire companies at night to save money, some council members held Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta's feet to the fire and demanded answers Friday.

Bronx Councilman James Vacca said closing City Island's Ladder 53 does not make sense.

"By the admission of the fire department, if this cut takes place on City Island, ladder company response from the next nearest company will be 9.5 minutes. It's now 5 minutes. You're asking us to accept a doubling of ladder response time,” said Vacca.

Besides Ladder 53, Engine 4 in Lower Manhattan, Engine 61 on Staten Island and Engine 271 in Brooklyn are all scheduled to close from 6 p.m. to 9 a.m., which is estimated to save $8.9 million a year.

But people who represent those neighborhoods are not buying the logic.

"This is a zero sum game. For every one dollar we take and spend on some knucklehead idea somewhere else in the city, it's a dollar taken away from essential services," said Staten Island Councilman James Oddo.

With the city in tough financial straits, the FDNY has already made concessions. It cancelled the next class of probationary firefighters and hasn't scheduled a new one.

Some additional savings are coming from the elimination of civilian jobs, but it seems those cuts did not go deep enough.

Calling the closures an extreme last resort, some opponents suggested Scoppetta cut more desk jobs.

The fire commissioner said cuts were already made.

"There isn't fat to trim in the fire department,” said Scoppetta. “We have a ratio of about one support person for every 10 in uniform, there are other agencies that have a 1-to-4 ratio. So we start out very lean and don't have a lot of room to maneuver in, so that's why we ended up having to effect operations."

But with retirements looming and no new firefighter classes scheduled, that number will likely shrink in just a few weeks.