Back in the 1970’s there was a growing industry of “management consultants” who soaked up millions of taxpayer dollars studying governmental operations. Then they would submit their findings to whoever had hired them along with a set of recommendations on how to make the agencies operate more efficiently.
“Efficiently” wasn’t really what it was, though. “Cheaper” would have been a better selection. In order to justify their cost of doing the study, the consultants would present a Rosy Scenario showing how their recommendations would save literally millions of dollars. Then they would drop the report on the mayor’s desk and fly out of town, ready to swoop down onto the next bunch of dupes who bought into their act.
The whole object, of course, was to fool the citizens into thinking that you could maintain services while lopping a big chunk off the budget. To the uneducated eye of the average citizen, their proposals always made a lot of sense on the surface. But the people who had to actually do the work knew that it was balderdash.
One of those road shows tried to screw up my department one time. Fortunately, our county supervisors are well versed on what it takes to run a fire and rescue department and they chose to ignore the entire report. But they satisfied a small segment of voters who wanted studies done to “improve” the government’s efficiency. One of the truly laughable recommendations that our band of budgetary bozo’s made was to just put drivers only on the ladder trucks. Then they would establish a few “flying squads” here and there that were staffed with the department’s “action-anxious” firefighters who would come flying in like Mighty Mouse and save the lives of all entrapped people. Presumably this lone truck driver would also have a bullhorn which he would use to reassure the desparate vicitms that help was on the way if they could just hold on for another 15 or 20 minutes until the Action Anxious Squad could get there.
Some desperate municipalities actually tried to implement the consulting charlatans’ plans and they ended up with public safety disasters. The biggest bust of them all was the combined-police-and-fire-departments scheme. This was the smoke and mirrors trick where you’d cross-train the police officers to do basic firefighting and reduce the engine companies to a driver and officer. If you got a fire, the engine would respond to scope it out and if it was a real fire, then they would send all the police cars to the scene where the cops would open their trunks and pull out their running gear and instantly transform into Firefighters.
Of course, it only took one weekend for the crooks to discover that one well-place arson combined with a smashed store window that was alarmed on the other side of town would leave the rest of the city wide open for casual holdups and burglaries. The biggest guppie of this scheme was Durham, North Carolina, where they bought into the full parcel. After watching their fire loss values skyrocket, along with the insurance companies threats to pull out completely, they had to dump it after only a couple of years. But to this day they haven’t yet recovered from that debacle.
Well, guess what? They’re baaaack! Yes, the budget-menders have started peddling the fire-police combination hoax again. Over the next couple of days we’ll be addressing a few locales that are being teased into trying this proven failure once again. This is an early warning to you to be on the lookout for these medicine shows.
For now, though, we have to get this equipment checked out. And I need to get some more coffee going. See you in the day room.
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