The Two Dirty Little Secrets Behind WHY Some Small County ESD Fire Departments are
Desperate for AUTO AID with the Austin Fire Department
Last week the American Statesman ran a story on the fragmentation of
fire response in Travis County. It left
the impression city and county residences needing help were being harmed
because not all fire departments were part of an AUTO AID agreement with the
Austin Fire Department. It painted
Austin Fire as unfriendly to those in need and fickle in whom it partnered with. The story was rift with innuendo, factual errors and
played into a cleverly orchestrated game of pubic opinion manipulation by one or more small county ESD fire departments seeking
to force Austin Fire to give them and all unqualified ESD's the full benefits of Auto Aid.
Let me offer up the real
motives (the “dirty little secrets”) behind this game of public opinion manipulation.
Secret # 1: Auto Aid keeps the poorly performing ESD
from being forced out of business because it provides them with all the resources they need but can't pay for themselves. Essentially its a subsidy using other taxpayer $$$$'s to keep the ESD viable.
Secret # 2:
It's about jobs, protecting
vested interestes. It keeps the ESD in the game so to speak; guaranteeing its staff and Fire Chief an
opportunity to be part of any consolidation into a County funded County Fire
Department.
Here are the facts the
American Statesman overlooked:
1.
An ESD is a fixed taxing district.
In Travis County
the 13 ESD’s are legacy operations of its
13 volunteer fire departments (when it really was a rural county and one
station was enough to manage the occasional grass fire, barn fire, trailer fire
or house fire). The entire county is
platted with ESD’s, expansion is not possible unless one ESD folds or merges
into another.
.
2.
Those ESD’s that
touch borders with the City of Austin have one common destiny: oblivion. This is because over time the City of Austin will
annex the ESD out of existence.
Annexation however is a slow death for the ESD because it never involves
the entire ESD, just the more valuable taxing areas. As those are annexed the ESD becomes
financially less and less capable of maintaining its basic service level. For the small ESD, their service delivery is
never high, and never up to national standards, so any compromise in funding
only tanks service capacity more.
Consider
this simple example: a structure fire takes, on average, 14-17 fire-fighters to
effectively manage and they need to be on-scene within 11 minutes if they want
to save lives and more than then foundation of the structure. Small ESD’s, like ESD 4, has an effective fire-fighting force of 8, two
engines and a chiefs truck, no ladder, and their stations are separated so far
apart it would take them 20 minutes to reach each other (and that is under
lights and siren conditions). In fire
fighting it’s the “effective force” you can mount in 11 minutes that matters. ESD 4 (and similar small ESD’s) can’t possibly
meet that under ideal conditions so as its tax revenues decline due to
annexation, it has real issues on how it meets service demand.
3.
“Mutual Aid” is the current stop-gap used by
the small ESD’s to bolster its ability to fight fires it could not otherwise
manage and all on the dime of other taxpayers.
They get free services just for yelling “help”. But Mutual Aid has two conditions for “free
help”:
a.
it requires the
ESD to “ask” for it, usually as it is responding to an incident
b.
it does not guarantee the ESD will get all the help it needs. Help
is offered only if other fire departments can spare resources.
4.
AUTO Aid is considered the gold
standard for Mutual Aid
because it eliminates the two problems noted with Mutual Aid. Under Auto Aid a fire department gets the full
backing of the other fire department(s) resources without question and without
delay. It happens automatically, hence
the term “Auto Aid”. For the struggling ESD's it is a perpetual
life-line that solves their lack of funding and their problems with providing
effective services.
To fully
appreciate how this high stakes game of manipulation is being orchestrated, one
only needs to look at the behind the scene maneuvering of ESD 4 Fire Chief. He pretends to not understand why
his ESD can’t have Auto Aid but he understands very, very well why that is so,
he is a retired Assistant Austin Fire Department Chief! This news story was a last ditch effort after
a variety of backdoor attempts to get what his ESD could not and should not
qualify for.
ESD 4’s Fire Chiefs first manipulative effort was
earlier this year with a good ol boy agreement with an adjacent ESD, ESD
9-Westlake for Auto Aid. Why ESD 9?
Because ESD 9 has Auto Aid with Austin Fire and by default ESD 4 would get Auto
Aid. Auto Aid with ESD 9 by itself
offers ESD 4 no strategic advantage, none.
Go look at a map of ESD’s and see for yourself. This was a calculated effort to get auto aid
via the back door. But Austin Fire
stopped it cold because they pointed out to the ESD 9 Fire Chief, a retired AFD
former Chief, the deal was being done solely to give ESD 4 something they did
not qualify for.
ESD 4’s Fire Chief’s second manipulation attempt was trying
to leverage neighborhood concerns about a cardiac arrest incident in an area
off City Park Road that the Austin Fire Department is responsible or but ESD 4
is closer too because of their station. Even
though both departments responded to this incident, several neighbors were
conveniently told that ESD 4 might have made the difference had they been sent
faster. Completely untrue since the
delay in dispatch was not more than a minute but it created enough community
stir for the ESD 4 Fire Chief to suggest the neighbors mount an email campaign
with the City Council asking that ESD 4 be granted Auto Aid.
ESD 4’s Fire Chief’s third effort was on the back-end
of the email campaign via a back room discussion with a City council member. The council member attempted to facilitate an
agreement with Austin Fire but was pushed back by management and the fire union, which pointed
out all the problems and implications of such a back room deal. The council member, not lacking in smarts, decided the smart move was to back off but encouraged the fire management to better articulate their auto aid
/ mutual aid policies.
ESD 4’s Fire Chief’s fourth attempt was manipulating
the American Statesman under the pretext he was just concerned about doing
right for those in need.
Factually, ESD 4 can’t provide an adequate level of
fire protection and there are others who are just as unprepared to do the same
for their ESD, including ESD 12-Manor, ESD 14-Volente, ESD 5- Manchaca, ESD 10-CeBar,
ESD-8-Pedernales. All of these ESD’s are
marginal players, and over use Mutual Aid.
They would love nothing more than to get out of Mutual Aid and become part of the Auto Aid club with AFD and AFD's partners (qualified ESD’s with
capacity, resources, staff, professional management and financial stability,
including ESD 2-Pflugerville, ESD 6-Lake Travis and ESD 11-Southeast) and all the Auto Aid benefits. But it’s a
bad deal for Travis County (and the City of Austin) because it keeps marginal ESD’s on the playing field
when they should just go away and be folded into a more functional and
competent fire department.
Travis County is not a rural county anymore (news
flash Statesman), it has pockets of rural life, especially to the east, but the majority of its
demographics are centered squarely in suburban and urban-suburban areas. All of which means the public expects public
safety services similar to the urban performance level. Unfortunately, that is not the case for those
of us who are serviced by small under resourced ESD’s that cannot manage even
the basic fire, let alone the more challenging fire without calling in mutual
aid from its neighbors. I have said it
before and will continue to say it again and again Travis County has outgrown
its need for 13 ESD’s, and all the duplication in management, and
administration. It needs one County Fire
Department.
None of this is hard to fix, it is simple stuff but it takes county
politicians and their administrative managers, and their ESD Board appointees to
do what is right by the taxpayers, the folks who count on getting the help they
need when it is needed. And right now, not all areas of Travis County are getting
decent services. I’m certainly not getting
much quality from my ESD. It’s time to
stop the games, stop the politics, stop the manipulation for personal benefit
and take the actions required to assure Travis County has high quality
emergency services.
In the interim I would like to offer some suggestions for managing
mutual aid, auto aid and dealing with the under-resourced ESD's that survive off of Mutual Aid and the good will of the larger City / County fire departments:
1.
Austin Fire and
the two biggest ESDs in Travis County- ESD 2-Pflugerville and ESD 6-Lake Travis
need to ratify a common standard for Auto Aid and Mutual Aid and stick with it.
2.
Auto Aid should
be the gold standard and only offered to truly qualified fire departments. The reward is once Travis County is able to
consolidate its ESD’s into one county fire department, Auto Aid standards between
the City and County will be easy to implement and maintain. Fire Services will become a defacto form of metro
government.
3.
Small ESD’s that
continually use mutual aid to offset their lack of ability should be charged a
hefty service fee for any mutual aid beyond the closest engine. Period.
4.
ESD 4 continues
to survive because the Austin Fire Department generously manages 3 of its 5
response areas. AFD needs to stop
letting ESD 4 play off of its goodwill and return responsibility for these
areas to ESD 4. Granted, ESD 4 is
chopped up because of City annexation, but that is part of the natural process
and does not make the City responsible for what the ESD can and can’t do. And lets remember, Austin Fire offered to take
over all of ESD 4’s fire protection services for just their tax revenues and they have been repeatedly rebuffed, ignored and demonized for their efforts.
5. ESD 12-Manor also continues to survive because of the
generous support it gets from Austin Fire, ESD 2 and ESD 11. Its time to stop the free service other than
one engine on mutual aid from only one department (the closest station). I understand the consequences of this suggestion. It will create the emotional charged
accusation of putting people at risk but those who sling such claims are
attempting to use emotional blackmail to force support from other taxpayer
funded fire departments. It’s a classic ploy to distract from the
reality of a highly dysfunctional ESD that is not serving its residents well and frankly, should be out of the business of doing so.
ESD Boards that oversee these marginal ESD fire departments have the
ability right now to quickly remedy the problem by contracting out fire services to a
better-qualified ESD or with the Austin Fire Department (its called "doing what is right for the community and the taxpayer"). If the ESD Board refuses to make the best
decision for the taxpayer, it is Travis County’s fiduciary responsibility to
replace the entire ESD Board as soon as possible. Travis County needs to start acting like a responsible entity
that cares for its taxpayers and provide the political leadership necessary to remedy this public safety crisis.
Bottom Line:
I understand the human drama and angst behind
the threat of losing jobs, but in public safety, service, high quality service,
is always first and foremost because it is all about saving lives. It is never about employment, or keeping the
door open for the possibility of a better employment deal with Travis County or
whatever unethical rational some attempt to offer to justify actions
contrary to the public good. In life
saving services, which the ESD’s are in, nothing else should trump the priority
of providing the taxpayer with the very best of emergency services. As a career public safety
professional I take special offense when another public safety colleague
blatantly tries to subvert this priority using public safety as the
purported concern, when it is anything but public safety. This Machiavellian
“end justifies the means” has no place in public safety. Fire Chiefs and their ESD Boards are in one business
only: serving the tax-payer and that’s what they need to do. If they can’t serve their constituents appropriately because
they lack the resources (for whatever reason) then they need to take the
honorable action of stepping aside to allow other more qualified and capable
fire departments to step in and provide the appropriate service. ESD
Boards that involve themselves in or tacitly support unethical and public
unfriendly endeavors by their management, as highlighted in this post, need to be
replaced immediately by Travis County.
In similar fashion, the new ESD Board should immediately replace the
offending Fire Chief. Manipulating
public opinion has absolutely no place in the business of public safety.
The one option the MAG Consultants prefer and recommend: 
