Tonight, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter announced cuts that the city is making to cover a billion dollar revenue deficit. HERE
He is laying off 200 city employees and leaving 600 jobs vacant, including 200 police officer positions. No firefighters will be laid off, but he is closing five engine companies and two ladder companies. Members from those units will be reassigned to significantly reduce fire department operations overtime.
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Yesterday, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that they are laying off 500 employees and allowing another 2,500 jobs remain unfilled when the current employee leaves the position. Read story HERE.
Bloomberg is not starting a 1000 officer police academy in January. He proposes closing five engines in dual (engine + ladder) houses in the evening hours. The FDNY academy school will be reduced from 23 weeks to 18 weeks.
IT IS ALL ABOUT THE CASH FLOW
Municipalities are trying to reduce “cash” expenditures, the direct outlaying of funds. In the Washington DC area, Prince George’s County instituted an eight day furlough affecting 6000 county employees … with disasterous results when applied to the paper-thin fire department operations staff.
Dave Statter has been on top of it since the beginning, including this bad outcome event during the first week of furloughs. HERE
Fairfax County will be furloughing all but public safety employees on January 2nd.
HARD CHOICES FOR PUBLIC SAFETY
Consider four engine companies, each staffed with a minimum of an officer, an apparatus operator and two firefighters. That represents 16 on-duty employees … actually you will need 20 employees to assure that 16 positions are filled.
You are told that there will only be eight available positions to staff the four engines starting next week.
- Do you staff two four-person engine companies?
- Do you staff three engines, two with a crew of three and one with a crew of two?
- Do you staff four two-person engine companies?
It is day three of this reduced staffing, and one of the eight remaining employees goes home sick. No overtime is available and there is no one left to fill the position.
If you decided to run two four-person engine companies, now will you:
- Run one three-person engine and two two-person engines?
- Run one four-person engine and one three person engine?
- Run one seven-person engine company?
I used these type of questions when teaching Fire Officer III, now most of us are living in a cruel economic reality.
I do not think there is a fire chief or budget officer that can beat this Kobayashi Maru scenario. As trekkies know, James T. Kirk cheated when he beat the scenario on his third attempt at the academy.
Earlier blog entries:
Mike “FossilMedic” Ward
The Voters Do Not Really Care …
Comments Off… unless it DIRECTLY affects them.
Dave Statter broke the story on a Monday death of a PG County, Maryland, resident. He was recovering from heart surgery and was having trouble breathing. When his wife called 9-1-1 at 11 am, the nearest fire station, 1.3 miles away, immediately sent an ambulance. The nearest fire station usually has a county-staffed paramedic ambulance, but that crew was furloughed for 12 hours, part of a budget-crunch response that will require every county employee to take 80 hours of unpaid leave by June 30th.
The nearest staffed paramedic ambulance was eight fire stations and 7.1 miles away. While dispatched the same time as the ambulance, it took an additional 8 minutes travel time. When the ambulance crew got to the patient’s side, they called in a “working code” that added a fire company. The (probably) two-person engine company arrived one minute after the paramedic ambulance. Go to HERE and HERE to get Statter’s well-documented report.
While this issue raises passion with insiders, it has no significant impact on the public. Unless you are directly affected. Here are two examples.
SEATTLE MEDIC ONE
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The Seattle paramedic program delivers a clinically excellent service. Most of the pre-hospital care research, as well as dozens of EMS medical directors, have come from the program designed by Doctor Michael Copass. We talked about the program HERE.
It also has a long history of struggling to maintain funding:
1970 Medic One research initiative. Partnership between Seattle Fire Department, University of Washington and Harborview Hospital.
1972 City Council declines to fund continuation of program.
Members of IAFF Local 27 scramble to fund the life-saving project from 1972 through 1979.
1974 60 Minutes runs “Best place to have a Heart Attack” feature
1979 establish a Metropolitan King County tax levy to fund Medic 1. Voted on every six years. Special Medic 1 tax levy funds the 22 paramedic ambulances in metro King County, including Seattle.
1997 only 56% of the voters approved the renewal of the levy, defeating Medic 1 funding.
Special referendum in Feb 1998 to restore funding.
IAFF Local 27 in high-profile campaign to pass the 2001 Medic 1 tax levy with enough funding to add four paramedic ambulances.
2007 Proposition 1 “Medic One Emergency Medical Services Renewal of Existing Property Tax Levy” passes with 83% approval after an 18 month campaign by labor and others.
THE PHILADELPHIA WORKLOAD
The Philadelphia Fire Department paramedic ambulance service has transport units exceeding 8,000 responses a year. For years the local media has run stories similar to Statter’s, documenting 40+ minute response times. The IAFF advocating that the city add 20 ambulances. I wrote about the problem HERE when a resident died New Year’s Day 2008. The department had to send two fire suppression rigs to provide enough oxygen while waiting over an hour for the first ambulance, that broke down onscene. She died by time the second ambulance arrived.
Long before the current economic crisis, both Philadelphia and Pittsburgh were in a muncipal version of bankruptcy. Legislation or court orders are merging city and county agencies and reducing the delivery of municipal services. While Philadelphia is getting some resources this fiscal year, most of their ambulances will continue to respond to 7,000+ calls a year.
Emergency services are facing budget cuts and resource restrictions of a magnitude that has not been seen since World War II. Monday’s experience in Largo, Maryland, will probably be repeated throughout the country. Municipal budget planners are warning that Fiscal Year 2010 (July 2009 – June 2010) will be worse than this budget year.
Mike “FossilMedic” Ward