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:

Fire chief position remains vacant:

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

Traditional and untraditional reductions of service.

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Improvements in fire suppression coverage:

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.

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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)