OWNERSHIP OF THE FIRE SERVICE: THE PRIVATIZATION ISSUE

OWNERSHIP OF THE FIRE SERVICE: THE PRIVATIZATION ISSUE

Dwindling funds. Tightfisted government managers. Uptight elected officials. Fed-up taxpayers. More mandated, costly-to-implement regulations. Evolving, costly technology. Demands for greater accountability. What’s today’s public fire department to do? Something’s got to give. Some pundits say it’s the public fire department that should go—the fire service should be opened up to competition from the private sector. “Not so,” say others. “Whatever the private sector can do, the public sector can do as well or better.” The debate is raging and will rage for some time to come.

W hat is known for sure, however, is that the public fire sector has been under intense scrutiny and that its future is being shaped by external forces that must be tracked by department managers and union leaders. These forces are calling into question most of the traditions of the public fire department: staffing requirements, personnel use, the number and kinds of services to be provided, and —in some municipalities— even the providers of the services. These developments have catapulted some public fire departments from the status of relatively secure, well-funded fire suppression-oriented agencies into a position where they must defend even “normal” staffing and equipment requirements. One of the most significant of these developments from the perspective of the public fire sector is privatization.1

During the Reagan administration, privatization —the “conservative utopia”2 blossomed from an economic theory into a political strategy in the United States* and into the “global phenomenon of the 1990s.”1 Virtually every’ type of service provided by governments—ranging from ambulances to zoning—has come to be provided by private companies in one form or another somewhere in the United States4.27-34)

During the same period (1984), the American Society of Local Officials, Inc. coordinated a handbook addressing a changing society being driven by taxpayer revolts and overextended municipal budgets and how the traditional public fire department, which previously had escaped financial scrutiny in the past because of its “really good image factors,” now has entered an “era of professional management and screams from taxpayers about the high cost of the fire service itself …”

It tells of a system that “assumed a majesty of inviolate tradition in its traditional red trucks, its traditional Roman helmets, doing things in its traditional way in its traditional paramilitary organization” and that reached a new high in public adulation. with the introduction of paramedic services, that caused the “glamour and jazz of the fire service to ride a new crest” — until, that is, Proposition 13 (the California grass-roots citizen initiative that mandated taxes and, consequently, expenditures be cut; it was the forerunner of similar initiatives in other states) came along/’

Proposition 13, with its demands for lower taxes and fiscal accountability, ushered in an era that has made it necessary for public service providers to know which services they are providing, to let the public know what these services are, and to provide these services on a basis competitive with other providers of the same services, including the private sector.

“How the fire service deals with this potentially smaller share of the public funding pie’ may well set the pace for delivery of fire services in the next century,” observes Cortez Lawrence of the Auburn (AL) Public Safety Department. “The issue,” he says, “w ill not go away, and the fire service deludes itself when it acts as if there is no need to plan for tomorrow.”

Public fire departments have been responding to the changing times. Accountability, efficiency, fiscal responsibility, and productivity have become as much a part of many departments as incident command systems, standard operating procedures. and preplans. Some departments successfully have beaten back efforts by governing officials to contract out fire services to private companies; others now are wrestling with the changing forces; and still others have initiated alternatives to make their operations viable and more secure. Public departments that have made or are making the adjustments to today’s economic and political climate generally have used the tools of education, evaluation, and application.

Hducation involves learning about privatization itself, its strengths and weaknesses, its effects on the public fire sector, and how it has worked where it has been tried.

Kvaluation entails identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the public fire sector in general and individual departments in particular: how to develop weaknesses into strengths, how to be more responsive to the public and the changing times, and how to be competitive with other providers of services, including the private sector.

Application includes developing and implementing the contemporary operating management strategies (COMS) needed to reshape public sector fire departments into viably managed operations that can identify the services they are providing; deliver them in a cost-effective, efficient manner; market them to the community; and build in mechanisms that ensure that feedback/monitoring data will be received from employees within the department, managers and elected officials within the municipality, and citizens/customers within the community—and that that feedback will be evaluated.

DEFINING PRIVATIZATION

Privatization does not mean the same thing to everyone. John I). Donahue, a member of the faculty at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, sees distinct differences among forms of privatization. “It is not only an inelegant term,” he says; “it is also lamentably imprecise. It can signify something as broad as shrinking the welfare state while promoting self-help and voluntarism, or something as narrow as substituting a team of private workers for an all-but-identical team of civil servants to carry out a particular task.” Decisions to privatize, he suggests, should be made on a casc-bycase basis. Nor is there any reason to believe that a private form of organization will always, or even usually, improve accountability *

Inappropriate criteria. Others share Donahue’s reservations. Economists and political scientists have identified difficulties applicable to privatizing public services. The criteria of the private market seem inappropriate in certain areas of life because “human beings are not solely economic creatures,” relates a Business Week report; “they have social attachments, patriotic stirrings, religious commitments, family bonds, and psychological needs, some of which contradict the textbook view of economic man …Auctioning off national symbols to the highest bidder offends us as citizens.”*

“Best” cannot mean only the cheapest or most efficient, as it is defined by privatization advocates. The value of some elements of democracy, some argue, is not reducible to efficiency. Among them are “public information, deliberation, and accountability.” Voters and consumers also care about access, community participation, and distributive justice/*

“A large element of nonsense” in the privatization debate, Donahue says, is proponents’ invoking the efficiency characterizing well-run companies in competitive markets and then concluding—without bothering with any intervening logical steps— that private firms will excel in public undertakings as well. On the other hand, it also is “perverse” to reject privatization only because some enthusiasts favor it for the wrong reason 0215,216)

THE PRIVATIZATION ARGUMENTS

The arguments used in favor of privatizing public services generally revolve around management functions, including the following, which generally are used to promote privatization. In some of the cases where privatization has been tried, however, some of these arguments appear to have been weakened.

Accountability. Competition makes a service provider more efficient, cost effective, and innovative, assert privatization proponents. They see government workers as self-interested individuals seeking to maximize their pay and other benefits while reducing their work load. They cite as examples political leaders whose private incentive is to give benefits to public employees in ways that burden only their successors in office. These same critics charge that since public fire departments constitute a monopoly, there is no incentive for them to operate in a cost-efficient manner. ”

ACTUALLY … Private monopolies could replace government monopolies and eliminate the benefits consumers and taxpayers might realize from privatization. Economic and government scholars warn that such monopolies can form unless government officials adhere to open bidding procedures and objective selection standards that require all rules, procedures, and criteria to be matters of public record.

Cost. Public services come at too high a cost, according to those who favor privatization. Steve H. Hanke, professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University, points to the “bureaucratic rule of two,” generally accepted among government scholars: “If you want to find the public cost of doing something, you just find the private cost and then multiply by two, and that’ll get you pretty close.””

ACTUALLY … Savings from privatization may not always be what they seem. Contractors on occasion bid too low (“low ball”) to obtain a government contract and then subsequently try to raise the price to make up for initial losses.12

Another factor that can cloud the savings picture is that it is difficult to compare cost effectiveness between public and private fire departments and to specify levels of service. There are no nationally accepted levels of fire suppression services. Each community selects its own level of service with regard to its needs and economic status. ⅜

Moreover, some services may not be performed at all. State law’ may specify that only public (government) employees can perform some aspects of fire services.1 * Private companies may lack the legal authority to perform fire prevention functions such as introducing and enforcing building codes, investigating fires, or instituting arson-prevention programs.15

Fire managers recommend that cost assessments take into account factors such as the following:

• Technology. Always evolving and generally expensive, it is one of the main contributing factors to today’s high cost of fire protection. Attempting to meet the cost provisions of a contract, private contractors may not always implement the latest technological advances as quickly as they should.16
• Contingency plans. They may be needed should the contracted-for private fire services be interrupted or suspended for any reason. Neighboring departments may not always be able to pick up full 24-hour coverage for other communities without being given lead time.”6″
• Mutual aid. Private companies with limited on-duty staffing or a reduced number and variety of apparatus may cause public departments participating in mutual-aid agreements to view them as being onesided and cancel them.”65’

Personnel. The need for public agencies to negotiate wages, benefits, and working conditions with “large, powerful unions” is often perceived as a major weakness by proponents of privatization/ 1,6) as is staffing “on the basis of the perceived safety needs of firefighters and citizens”—seen as a practice that contributes to inefficiency. 1

ACTUALLY … The public sector is aware of these staffing issues and has begun to address them. Critically evaluating the organization’s personnel needs and proposing reductions, if necessary, are possibly the most difficult tasks facing fire chiefs, says Lee Daugherty, chief of the Peoria (IL) Fire Department and former chief of the Littleton (CO) Fire Department. He adds that “union leadership must be realistic with regard to demands for reduced hours, increased wages, and increased personnel.”” 121 Another approach managers recommend is to explore areas—emergency medical services (EMS), fire prevention, maintenance, and dispatching, for example —that wall help increase the productivity of present employees at present, or even reduced, funding levels.18

Private fire departments use fewer paid firefighters than public departments. Most private-sector departments hire only a minimum of fulltime personnel and then use part-time personnel to cover vacancies that may arise. They rely on paid on-call reserves for the additional manpower they need for major emergencies.Iv This method of staffing is not for every department and probably works best in cities with populations of 100,000 or less.20

A government study of public and private fire departments providing fire suppression and emergency medical services concluded that private operation of these services was feasible in some types of communities but not in others. It found that providing fire department services under private contract is not a practical alternative to replacing career fire departments in larger cities. Private providers were found to be a viable economic alternative in some communities that do not have career fire departments and that want to expand into advanced life support and EMS. Privatization also may be suited to facilities operated by special agencies or authorities.031_)

THE EVOLVING FIRE SERVICE

Historically, privatizing public safety, especially fire departments, has been controversial and intensely opposed politically. One reason for this is that private volunteer organizations, which are highly social and part of the communities in which they serve, protect thousands of small towns and rural settlements 0 Despite this, however, the fiscal and political problems of the past couple of decades have forced some municipalities to look more closely at privatization or other alternatives that will make it possible to provide levels of fire protection services taxpayers want and are willing to finance.

Geography has been a factor in the privatization of fire services. Privatization generally has had less appeal in the Northeast and the Midwest than in other parts of the country. In recent years, however, even the “patronage haven” Chicago has been looking to private services as one way to escape fast-rising employee benefit and pension costs; but Chicago’s mayor has put the city’s huge police and fire departments off-limits. There has been some speculation about contracting out ambulance and other specialty services.21 Private sector fire services are entirely excluded from the New England and Middle Atlantic regions and are almost entirely excluded from the north central states. In these regions, strong county or local governments provide fire protection in unincorporated areas, there is a strong tradition of volunteer fire departments, and professional firefighters are unionized (the union has been the most effective opponent of private sector fire services).22

The earliest private sector fire service organizations were in rural and unincorporated suburban areas of the South and West, particularly in states whose counties did not automatically supply fire protection in unincorporated areas. The south, in general, and Tennessee, in particular, never had a strong movement toward volunteer fire services in metropolitan county or rural areas. In the early 1960s the only fire services available in Knox County, Tennessee, were provided by three independent subscription services/ 1512)

The Rural/Metro Corporation, founded in 1948 to serve unincorporated areas outside Phoenix, Arizona, generally is considered the pioneer in private sector fire services, although small private sector services had been operating in the southeastern part of the country before that time221 Communities with contracted, private fire protection services for the most part have been in the states of Arizona, Georgia, Illinois, Oregon, and Tennessee221 25

The private sector fire service began to grow in the late 1970s. Subscription services for residential fire suppression, however, have not been extended to new areas in recent years. Nearby cities’ annexing of unincorporated subscription areas and the incorporating of service areas into fire protection districts have eroded the private subscription base221.18 The expansion of the private sector fire service into community fire protection seems to have slowed down for the time being. The number of incorporated fire districts, most of whom will develop their own services, has been growing, reports Bill Wagner, chief of the Bullhead City (AZ) Fire District (a paid and reserve department). Sun City, Gilbert, and Northwest, in Arizona, he points out. which formerly had been served by private contractors, did not renew their contracts. Yet, Wagner maintains, the private sector fire business is still viable.23

Most private providers (there are about nine companies) have been looking to areas other than community fire suppression in recent years, reports Gary Jensen, president of the private company American Emergency Services. Some have been caught in the middle of battles between fire service unions and city officials (some cases are discussed below). Some managers would threaten the unions with privatization and then use the private companies to whipsaw the unions, Jensen explains. The move toward privatization in a community generally started out as an economic issue and usually turned out to be a political one, he adds. He observes that interest in privatization appears to have been renewed within the past year or so.2

Interest in privatization hasn’t subsided in some quarters, says Chief Harr)7 Diezel of the Virginia Beach (VA) Fire Department, although it is down from 10 or 15 years ago. “But,” he warns, “privatization may resurrect itself with a bang in coming years.”25

The private sector fire industry has faced a number of serious setbacks in recent years, among them the following:212

• Dover; New Hampshire, 1982. Dover was the first community in the Northeast—and the first city anywhere with a unionized fire department—to attempt to go to contracted, private services. The idea of contracting out fire protection cropped up within the fire department itself but failed when the captain who proposed it —also the president of the Dover Professional Fire Officers’ Association—could not raise a S 200,000 performance bond. The city manager, however, retained interest in the idea, and he asked Fire Chief David Bibber to check out “this privatization business.” Bibber checked with areas of the country he knew were contracting out services. Although he originally was opposed to the concept, he ultimately came to look on it as a viable alternative for the city. “I did everything I could do to chip it apart,” Bibber said at the time; “the more I investigated, the more I grew convinced that private contracting makes sense.”26

The local officer and firefighter unions led initiatives that included lobbying in the state legislature for laws that would prohibit private fire services within the state (this bill was defeated), organizing a community campaign against privatization, and filing lawsuits. The Dover City Council, nevertheless, voted 5 to 3 to approve the contract with the private company. Ultimately, however, the New Hampshire Supreme Court rendered the contract between the city and private fire service “legally inoperative.” In addition, voters approved a referendum that amended Dover’s city charter to make it illegal to contract out police and fire services, and they turned out of office the three city council members who voted to replace the public fire department

• Williman tic, Connecticut, 1982. City officials were stalemated in contract negotiations with the firefighters’ union and were considering a proposed five-year contract, projecting a savings of S1.4 million, from a private sector fire services company. Terming the city’s action “union busting,” the local firefighters’ union undertook various actions that included initiating a referendum, passed by the voters, to consolidate Willimantic with the surrounding township of Windham (thus nullifying the Willimantic council’s vote to approve the private contract). Ultimately, the union offered the city a new contract that would save taxpayers an estimated 5340,000 and included concessions on overtime pay and apparatus staffing, which the city council accepted. The council members who voted for the contracting out of services were voted out of office in the following election260
• Valdosta, Georgia. 1983. Firefighters presented to city officials, who were considering a contract with a private company, a petition containing more than 4,000 signatures of registered voters that would amend the city charter to prohibit contractual fire services.2 In the meantime, the ensuing fights in and out of court created feelings so intense that a local newspaper editor was prompted to write: “Citizens who pay the bills would be better served if the union would put away the picket signs, discard the petitions, and concentrate on firefighting and if the Mayor-Council would stop rattling cages about contractual firemen and admit we need a city fire department, perhaps with some changes” Ultimately, a new contract involving concessions with regard to minimum staffing clauses, merit evaluations, overtime provisions, holiday pay, and sick leave was negotiated.28

The controversy surrounding privatization is limited largely to fire suppression services. Private companies are providing specialized fire protection services at airports in several states and at government installations.

Some private providers of fire services have expanded tremendously into the FMS business, reports Jensen (American Emergency Services). Up until recently, not as much controversy surrounded this arena. One explanation for this might be that until recent years most FMS was provided by private companies131 * “Over the course of several years, the fire service generally has been able to stand up on the fire suppression side, but not on the emergency services side,” Garry Briese, executive director of the International Association of Fire Chiefs, relates. “The private industry is getting its collective act together more effectively in ambulance service.” Briese says very significant changes in FMS are coming and that the private companies are going to be extremely competitive, especially with regard to ambulance services.29

EVALUATION/LESSONS LEARNED

Analyzing the position of the public sector fire department with regard to evolving economic and social conditions has led the public sector fire service to realize what some economic and government scholars and fire service managers already had discovered: that how resources and personnel are managed is more critical to a successful operation than who owns the resources and who signs the personnel checks.

They found that public departments indeed can compete successfully with private companies, that municipal departments that restructure themselves to meet the competition have nothing to fear from privatization. and that the optimum solution for the private-sector vs. public-sector dispute may be to marry the best aspects of both systems.30

“The private sector has no magic formula, no supernatural power, no secrets for success in providing fire protection,” maintains Briese. “The public and private sectors have the keys to the same doors.”31

Among the “lessons” that must be incorporated into operating strategies as the public fire sector continues to restructure for the future are the following:

• Perception counts. The objective here is to clear away attitudes and behaviors that create the impression, generally held by privatization proponents, that the public system is monolithic, mired in tradition, and incapable of being, or unwilling to be, more responsive to prevailing economic and social conditions. “The system,” proposes John C. Houlihan of the Institute for Local Self Government, “should be analyzed part by part, and only those parts that serve the purpose of the system, instead of the system itself, should be retained.”3″ “Being embroiled in tradition is killing public fire departments,” laments Chief Wagner (Bullhead. Arizona). He cites especially the retaining of personnel systems that protect nonproductive people and management’s being subject to political pressure11111

Where the department is perceived as one that is merely maintaining the status quo, as being engaged in handto-hand combat with the system, or as having a no-change attitude, the private contractors can look very, verygood. Strong community relations; active community programs; and high, positive visibility “blunt the seductive reasoning of contract services.” The public understands and is willing to pay for quality.33

• Failing to respond to today’s conditions can threaten a department’s existence. Citizens and municipal officers “are going to save money, no matter what, and if that means contracting out the fire services to private industry that is what they are going to do,” Charles Monzillo, chief of the Willimantic (CT) Fire Department, told attendees at a regional convention of fire chiefs in Hyannis, Massachusetts, in June 1983. Cautioning against being “too parochial,” he referred to the privatization battle fought in his community (mentioned earlier) and reported: “My men gave up some hard-earned gains they had made at the bargaining table in order to match a SI40,000 annual saving promised by the private contractor. They did so to preserve the municipal department.”3

“As public servants, we need to ask ourselves who we are,” exhort some fire service members in a National Fire Academy (NFA) research paper. Departments, they stress, must determine whether they arc try ing to serve the public in the most cost-effective manner or whether they are serving the department’s “own best interests.” Failing to perform according to taxpayers’ expectations, they caution, will break the trust from which public fire departments have benefited in the past18 101

Unfortunately, says Robin F. Paulsgrove, assistant fire chief of the Austin (TX) Fire Department’s services division, the advent of the threat of privatization may be the first occasion on which some departments recognize that even an organization with a noble mission has competitors. “Perhaps no one is threatening to hang out a shingle and open a firehouse across the street from ours, but we have competitors for diminishing resources,” continues Paulsgrove. “Those organizations that best satisfy changing community needs will survive.”

• Managers must he fiscally adept. Fire chiefs will have to be better fiscal managers and strategists, especially from the personnel/management standpoint, fire managers stress. The ultimate question is, “Who can provide services cheaper with efficiency?” Fire chiefs must be able to read spread sheets and profit-and-loss statements in the same way they know how to use the incident command system,” stresses Ronnv Coleman, California state fire marshal and former chief of the Fullerton (CA) Fire Department.33
• Managers must he guides. Among the goals of the NFA’s Executive Fire Officer Program is to “improve the executive’s ability to effectively and efficiently lead within a dynamic and complex organization…” To H. Wayne Bryan, Jr., of the East Naples (FL) Fire Control and Rescue District, “The key words lead and dynamic suggest an enlightened, point-man’ sort of executive guiding his organization through the inevitable change that most surely will come.” As Bryan sees it, public fire departments must improve their effectiveness in dealing with the “ ‘real’ fire problem: the ever-increasing amount of public resources that must be expended to provide fire protection service in communities—the growing tax rates, insurance premiums, and financial burdens that are eating out the substance of the American pcople.”321
• Vigilant management is needed. Contemporary operating management strategies entail knowing that good management is never truly achieved, that it is always evolving, and that it is the nature of every system to be subject to flaws that can erode its efficiency. Donahue points out that “even when no specific peril looms, management is a struggle against entropy.” Proper maintenance, therefore, is needed to keep even productive institutions from breaking down. All organizations are subject to what economist Harvey Liebenstein has termed “X-inefficiency.” Licbcnstcin’s theory states that “all organizations, no matter how sensibly designed at the start, are prone to a gradual loss of discipline and rationality.”36 The tendency toward slackness can be controlled only if an entity is “inclined and able to resist drift, deter waste, and focus resources on the organizational mission,” says Donahue—generally the responsibilities of owners in the private sector. In public fire departments, these should be the functions of the fire chief or other designated ranking executives.
• Department members must work as a unit. A public fire department aggressively involved in its community can be a formidable competitor, but only if the talents, skills, and cooperation of the entire organization are synchronized. Free-lancing on vested issues or refusing to compromise on issues guarantees ineffectiveness and, in all probability, will push more communities toward seriously considering privatization33.9
• Departments must share innovations. The contemporary fire chief? manager must share with chiefs/managers of other fire departments information on new kinds of training and methods for measuring community needs and organizational performance The fire service sometimes functions in an atmosphere of “selfcreating isolation,” in which information on innovative experiments is not shared with other departments. The fire service needs to be as dedicated to the new as it is to the old. Awards should be given out for the idea of the year31,9
• Communicate with the public. Instead of being defensive, departments should communicate with the people in the community. They should concentrate on marketing and letting the people know w hat they are doing, emphasizes Chief Wagner.

APPLICATION/CONTEMPORARY OPERATING MANAGEMENT STRATEGIES (COMS)

Programs and policies implemented by municipal fire departments must be developed according to the needs and nature of the community and with regard to state and federal regulations and regional preferences. Among some of the contemporary operating management strategies (COMS), or alternatives to privatization, used by departments to make them more responsive to prevailing fiscal conditions are the following (not all are appropriate for every community):

Fees. Fire departments are being asked to establish alternative funding mechanisms. The trap to avoid here is to feel sorry for yourself. The task should be seen as an “interesting opportunity” for the fire service. Economic solutions must be found to economic issues, or public fire departments “will have less to do. less to do it with, and more pressure to perform. “35 19 California’s experience with Proposition 13 indicates that fees for a wide range of services are more acceptable to the public than conventional tax increases33 Experience has shown that fees and surcharges must be suited to individual community makeup and politics and that they should not appear to be discriminatory against a particular segment.

Inglewood, California, for example, suspended after the first year fees levied on the basis of the calculated fire flow requirements of each commercial and industrial structure because the fees proved politically unpopular.’ Yet, in a recent phone conversation, Darlene Boca, Inglewood’s code enforcement superintendent. reported that fees subsequently imposed for inspections and ambulance service are working well.

San Clemente, California, has an extensive schedule of fees, some of w hich have been in effect since 1980, covering personnel services; inspections; incident/investigation reports; paramedic. EMT, and ambulance services; business plan reviews; hazardous-mater ials-related services; and other areas, including fireworks.

Faced with the fiscal stress of Proposition 2½, Boston officials introduced in 1982 a fire service fee applicable only to larger commercial and industrial buildings. The courts ruled it illegal in 1985, and all fees collected had to be returned to building owners, Lieutenant Richard Powers, public relations officer for the City of Boston (MA) Fire Department, reported recently. On the other hand, Powers adds, a fee schedule for what the department has termed “needless responses,” instituted in 1988, has been successful. Fees, based on a sixmonth period, begin with the fourth such response. Charges are S75 each for the fourth and fifth responses, SI00 for the sixth, SI50 for the seventh response, and S200 (the maximum fee) for eight or more responses. In addition to bringing in revenue, the fees have pressured building owners into repairing malfunctioning alarm systems, the predominant cause of the “needless” calls.

Comprehensive, enforced safety codes. Adopting and enforcing stringent safety codes can save money for municipalities by reducing a fire department’s operating costs. In addition, charging a fire service fee based according to the demand a building places on the fire suppression system, proponents say, motivates building owners to invest in alarm systems, sprinklers, and other preventive measures.

Consolidation of staff support services. Consolidation can be a feasible option, especially in regions where many services are duplicated or where individual departments would not be able to acquire training or provide services in specific areas on their own. Some of the areas recommended for consolidation are training, disaster management, planning, vehicle maintenance, purchasing, and dispatching1836)

Consolidation, which would have the closest units respond, also has helped resolve boundary issues in areas where jurisdictional boundary’ lines have been determined by annexations. Irregular boundaries generally are the result of jurisdictions’ leapfrogging to annex desired tax base areas, leaving pockets of non-revenuegenerating problems for other jurisdictions to protect.38,39

Some departments, city managers, and fire chiefs may reject consolidation because individual department autonomy must be surrendered. But, Chief Bruce Smith of the Colerain (OH) Fire Department is quick to point out that that “we-can-do-it-better” attitude can only go so far with limited dollars.”3

Other benefits that can result from consolidation include uniform, stabilized pay scales; consolidated pension resources; improved insurance services office ratings; volume purchasing; and decreased maintenance costs resulting from a reduction in the number of fire stations due to largerscale planning. Additional advantages include faster response time, more efficient allocation of personnel, increased service levels for the same dollars spent, regionalized public information and education programs, and consistent systemwide codes38 26,28

Some three years ago, three fire departments in the Portland, Oregon, metropolitan area consolidated some of their functions to rectify conditions such as redundancy in apparatus and equipment, as well as duplication in personnel, especially at the mid-manager and support levels. Each department was kept separate, but the three departments share equipment, facilities, and personnel38 25) “The move is working out better than we thought it would,” Floyd Pittard, assistant chief of the Tualatin Valley (OR) Fire Department-one of the departments taking part in the consolidation — reported recently; “the tax rate dropped from $3.03 to S1.99 per thousand over the three-year period.” (Pittard has written a guidebook, A Systematic Approach to Functional Consolidation and Merger, it is available for S40.)

Charles Rule, chief of the Manteca (CA) Fire Department, sees regional or county consolidation of fire services, ranging from the consolidation of one function to total political consolidation, as “probably the most promising approach (to resolving financial difficultiesj.”38 -S 26 Many fire departments, including his own, have experienced increased operational efficiency, effectiveness, reliability, and cost savings from a variety of consolidation configurations.

Contract with adjacent departments. The village of West Milwaukee, Wisconsin, moved toward resolving its severe budget crisis by entering into a fire service contract with neighboring Milwaukee. It saved more than SI million, or about 60 percent of its projected annual budget, in the first year of the contract. Prior to the contract, West Milwaukee drew one engine and one aerial apparatus to a response. An incident now gets a metropolitan assignment of six companies and at least two chief officers. Special teams, such as hazardous materials and dive rescue, are also available. Milwaukee offered eity jobs to the firefighters affiliated with the West Milwaukee Fire Department.40

Despite the financial gains for the village, however, voters were so angered by the closing of the fire department that they voted out of office the trustees who voted for the closing. Chief August Erdman, of the Milwaukee Fire Department, recently reported that the arrangement is working out well for the city and the village. Attempts to dissolve some of the citizens’ hostility and misgivings included holding an open house during which citizens were shown that their services actually had been increased.

Select a level of service. Some municipalities have used the option of adjusting the level of services provided to the community according to the public’s preferences and the money available.

Stress value. The Austin (TX) Fire Department’s “Build Austin’s Standard in Customer Service (BASICS)” initiative has built into it the process of Total Quality Management (see page 117). Total Quality Management (TQM) stresses service management within a total organizational approach that makes the customer’s perception of quality of service the top driving force for operating the organization, according to Assistant Chief Paulsgrove. TQM begins by incorporating the private industry process of identifying customers and evaluating their service expectation. Improving department service marketing, along with product quality and cost efficiency, increases the public fire department’s ability to compete with private industry, Paulsgrove stresses. “Public safety is more than a service —it is a community value, anti the public sector is particularly suited to provide community protection when risk exceeds demand.”

Adopt a corporate business model. The Springfield (OR) Fire Department in 1981 was an organization that provided fire suppression, fire prevention, and basic emergency medical services first response to a population of 49,900. In 1983, it became the Springfield Department of Fire & Life Safety (SI)FLS), and its organizational mission has been expanded to include fire prevention, EMS, and haz-mat protection. The catalyst for this transformation was the department’s severe funding crisis.

Using the business corporation as a model, the SDFLS evolved into a bottom-line oriented organization whose functions include revenue production, advertising and marketing, customer service, and research and development. (See “Fire Department, Inc.,” Fire Engineering, May 1992.)

THE FUTURE

The adage “Forewarned is forearmed” seems an appropriate one to invoke when contemplating the economic and political scenario surrounding today’s public fire sector. Just as failing to undergo adequate training, follow clothing and health safety standards, and adhere to standard operating procedures threaten the physical life of a firefighter, so, too, do management policies that fail to recognize and address the warning signs pointing to the need for selfevaluation and, in some cases, significant changes endanger the life of the public fire department. Proaction is as appropriate—and urgent —here as it is for emergency responses. Engaging in deceptive analysis—that gives the answers we want —instead of objective analysis that helps us find the answers we need’41 can be as devastating as improper size-up on the fireground. The alarms have been sounded: I he remaining years of this century will present the American fire service with its greatest challenges ever. Some departments will see them as problems, while others will see them as opportunities. If the turf and ego mentality that has prevented progress in the past prevails, outsiders will determine the fire service’s future direction38.33 How is your department responding?

(A bibliography applicable to this article is available. With your request, please enclose a self-addressed, stamped, legal-size envelope.)

References

1. Campbell, Colin A. 1984. “Private Sector Eire Protection: A Threat Or A Challenge?” Inti, l-‘ire Chief. 40:2,11.
2. Kuttner. Robert. Mar. 10, 1986. “Keeping the market in its place.” Bus. Wk. In l ine Reader, Jan./Feb. 1989. p.67.
3. Henig. Jeffrey R 1989-90. “Privatization in the 1 nited States: Theory and Practice. Pol. Set. Quart. 104:4,663-
4. Goodman, John IV. Gary V Loveman 1991 “Does Privatization Serve the Public Interest?” Harvard Bus. Rev. 69.Nov.-Dec..26-48.
5. W itzeman, Lou. 1984. “The Fire Department Goes Private.” This Way Up: The Local Official’s Handbook for Privatization a tut Contracting Out. Raymond Q. Armington and William D. Hllis.eds.; American Society of Local Officials, Inc., coor. Chicago: Regnery Gateway, pp.64-92.
6. Liwrence. Cortez. 1990. “Alternative Public Safety Service Delivery (Emphasizing Eire Protection Services),”re search project, Natl. Fire Academy, p. 13.
7. Donahue, John D. 1989. The Privatization Decision: Public ends, Private Means. New York: Basic Books, Inc., pp. 4,6.
8. Hayts, Samuel P. 1949. “Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890-1920. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. And Dwight Waldo. 1984. “The Administrative State: A Study of the Political Theory of American Public Administration.” New York: Holmes and Meier, 1st ed. quoted in Privatization: Toward More Effective Government, Report of the President’s Commission on Privatization, March 1988. p.243.
9. Hanke, Steve H., ed. 1987. Prospects for Privatization. 1987. New York: Proceedings of The Academy of Political Science 36:3,13,14.
10. Fitzgerald, Randall. 1988. When Government Goes Private: Successful Alternatives to Public Services, Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy Book. New York: Universe Books, p.297.
11. Lockhead, Carolyn. 1988. “Cities Finding Public Services Better-Run By Private Firms. The Voice, 1FSI. Oct., pp. 12,13.
12. Fixler, Jr., Philip E., Robert W. Poole, Jr. “Status of State and Local Privatization.” In “Prospects for Privatization,” p. 171.
13. Campbell. John A. 1983. “Private Provisions of Fire Department Services: Report to the Small Business Administration.” Inti. Eire Chief. Sept. In A National Symposium on Private Sector Eire Protection. Orlando. Fla.: Comprehensive Emergency Management Associates, p. 19.
14. Fisher, Aubrey W., et al. 1983. “An Informational Study of Private Fire Protection,” research project, National Fire Academy Executive Development III Program, p. 19.
15. DiNenno, Philip J. 1980. “Private Contract Fire Protection: An Alternative Management System.” Inti. Eire Chief 46:1, 12-14. In .4 National Symposium.
16. Barton. A l… et al. 1982. “Is Contract Fire Service a Viable Option?” research project, National Fire Academy Executive Development III Program, pp.7.8. In A National Symposium.
17. Daugherty, Lee. 1989. “Private Versus Public Fire Protection,” research project, National Fire Academy Executive Fire Officer Program, p.3-
18. Barkdull, G.H., et al. 1986. “What Should Public Fire Agencies Do to Avoid Private Takeover?” research project. National Fire Academy Executive Development III. p. 3-
19. Jensen, Gary S. 1986. “An Argument in Favor of Contracted Fire Protection …and the Argument Against It.”; Fireyo/zrnal. July, p.-tO..
20. Byme-Walsh, Michelle, Karen Wojcik. 1990. “W hat can the public fire service learn from private departments?” Eire Chief Jan., p.40.
21. “Taking the Town Private.” Newsweek, Mar. 4, 1991, pp.52-54.
22. “Alternative Methods of Providing Fire Protection.” 1986. Centaur Associates, Inc. Washington, D.C. Federal Emergency Management; U.S. Fire Administration, funder.
23. Phone interview, June 1992, Chief Bill Wagner, Bullhead (AZ) Fire District.
24. Phone interview, June 1992, Gary Jensen, president, American Emergency Services.
25. Phone interview, June 1992, Chief Harry Diezel, Virginia Beach (VA) Fire Department
26. Peron, Jim. 1983“Blazing Battles.” Reason, Nov., pp.4l.
27. Shearin, C. 1983. “High Court Rules Firefighting Petition Here Valid.” Valdosta Daily Times, Georgia, 78:328, Sept. 9.
28. Editorial, Valdosta Daily Times, July 10, 1983.
29. Phone interview. June 1992. Garry Briese, executive director, International Association of Fire Chiefs.
30. Bryan, Jr., H. Wayne. 1991. “Privatization Principles: Enhancing Public Sector Fire Protection Services,” research project, National Fire Academy Executive Fire Officer Program, pp. 19,20.
31. Briese, Garry L. 1984. “An Overview of The Private Sector Fire Service.” Inti. Eire Chief, Feb., pp. 16-19.
32. Houlihan, John C. 1977. “Can We Still Afford the Traditional Public SafetySystem?” Public Management, July. In National Symposium.
33. Diezel, Harry. 1986. “An Argument in Favor of Contracted Fire Protection. . and the Argument Against It.” Fire Journal, July, p.79.
34. Mahoney, Frank, no date. “New England chiefs advised to cut their firefighting costs.” Globe. In National Symposium.
35. Coleman, Ronny. 1991. “Should fire departments charge for services?” Eire Chief, Nov., p.49.
36. Liebenstein. Harvey. 1966. “Allocative Efficiency versus X-Efficiency.” Amer. Eton. Rev., June, in Donahue, p.49.
37. “Municipal Services: The Privatization Option.” 1983. The Heritage Foundation Backgrounder, Jan. 11, pp.6,7. In National Symposium.
38. Thompson, Stephanie. 1992. “Spotting a Trend: Fire Department Consolidation.” Amer./City & County, April, p.26.
39. Rule. Charles H. 1992. “Consolidation/regionalization: Answers for the future?” Eire Chief, Jan., p.3.3.
40. Nailen, Richard I.. 1991. “Contract fire service rescues village budget.” Eire Chief Nov., p.70.
41. Phone interview, June 1992. Cortez Lawrence.