How to provide Austin with higher quality emergency medical response and better overall services at HALF THE COST to the TAXPAYER!

 Open Letter to the City of Austin Council and Executive Management

I have offered my opinion before on how to provide our community with higher quality emergency medical response and better overall services at half the cost.  I’d like to offer another consideration along the same theme but it offers even better outcomes than what was suggested earlier in reconfiguring EMS response for the City of Austin. 

There are three countywide and one tri-county EMS system (similar demographics to the City of Austin) that would be worth looking at as an alternative to the present configuration used by the City of Austin.  Their approach provides their communities with faster response, better quality pre-hospital medicine and at NO TAXPAYER SUBSIDY. For one of the systems it also provides funding (at no taxpayer expense) for AEDs for ALL law enforcement vehicles (police and sheriff) that are now part of the countywide first response network.  It is an extraordinary approach to building a viable and high quality EMS system and worth your time and attention given the potential it could offer in saving tax dollars and dramatically improving EMS services. 

The four “systems” are Portland, Oregon (a three county system), San Mateo County, California, Solano County, California, and Contra Costa County, California.  Each of these county operations have similar demographics to Austin. 

Each “system” is a combination public/private configuration.  The public side of the system is fire based paramedic first responders, and the private side an ambulance transport vendor.  What is so fascinating about their approach is that all of the governments “bid” out the “rights” to provide countywide ambulance service.  The ambulance vendor “pays” each county fees for the exclusive franchise rights for 9-1-1 transport services.  For example, in the Portland EMS System, one of the three participating county’s is Washington County, and they receive over $424,000 a year in franchise fee for this exclusivity (and that is just one of the three county’s for the Portland EMS System).  The money the private vendor pays for the “rights” to serve a county are typically used by the county to fund its EMS oversight operation and system medical direction.  All of this is under a very sophisticated performance contract which stipulates response times by geo-zones (urban-8 minutes, rural-11 minutes, frontier-30 minutes) at 90% or greater performance compliance, regulates the fee structure patients can be charged for transport services, vehicle requirements, employee compensation minimums, including benefits, work conditions, etc.   Not only are their response standards more rigorous than what the City of Austin requires from its own EMS Department but their basic fee structure for services are equivalent to user fee's charged by the City EMS Department for its services. It is also worth noting, the salary a 6 year private paramedic earns in this "system" averages $64,000, not including overtime.  They work 8 & 12 hours shifts.  You will find this competitive to what Austin pays its municipal ambulance paramedic. 

What makes this approach even more attractive for a city like Austin is its existing franchise process for non-emergency ambulance transports.   The city could easily and profitably offer to grant exclusive emergency and non-emergency services to a single private ambulance vendor based on “highest” bid basis.  The profitability of that offering would be very attractive to any well-managed and professional run private ambulance vendor.  The potential savings in taxpayer dollars could be enormous even though a portion of the savings in EMS costs would have to be reinvested in the enhancement of Austin Fire Department first response medical capability it would still offer taxpayer savings for other much needed city projects. Not only would the city get a more reliable and higher quality ambulance response network (at no cost to the city) but an expanded and enhanced fire first response that would dramatically improve the ability to get a first responder paramedic to the side of a patient in 6 minutes or less, all at a cost substantially less than what the City pays now for its ambulance operation.  It would also solve the 4 person staffing issue for Austin Fire and resolve the concern about the added staffing cost being without merit or benefit.  Adding paramedic capacity (or EMT-intermediate in certain cases) to the 4^th position offers unquestionable benefit because of its dual productivity: fire-fighting and paramedic.  The key difference is the cost for this additional duty is an annual stipend of $7,500.  Contrast that to the annual salary of a tenured EMS paramedic who does only one job: $65,000, not including overtime.  The fire-fighter-paramedic is substantially cheaper, gets to the scene faster and offers better quality medicine because time to scene matters in life-threatening emergencies.

Even if you back out the user fee’s the City EMS Department claims offsets 50% of its operational cost, the net cost to city taxpayers is still over $15,000,000 a year.  Contrast the Austin EMS System with these no subsidy high performance EMS systems and its very clear Austin is getting short changed… by about $15,000,000 a year… and that amount will only grow each year.

Ambulance transport is a profit center under the private ambulance model, and a loss leader (big one at that) under government simply because government cannot work at the same pace and under the same private protections the private business can.  Government has special rules that offer the public protection from unethical Tammany Hall practices but they play havoc on its ability to act as a business enterprise.  

The rule of thumb for good government is if the area of service is already efficiently provided by the private sector, its best to let that portion of services fall under private service contract using best practices and a well-written performance contract.   

Government does best in the high risk or regulatory, no profit center areas of service like fire fighting, rescue, medical first response and law enforcement or other regulatory services.  

 Ambulance transport operations, in urban areas like Austin, would be better managed under a performance contract with a well qualified, ambulance contractor. 

When Austin got into ambulance transport no such private solution existed, at least not in this state, but after 30 years a lot has changed.  The private ambulance industry has evolved into a highly refined service operation that offers better services (transporting from point A to B)  and, under the right contract configuration (performance contracting),  can provide those services to a government without a taxpayer subsidy.

By shifting the role of government from a very expensive, subsidy based ambulance transport program with terrible performance, to a rapid response paramedic first response (fire medics on Austin Fire Department apparatus) you reduce the time to a life-threatening emergency from the current 10-12 minutes to an average 5-6 minute or less response time  (50-60% faster).  Plus the cost for outfitting a first response vehicle with equipment and trained fire-fighter medics is around $150,000 per vehicle, about 1/10^th the cost of an ambulance. If transport is required, the private contractor provides those services under a very structured performance contract and all cost for these services are paid for as noted by user fees.  Its win-win for all involved. Taxpayers get better emergent service and the cost savings can, in turn, be used to improve fire services, police services, parks, libraries, etc.   

It is also worth noting the City could still retain some of its ambulance operation specific to the high priority acutely critical calls, all other lower priority call types would be managed by referral to the private ambulance contractor.  My point is that the City continues to support a public safety program that is no longer meeting its base mission and has become a huge drain on public safety funding, and will continue to do so.  There are better, faster, cheaper options that deliver exceptional performance at much cheaper costs to the taxpayer, example: Seattle, a highly respected fire based operation, clinically sophisticated and provides exceptional emergency medical services to its residents.  Seattle uses a public/private model.  The fire department operates a small fleet of critical care "medic" units for the critical call types and paramedic first response engines, supplemented by a private ambulance provider to manage transports for the lower priority call types.  The quality of Seattle's fire paramedics provide clinical care far and above what Austin's EMS operation offers.  

Before I close, one question that will undoubtedly be raised is what happens to the existing city EMS ambulance staff?  The short answer is they would be integrated into the fire department, trained as fire-fighters.  Those who could not meet the physical qualifications or would prefer not to “fight fires” as a secondary role, could be grandfathered into a transition status under their existing salary structure, and operate the fire departments critical care ambulances I mentioned above.  As those individuals retired or left for other career reasons, their positions would be absorbed into the fire ops side.  The initial cost savings for the city would be in eliminating all the duplications in management, logistics, and the reduction in required ambulances.  With the potential for 44+ paramedic first response vehicles, you don’t need as many ambulances, and as ambulance paramedics are transitioned over to fire-fighting, the ambulances they staffed could be shifted to the private ambulance vendor. It also offers the benefit and cost savings of eliminating the currently proposed EMS civil service option with all its layers of expensive and redundant bureaucracy which only adds to the complexity and overall cost of union negotiations for public safety. 

I will be happy to offer you RFP’s used by these counties to select their ambulance vendors, including a full description of performance requirements if you are interested.   They offer great background on how they operate and will shed some interesting light on how Austin could also operate.

Below are some contact references you or your staff can use to verify what I am offering.  All but one is specific to Washington County (Portland EMS System).  Feel free to grill them on their operation; I am betting you will find all are very candid and forthcoming. 

 

Metro West Ambulance-Washington County Ambulance Contractor

Larry Boxman            Director of Operations       

503-648-6658         

larryb@metrowest.fm  

Washington County (Portland EMS System)

Jonathan Chin         EMS Administrative Supervisor- Washington County

971-226-4507

503-846-4956

jonathan_chin@co.washington.or.us

Tualatin Valley Fire Rescue-Washington County

MarK Stevens           EMS Batt Chief- Tualatin Valley Fire Rescue

503-649-8577

mark.stevens@tvfr.com

Abaris Group EMS Consultants-Developed RFP for Portland EMS System

Mike Williams           President

mwilliams@abarisgroup.com

Hope this helps.  If you would like more info, I’ll be happy to visit with you. 

Gordon Bergh

Retired (2006) City of Austin- Assistant Director-EMS
Small Business Owner

Why Travis County Residents Are Poorly Served By Travis County’s Inter-Local for Ambulance Service with the City of Austin

The current EMS inter-local between the Travis County and the City of Austin does not serve the Travis County taxpayer or most importantly the patient.

The average response time for a City of Austin ambulance IN Travis County is over 16 minutes!  In a life-threatening emergency, brain cells begin to die after 4 minutes, and after 6 minutes, the potential for successful resuscitation falls to the single digits.  Those County residents who do get pulled back from the brink of death do so not because of the ambulance but because of the local fire department fire fighters who respond to these calls and the air rescue services provided by Travis County’s STARFlight helicopters.   For this extraordinarily bad performance Travis County forks over an amazing amount of taxpayer money (over $12,500,000) with virtually no control over the services provided.  Even worse, the inter-local does not allow Travis County to utilize existing qualified area fire department resources to mange cost of service and improves response time.  The inter-local offers only a City of Austin solution at a whopping $1.5 million dollars per ambulance and for 2013, the City is proposing another hefty $4,500,000 increase in its cost for services (33% increase)!   To fully appreciate the problem, Travis County could pay to put dual role fire-fighter paramedics on EVERY fire truck in Travis County, maintain higher training quality under a contract with Seton and the UT medical school than the City’s ambulance medics receive under their in-house program and have their own medical director with far more active and transparent oversight of paramedic performance than the City ambulance medical director provides to the County fire department EMT's now, for $4,050,000 ($450,000 less than what the City is proposing for just 4 ambulances and it would reduce response times from 16 minutes to under 8 for county suburban areas and under 12 minutes for rural areas.   The three proposed City of Austin ambulances would improve response times by only about 1-1.5 minutes.  Of course, Travis County doesn't need all its fire apparatus staffed with a paramedic, my point is to simply illustrate how a more common sense approach in delivering EMS can save lots of taxpayer dollars and dramatically improve response time AND capacity.  Travis County needs to do what is right for the patient AND its taxpayers by fixing the existing contract issues with the City of Austin.    

Where’s the Problem?

The City/County Inter-Local has no substantive performance requirements for EMS services other than vague references, my favorite: “ provide emergency medical services in accordance with recognized standards to access, triage, treat, evacuate and transport patients in the most timely manner possible” (and which standards would those be?). 

Additionally, it provides:

• no direct financial controls,
• no accounting of direct services costs by ambulance management,
• no managerial accountability of any type, and
• no transparency in any phase of the services provided

In fact, this inter-local essentially requires Travis County to sign away its contractual "rights" for ambulance contract oversight under the assumption an "EMS system" approach through a inter-governmental partnership provides the county with maximum benefit. 

Unfortunately, what may have provided maximum benefit 25 or even 15 years ago is no longer the case given other cheaper, faster, higher quality EMS delivery options. It essentially relegates Travis County to the role of contractual hostage to a City of Austin managed ambulance service where County needs are always second to those of the City. 

What makes this even more amazing is this particular inter-local agreement has been going on for 25 years, but it has:

·      Never been Independently audited,

·      Never competitively bid  

·      Consistently delivers mediocre to poor service for county residents (and I happen to be one of those) at an extraordinarily high cost for those services 

Violates Core Tenets of Responsible EMS Contracting

This City/County EMS inter-local agreement VIOLATES EVERY CORE TENET of responsible EMS contracting (Ref: The American Ambulance Associations Guidebook- Best Practices in Designing, Managing and Contracting for Emergency Ambulance Service).  

What’s so revealing in this quoted reference is it represents the gold standard for the private ambulance industry inter-governmental contracting.   Typically governments have higher performance standards than private industry for matters of public safety, but for the City/County EMS inter-local, there are no standards of any consequence or value even close to private EMS industry standards, which should be a BIG RED FLAG for Travis County leadership! .  The irony is the privates have HIGHER STANDARDS for public services than either Travis County or the City of Austin.  I am not promoting privatization as the solution, but its worth noting not only for the above reason but because the City’s EMS Union has tried to depict ambulance privatization as a step down when in terms of patient services and cost to the taxpayer for Travis County it would be a step up! 

To fully appreciate how bad the Travis County EMS Inter-local really is, compare it to the following contracting essentials and see for yourself how poorly written the EMS Inter-Local really is. 

Best Practices in Contracting for Emergency Ambulance Service

#1: Hold the EMS service accountable-TC’s EMS Inter-local does not.

Every ambulance service should be evaluated on its ability to deliver results in the areas of clinical excellence, response-time reliability, economic efficiency, bill collection and customer satisfaction. This should be accomplished through performance-based assessment.  A high-performance emergency ambulance service achieves clinical excellence, response-time reliability, economic efficiency, and customer satisfaction—simultaneously. The designated emergency ambulance provider should be required to meet or exceed specified levels of performance in each of these four operational areas. Without accountability, there are no assurances.

• Travis County Inter-local has no stipulations to hold the City of Austin Ambulance Department (EMS) accountable for its performance.  
• There are no meaningful performance outcomes for ambulance response time
• There is no penalty for under performance or incentives for exceptional performance
• There are no monthly data  reporting requirements
• There are no performance requirements for financial controls
• There are no economic efficiencies identified
• There are no clinical benchmarks (other than CPR save rate which represents less than 1% of the work load and is not an indicator of overall effectiveness or clinical competence)
• Bottom line: there are no contractual repercussions for the City of Austin's Ambulance Department for any of their activities, operational, clinical or financial

What are the consequences? 

• At an average 16 minute response time the ability of the ambulance paramedics to make a difference in saving a life is clinically impossible.
• The City ambulance department consistently recommends annual increase in City & County funded ambulances based on a computerized dispatching program that has never been audited for accuracy.  In fact, the City ambulance departments own Medical Director complains that the computer aided dispatching program the City uses to prioritize 9-1-1 medical calls is inherently “flawed and should not be used or relied on for determining future ambulance resource needs”. 
• After the City ambulance department invested millions of dollars in a electronic patient record keeping system, which Travis County had to pay its 30% share, the billing process which was suppose to see huge dollar improvements in its efficiencies, requiring less billing staff remains terribly back logged (45 days) and for the fiscal year 2011 the City approved "adding" billing staff.  So much for cost savings and improved services. 
• Just for fiscal year 2010, STARFlight medical billings, which until recently have been managed under the inter-local by the City ambulance billing section, was discovered to be over $2,500,000 in arrears just for medicare bills!   Any idea how many dollars they are behind in ground ambulance billing?! 
• There is no independent customer satisfaction appraisal process to gauge user satisfaction other than a annual sampling the City does for its various departments, and a less than objective, outdated ambulance department customer service process
• The City ambulance management's only solution for their poor performance is recommendations that Travis County add more  ambulance resources (at over $1,500,000 per unit). For fiscal year 2013, the ambulance director is pushing for Travis County to fund three more ambulances at a cost of almost $5,000,000 and will only improve services by "2%".   An expensive solution given other cheaper and more effective management options including better utilization of existing ambulances using dynamic deployment and peak load staffing, and upgrading County ESD's (fire departments) to paramedic first response (at $150,000 per fire apparatus, considerably cheaper than adding ambulances). 

#2:  Establish an independent oversight entity- TC’s EMS Inter-local does not.

This is a body that has an arm's-length relationship with a provider organization and regularly monitors how it is performing. It periodically requires independent outside audits. To be effective, the independent oversight entity should consist of an unaffiliated and objective group of people selected for their expertise in specific professional disciplines required in the development and oversight of the emergency ambulance service. Community representation on the independent oversight entity should include leaders from areas such as the following:

• Legal

• Accounting

• Business

• Medicine

• Patient advocacy

• Hospital and/or health care

• Local government (elected official)

• Travis County has no "independent" oversight, only a toothless body called the EMS Advisory Panel which meets for one hour, every  month.  It was purposely made impotent by the City to minimize its oversight potential. 
• To effectively manage a "vendor" for emergency ambulance service, be it another government or a private contractor, there MUST be effective oversight including monthly review of actual performance data and regular outside audits of the contract.  
• As noted, this contract has never been independently audited or any consideration given to competitively bidding out service to qualified governmental agencies (example: county fire departments) or private ambulance contractors (example: AMR, Paramedics Plus) over its entire 25 year history.  A fundamental violation in contract best practices. 
• Additionally, the City ambulance management has told County administration their requests for ambulance performance data specific to ESD jurisdictions “yields no benefit” even though this was requested to aid the County and ESD’s in evaluating  how to serve emergency patients more effectively.   In fact the ambulance director stated to a Travis County executive sharing such information with the ESD’s would be “dangerous”.   
• To date, both Travis County and the City Ambulance Departments own Medical Director, have been refused direct access to the agency's computer aided dispatch data on ambulance response and all patient related data from the agency's "paramedic run forms"  for independent performance assessment and medical oversight.  

#3:  Account for all service costs- TC’s EMS Inter-local does not.

An effective emergency ambulance service accounts for all its costs—direct, indirect, and shared.  Cost calculations should include labor, medical communications center, buildings, vehicles, equipment, supplies, liability exposure, administrative overhead, and independent oversight costs.

• In spite of the language in the inter-local allowing only "at cost" expenses, the City of Austin regularly over prices its various direct and indirect services to Travis County. 
• Example:  billing for STARFlight:  earlier in the year the cost for this service was $250,000 but the price "magically" shrunk to under $20,000 when the City became aware Travis County was seeking outside bill collecting services. 
• None of the ambulance cost are itemized with specific correlation between cost for the item and benefit to Travis County residents for the services it receives. 
• None of the new or supplemental costs are required to be OK'd by Travis County's auditor first.
• None of the ambulance service costs are regularly accounted for and certified accurate by an independent audit authority.

#4:  Require system features that ensure economic efficiency- TC’s EMS Inter-local does not.

The volume and location of medical emergencies vary by hour of day and day of week. To reflect this reality, ambulance deployment should be based on geographically deploying the right number of ambulances according to historical call demand and redeploying as events occur. In contrast, “fixed base” or “static” deployment (which is the model the City uses for ambulance deployment), in which shift schedules and unit locations are fixed, is generally discouraged and should not occur other than in remote, low-volume locations.

• The City ambulance operation does not match staffing with demand, resulting in not enough resources during peak demand, and too many during low demand periods. 

• Travis County could use more of its ambulance assets during peak periods and a smaller number for slow periods, supplementing the gaps in service with beefed up ESD first response paramedic engine companies at 1/10th the cost of an ambulance and 40% -60% faster. 
• It could also hold on dispatching a county ambulance resource for the lower priority medical calls until first response confirms a need for patient transport. Rather than fixed deployments, Travis County ambulances should use a combo of fixed and dynamic deployment based on demand levels.  Fixed for slow periods, dynamic for busy periods.    Plus, the two paramedic  supervisors (who drive fully equipped paramedic vehicles), and are paid by Travis County, per the inter-local to oversee county ambulance staff and operations, should be routinely required to stay in the county and actively integrate into ambulance gap coverage when a county ambulance is on a call.     

#5: Ensure long-term high-performance service- TC’s EMS Inter-local does not.

This includes requiring results-oriented performance standards to be met, and then either benchmarking the clinical and financial performance against other recognized high-performance services or engaging in competitive procurement

• Travis County has no such standards.  At the very least the County should bring in a professional EMS contract consultant to establish requirements for ambulance service with clear, concise, measurable performance requirements centered on patient services and cost controls, and cross reference performance between cost of service, quality of care and customer satisfaction (none of which is achieved under the present inter-local agreement).   
  
  

Why does Travis County continue to renew a service agreement that cost more than what other communities pay for comparable EMS service and delivers far less?

The answer:

Travis County, like most municipal and county governments, lacks in-house executive administrative expertise with professional experience and knowledge of EMS best practices, performance contracting and the EMS industry in general. 

What to do?

Solve the one-sided contracting problems and the County regains the critical foot hold needed to responsibly address the future direction of ambulance services and EMS for Travis County.  It does not mean the County has to pull out of a "the present EMS system", it can still be an active participant but under it own terms including how ambulance and first response is delivered in its area of "the system".  But, the County can no longer ignore these contract problems and if it does, only guarantee more of the same: poor service, high operational cost, no say, no control, no standards. 

To Travis County's credit they have taken the first big step and hired an experienced consultant team to evaluate the current EMS level of services.  The results of the consultants report was no surprise, ambulance service is not good in Travis County (that is in terms of operational management, deployment and response, not the quality of the paramedic services once it gets on scene).   Now Travis County must take the next step and hire another professional EMS consultant group with proven EMS contract experience, including writing a real EMS performance contract, developing a master plan for integrating County Fire Department paramedic first response and ambulance operations, and developing a competitive procurement process for county-wide EMS services or more dramatic, a process to cede direct responsibilities for EMS to qualified County ESD fire departments (of the current 13 ESD's, only 6 would fall into this category but they cover the majority of County population).   In the interim, at the very least, the next pending EMS inter-local agreement should be modified as follows:

.   

      1)  The County’s Purchasing and Audit Departments should manage the EMS inter-local with support from the County Emergency Services Executive and the County’s EMS Officer (STARFlight Program Manager).  This joint sharing of oversight provides the critical  financial depth and experience in contract oversight that does not exist in the County’s emergency services section.  This group should also be authorized to use outside legal counsel familiar with performance specific EMS contracting as its counsel and guide for managing the contract and developing new service contracts to be competitively bid for all future service contracts. 

      2)  Either the Auditors Office or preferably an independent accounting firm familiar with this type of service contract should audit the inter-local annually.  Poor performance should be financially penalized as they are in other communities and in turn exceptional performance should be rewarded financially also.

Travis County EMS Consultant Report

 Travis County EMS Consultant Report

 For those interested, the following link will provide a copy of Travis County's EMS Consultant Report on Existing Ambulance ("EMS") Services and Options to Improve.  The report is a 145 page PDF file.  

Overall, the study offers a balanced assessment of the current problems Travis County has in its inter-local agreement with the City of Austin for ambulance services and medical direction. Two disappointments: it lacks depth in financial modeling which I think is essential in driving home key points and is missing an analysis on the productivity and effectiveness of the City's  "EMS Office of the Medical Director".  Regardless, the report does a decent job laying out the issues, for example:

• Within the past 5 years costs have sky-rocketed 48%, but ambulance response time continues to average an abysmal 18 minutes and the city ambulance service ("EMS") only solution for their poor performance is for the County to contract for more ambulances at a whopping $1.8 million per ambulance.  
• The City continues to resist financial transparency or accountability and Travis County has no contractual control over the services it receives or its costs.  
• The ambulance union and its crony medical director (whose budget is one of the highest in the nation, approaching $1.0 million dollars annually)  fights to keep county fire departments from putting their own paramedics on fire trucks even though it would dramatically improve response time, improve patient care and costs 1/18th the price of an ambulance (for one ambulance you could outfit 18 fire trucks with paramedics, that's a lot better coverage for county residents and a far better deal for taxpayers). 

There are also a few noteworthy  kudos for the City regarding the clinical care the ambulance medics provide (when they finally get on the scene), improvements in bill collection and revenues and improvement in City ambulance response time.   The report also highlights other "EMS systems" to give some comparative perspective and provides a series of options for improving existing services.   

The one option the MAG Consultants prefer and recommend: 

Consolidating all County fire departments (ESD's)  into single county funded fire department and adding EMS services and a dedicated County EMS Medical Director along with merging County Emergency Management, Fire Marshal Services and STARFLIGHT Air Rescue operations into the same operational entity.  

Worth a read.

I'll offer more comments on why I believe its time to  merge county fire departments into one county-wide operation and my preferences on how Travis County should improve its emergency ambulance services in my next post.

Here's the link for your own PDF copy of the EMS Consultant Report:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17565395/PUBLIC%20SHARED%20FIlES/MAG%20EMS%20Report%20for%20Travis%20County%2011%204%2011-1.pdf

The Two Dirty Little Secrets Behind WHY Some Small County ESD Fire Departments are Desperate for AUTO AID with the Austin Fire Department

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.   

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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.