“Fresh water, fresh ideas” was the theme of the International City and County Management Association (ICMA) meeting, held this past September in Milwaukee. With sessions like “Labor Relations in the Age of the ‘New Normal,’” “Show Me the Money,” “Using Data to Right Size Police and Fire,” “Public Pensions: Shedding Light on a Heated Debate,” “Asking Your Police and Fire Chiefs the Right Questions to get the Right Answers,” “Are You Bound by Tradition (with your EMS, Fire and Police Services)?” and “Moving from the Traditional to the Transitional,” it was pretty clear that fresh ideas wasn’t just a tired marketing slogan. This group meant business when it came to rethinking old paradigms.
Public safety makes up a significant (if not the major) portion of any community’s budget, so in these days of revenue decline and slashed budgets, it only makes sense it’s going to receive attention from city administrations. In some of the ICMA sessions I attended, there was open criticism about the way the fire service has fought change and generally has been a thorn in the side of city management. (“Two hundred years of tradition unimpeded by progress” was how one presenter framed the fire service’s reluctance to adopt new technologies and use data to improve service and cut staffing.) One private ambulance service executive in attendance said he was “shocked” (his word) at what he viewed as a sea change in the attitude of city managers. From his perspective, they had moved the debate from “Is radical change necessary?” in the provision of public safety to “What are the barriers to implementing new models?”
In my conversations with city managers and administrators (many of whom are from small and medium-sized communities), I got a fresh appreciation for the difficult juggling act they must embrace in dealing with elected officials, labor unions, special interests, and concerned but often uninformed citizens. Some were looking at their options for either privatizing EMS if they hadn’t already done so or relenting to a fire chief who wanted a bigger role in EMS. In just about every case, it was clear they were frustrated in trying to get straight answers and were themselves uneducated when it came to understanding how “a ride to the hospital in an ambulance” was just one part of a broader EMS system—and one that was evolving itself.
One of the keynote speakers at the conference was Bill George, former CEO of the Medtronic Corporation. In reiterating the theme of the conference, he acknowledged the intense pressure many communities find themselves under and the need for leadership to tackle sacred cows. He also paid tribute to the city and county managers in the audience as true public servants, ones who got into this business to make a difference in their communities.
You can help them in that goal by educating them about fire and EMS issues beyond the stereotypes and newspaper headlines. A good starting point is a white paper the ICMA commissioned last year on the topic. Get a copy, send it to your community’s administrator and get the conversation started.
Keith Griffiths can be reached at editorinchief@emergencybestpractices.com.
A free executive summary of the ICMA white paper, “Making Smart Choices About Fire and EMS in a Difficult Economy” by Jay Fitch, Mike Ragone and Keith Griffiths, is available at fitchassoc.com. Or you can purchase the entire report at http://bookstore.icma.org/product1.cfm?Product_ID=2126
