Fiscal Year Frustrations – 3 Unique Budget Factors A Fire Chief Can Use

The Fiscal Year 2019-2020 budget started July 1. The curated daily news posts on the Company Commander Facebook page paint a diverse picture of the start of this budget year. There are severe constraints in many communities creating conflict and loss.

Unlike the federal budget, state and local government have to create and maintain a balanced budget. There are much tighter restraints on local governments borrowing money than at the federal level. (Morgan, Robinson, Strachota & Hough 2015). Here are some of the Fiscal Year 2019-2020 issues we have been following:

The fire chief is terminated as the jurisdiction reduces fire suppression coverage:

• Turlock, California – Fire Chief Robert Talloni was terminated before the city partially closes one of the four city fire stations at the start of FY2019-2020 budget.
• Farmersville, California – Fire Chief John Crivello’s job, originally funded through a SAFER grant, not funded by the city for FY2019-2020, converted to a volunteer position.
• King William County, Virginia – Terminates Fire Chief Andy Aigner as it deals with deployment and staffing issues. Hired 2 Richmond company officers to be part-time battalion chiefs.

Fire chief position remains vacant:

• Providence, Rhode Island – Fire Chief’s position unfilled for 4 years, now to be abolished
• Mills, Wyoming – First attempted to fire all 9 paid firefighters to reduce the budget by $1M. Agreed to maintain staffing in a 1-year labor agreement for FY 2019-2020. Attempting to appoint a fire chief with no fire or ems experience.
• Kauai County, Hawaii – Enters year 2 in search of a fire chief
• Bradley, Illinois – possible merge with another department

Scramble to provide enough funds to repair/replace essential resource:

• Mead County, South Dakota – Voted down the creation of fire-ems district in December, now wants Sturgis City to continue to provide 9-1-1 ambulance service. Sturgis has incurred $85,000 deficit serving the area.
• Menomonee Falls, Wisconson – All five engine companies out of service due to mechanical issues.
• Colorado Springs, Colorado – 20% of front-line apparatus are 18 years or older. Safety issues that injured firefighters are sidelining some older rigs.

Traditional and untraditional reductions of service.

• Rochester, NY – Rotating brown-out of fire stations
• Portland, Maine – Closes Engine Company 1, reducing from 5 to 4 engine companies
• Monterey County, California – 5 North County Fire Protection District firefighters laid off.
• Flint, Michigan – Sends layoff notices to 6 firefighters whose positions were funded with a SAFER grant.
• Ashland, Oregon – Fire Chief Mike D’Orazi resigns to preserve three firefighter positions.
• Cedar Falls, Iowa – Replacing fire battalion chiefs and fire company commanders with police-experienced Public Safety Officers with minimum fire training and no suppression experience.

Improvements in fire suppression coverage:

• Prince William County, Virginia – Finally gets 24/7 career staffing in all 22 fire stations.
• Andover, Massachusetts, Goes from driver-only to 2 person team for Truck 1

We have also followed the proposed significant layoffs of firefighters in Houston, Texas, and Patterson, New Jersey. Houston Proposition B referendum was ruled unconstitutional. Patterson found other ways to balance the budget.

What does this mean for you?

The research identified three unique local government budget factors:

1. Local governments are closest to the citizens and more accessible in bearing the burden of frustration that citizens experience in paying their taxes.
2. A large number of government jurisdictions at the local level encourages a spirit of cooperation.
3. Most local governments have a different political structure than the federal and state levels of government.

The local system encourages greater cooperation between the legislative and executive functions of government. Taken together, these factors create a political logic at the local level that is far different from the logic dominating the budgetary process at the federal level. (Morgan, Robinson, Strachota & Hough 2015)

Community needs will always exceed the available resources. Financial and political pressures on local government may result in more “creative” approaches to fire protection services. For example, Cedar Falls, Iowa, promotes the Public Safety Officer model – training police officers in firefighting tasks – as a way to save personnel cost and increase the number of responders to an incident.

The implication of these creative approaches means that fire department leadership (command and labor) should develop new or expanded relations with other local government agencies as well as the community. Become an indispensable community asset by discovering new ways to provide service under our all-hazards mission. When more of the community has a positive experience, we increase our political base of support.

Follow the money

Governmental budgets are a way of collecting and spending the public’s money as efficiently as possible. The budget is also a political document. Priorities are established, and the expenditures of revenues are allocated in line with these priorities. Requiring a balanced budget forces elected officials to exercise financial discipline. (Truchil 2018)

The fire department’s budget is determined by the elected officials, guided by the jurisdiction’s budget and administrative officers. Others that influence this budget process are nonprofit service providers, private market-sector organizations, and other community partners. Consider public-private partnerships to meet specific needs. For example, a lodging professional group paid for half of the purchase price of a new aerial that would be assigned to the fire station covering the new highrise hotels in a resort community.

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Morgan DF, Robinson KS, Strachota D, & Hough JA (2015). Budgeting for Local Governments and Communities. New York: Routledge.

Truchil, BE (2018) The Politics of Local Government: Governing in Small Towns and Suburbia. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

Featured image: A sign posted on the Rochester Fire Department’s Monroe Avenue station on Monday, July 1, 2019. (Photo: Brian Sharp/@sharproc)