Travis County ESD Board of Commissioner Appointments- Like Making Sausage-You Don’t Want to Know

The concept of an ESD Board is pretty simple: 
  Being an advocate, a fiduciary, for the taxpayers it serves and rigorously insures their interest comes first, all the time.

As the taxpayer advocate and fiduciary,  the ESD Board has one single responsibility: 
Utilizing the tax dollars the ESD collects to provide the best fire protection possible with the dollars it has available.
  
   

The mechanism for such oversight is best described as an arms-length relationship between the five-member ESD Board and either its Fire Chief,  if they operate their own fire department or the fire department they contract with for fire fighting services (four (4) ESD's contract with volunteer fire departments: ESD 14-Volente, ESD 10-Ce-Bar, ESD 8- Pedernales, ESD 5- Manchaca,).  In either case, they are responsible for hiring AND firing the Fire Chief or the contract fire department based on their performance and ability to serve the taxpayers efficiently and effectively.  When either or both of these performance aspects are not being achieved, it is the ESD Boards responsibility to find the best remedy available to provide its taxpayers with the highest quality emergency services, including, replacing the Fire Chief, replacing the contract fire department, or merging with another ESD.     

But in Travis County, not all ESD Board of Commissioners operate from the noble and honorable side of being the taxpayer’s advocate and fiduciary.  Some are nothing more than cronies of the Fire Chief or the volunteer fire department they contract services with, others lack the type of business and professional experiences essential for this level of oversight responsibility.   It is the proverbial “looking glass” scenario where the board shifts advocacy from looking out for the best interest of the taxpayer to the classic “rubber stamp” operation FOR the very management or volunteer organization it is designed to independently oversee on behalf of those who pay the bills.  Its just like sausage, you really don’t want to know how its made but in emergency services, what you don’t know could injury, or kill you, your family or your neighbors. 

ESD Boards are appointed by the elected County Commissioners, specifically by the County Commissioner whose district has the ESD within its boundaries.   The Commissioner submits their “pick” for ESD Board appointment to the entire Commissioner Court who routinely extend political courtesy and rubber stamp the recommendation with a full court vote of approval. 

The problem is how the appointee is selected.  There is no independent / objective process that:

•         Opens ESD Board appointments up to all qualified taxpayers desiring to be considered for an appointment to their respective ESD Board.

•       Standardizes the qualities sought for an ESD Board member (business experience, education, etc.).

•           Independently reviews and validates the essential qualifications of a candidate.

•        Recommends candidates based on proven qualifications.

Instead each County Commissioner uses their own selection process for “their” ESD Board appointments and the results can vary between a reasonably functional and responsible ESD Board to a Board that rivals "F Troop". 

Typically the person is  “suggested” by a confidant of the appointing County Commissioner or an existing ESD Board member, or by a self-serving Fire Chief seeking to maintain control of his board with “his” people (not all Chiefs operate from this manipulative position but more than a few do). Other times, an appointee is selected as a patronage gift to a supporter of the County Commissioner or, and, this is extremely rare, as a result of a taxpayer who submits a name for consideration (which is often times laundered through the existing ESD Board and / or Fire Chief for their “approval”).  Its incestuous and counter to even the most basic of best practices in local government. 

Compounding the appointment problem is the lack of a term limits and the lack of any standardized training for the new appointee regarding:

o   Primary fiduciary responsibilities to the taxpayer.

o   The law as it relates to the ESD, including tax rates, transparency, accountability, etc.

o   National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) standards for minimum fire fighting services in the urban/suburban/rural environments.

o   Importance of continually assessing whether to merge or contract out fire protection services to maximize taxpayer value and service quality.

o   The annexation realities for ESD’s that border the City of Austin.

o   The importance of an arms length relationship with their Fire Chief.

Adding to these problems yet again are similar challenges inherent in the organizational culture of each ESD Board (and there are thirteen (13) ESD Boards in Travis County!).  Similar to the imperfections of the political appointment process; organizational culture of the ESD Board has a good side and a bad side. A good ESD board culture provides what Travis County’s appointment process fails to do: educate the new appointee on his/her core responsibilities and legal/ethical duties. It is a on-the-job process that introduces the new appointee to the full scale and scope of his/her duties.  They demonstrate, by their collaborative actions, their fiduciary responsibilities to the taxpayer; the need to be transparent and accountable to the public, the importance of “oversight”; keeping a respectful but arms length relationship with its Fire Chief; thinking strategically beyond its borders and consistently promoting strong, ethical leadership. In similar fashion a bad ESD Board culture strives to indoctrinate the appointee to the Board’s preferences for “doing things”.  This culture considers its primary role as the  “supporter” of its Fire Chief and his agenda, a “rubber stamp” operation that considers the taxpayer a distant or worse, a non-player in Board decisions, disregards transparency and accountability, ignores bad management procedures like blatant nepotism, thinks in the vacuum of its borders and operates as a 17^th century fiefdom.

Lets look at my ESD as a case study of how ESD Board appointments are done and what happens when the County Commissioners do not practice due diligence and instead follow the longstanding ritual of political patronage or worse, expediency for the sake getting the task off the “to do list”.  My ESD is a bit different than most because it sits in two County Commissioner districts, one on the East and one on the West. I sent an open records request to the County Commissioner office who appoints for the western half of the ESD  in late August asking for the following information:

1.  Resumes for each ESD 4 Board Member detailing their work experiences and other expertise that qualifies them to sit on an ESD oversight board.

2.  Document listing each ESD 4 Board Member, date of appointment, who appointed and any training they have acquired to be competent ESD Board Members.

What I got was nothing other than an email from the Commissioners aide indicating appointment dates but no formal resumes for their two appointees, one who is the Board President.  No further explanation was offered on their work experiences and other expertise that qualified these two gentlemen to sit on the ESD 4 Board nor any info on their training.   I did not ask the other County Commissioner for similar info because I doubted his reply would be any more informed or detailed.  All in all, not very encouraging but it does lend some light on why Travis County has issues with its ESD’s.    It’s a good old-boy, wink-wink process without any standards, without any objective / independent verification of an appointee’s qualifications or even the most basic of training on ESD responsibilities.   Sometimes the County Commissioner hits it lucky and gets a great oversight board but as you look at all the 13 ESD Boards you realize a handful of good boards does not offset a similar handful of not so good ESD Boards.  The taxpayers still lose. 

This lack of due diligence in appointment and training can and does create ESD Boards that are unprepared for oversight duties. Examples of poor oversight include:

•        An ESD that spends more than its annual tax revenues.  One ESD last year had a deficit approaching $615,000.   Their auditor posted a warning in the annual audit stating the ESD was in financial peril and will require “very difficult decisions (involving) response times, locations of stations along with adequate staffing”.

•           ESD Boards (there are at least 5 that do this) knowingly operate fire-fighting operation that lack the staffing and resource capacity to manage basic fire fighting for their district.  They offset this lack of capacity by counting on the good will of other adjacent, better staffed, trained and equipped fire departments for “mutual aid”.  The Austin Fire Department has spent over $315,000 in city taxpayer funds to support just one of these ESD’s in repeated “mutual aid” calls.   

•          An ESD Board that allows its Fire Chief to continue to provide a non-essential “training academy” that other agencies already offer in spite of the fact the ESD cannot meet its current fire-fighting mission and is in serious financial distress.     

•            An ESD Board that knowingly allows its Fire Chief to hire his daughter as the department “medical officer” even though the ESD only has only two engines with 3 fire-fighters each, is in financial distress, relies on the Austin Fire Department to cover three (3) of its five (5) response areas (and does not reimburse AFD for their efforts), and out of a 28 member department pays her the 5^th highest salary, just under what their battalion chiefs make and she reports to and is evaluated by her father, the Fire Chief. 

•    An ESD Board that refuses to consider repeated offers from the Austin Fire Department to open negotiations to take over direct fire services for JUST the ESD’s EXISTING TAX REVENUES even though the change would substantially improve the quality and resource depth of fire response, and reduce homeowner insurance rates because the Austin Fire Department has a lower ISO rating than the ESD’s current in-house fire department. 

•        ESD Boards that contract with their local volunteer fire department to provide district fire service do not independently verify if the money they pay to these volunteer departments are being appropriately used.  Additionally, Travis County has NEVER asked the ESD Boards who contract this way to verify the financial integrity of how public tax money is being spent by the volunteer fire departments.  It’s a completely unregulated, unaudited operation. 

• An ESD Board that approved a $1,000,000 remodel of an existing fire station with an annual tax revenue stream of little over $1,000,000 and no financial reserves.  An adjacent (and more fiscally responsible) ESD, built a similar sized station, from the ground up, for only $540,000.  The same ESD Board also approved a lease program for 2 new fire engines and paid their Fire Chief a high five-figure salary to manage one (1) fire station with one (1) engine and crew, then discovered their financials were in such distress  they were forced to drastically reduce services, eventually were pressured to fire their Chief (even though they approved all the expenditures) and seriously considered declaring bankruptcy.   They remain in deep financial trouble.

•         An ESD Board that supported an expenditure for a tricked out rescue vehicle by its contract volunteer fire department, better equipped with advanced rescue tools than most urban professional fire departments, for a coverage area of only 21 square miles, a population of only 14,000, an annual rescue response frequency that can be counted on one or two hands and none of the rescues more challenging than a routine vehicle entrapment.   In contrast, the Austin Fire Department has three rescue trucks for an area of 251 square miles and a population of 793,000 and none of their trucks are as well equipped and they handle over 1200 rescues annually.  Its also worth noting this ESD contract volunteer fire department routinely relies on the Austin Fire Department to provide mutual aid services on fires it cannot manage and never reimburses the Austin Fire Department for their assistance. 

•       An ESD Board with serious service delivery problems with its volunteer fire department that refused a management offer  (for just the existing ESD tax revenues) by an adjoining, financially stable, and professional managed ESD (with one of the best ESD Boards in Travis County) which would have provided them an experienced Fire Chief (they only have a part-time Chief with no executive management experience, paid a whopping $80,000 annually to supervise one fire station with 2 fire-fighters per day), a Chief Financial Officer (they have no CFO), a 24 hour Battalion Chief (they have none), full time professional fire-fighters (they have volunteers) and lots of supplemental fire fighting resources including auto aid with both the Austin Fire Department AND its immediate neighbor Cedar Park Fire Department (which has a fire station substantially closer to the ESD's largest populated suburb). 

There is only one standout example of an exceptional ESD Board,  ESD 11 (South East Travis County).  They know their oversight job, and the board membership represents a variety of business skills and professional credentials that understand the ESD business model and how it must work to efficiently and effectively serve the taxpayer.   The Board is strategic, value partnerships, thinks beyond the district boundaries and is continually seeking to improve the services they provide their taxpayers.  Interestingly, this ESD is part of the Austin Fire Departments “auto-aid” program, the gold standard for area fire departments, which only a handful of ESD’s qualify for.   It’s a gold standard because to qualify an ESD must meet certain training, staffing, equipment and station minimums.  It a quid-pro quo arrangement that saves taxpayers money because it reduces the need to add resources that can already be provided by the other fire department.  Political boundaries are ignored and the closest fire resource is sent to a 9-1-1 call. It is a no question, the cavalry is coming arrangement that saves valuable time and dramatically improves the ability of the departments to respond quickly to an emergency. 

Bottom Line:  The Travis County’s ESD Board appointment process is badly broken and works against the best interest of the taxpayer.  But it’s a symptom of a larger problem; Travis County simply does not need 13 ESD’s, with 13 Boards, 12 Fire Chiefs, 13 administrative staffs, and 13 different performance standards. Its time for Travis County to get serious about its responsibility for county fire services and fix the entire problem.   

WHO'S MINDING THE ESD 4 STORE?

Who’s Minding The ESD 4 Store?

    ESD 4 Engine 407                                                                   ESD 4 Brush Truck 407 

In the late morning of Thursday, September 8^th, I am returning from a short fire ground survey of the Pedernales / Spicewood fire with a colleague and who do we pass, on Hwy 71 West, on their way to the Pedernales fire apparatus staging area, but the very ESD 4 engine, followed by its brush truck station counter-part assigned to the ESD fire station on City Park Road that provides my neighborhood and the surrounding area with 9-1-1 fire and medical protection.  

What struck us as odd was both of these fire vehicles are some, if not, the BEST of the ESD 4 fire fighting fleet.   They are front line units and they had apparently been pulled off their primary fire protection mission to help contain a wild fire that was no longer out of control, in fact, the fire line was spot firing and smoldering, had no lives at risk, no structures in harms way and there were 2 STARFlight helicopters and one contract Forest Service helicopter actively and systematically working what remained of the fire line.  For all practical purposes the fire was a mop-operation, nothing more.

 

 For the record, I have no problem with ESD 4 wanting to help another fire department, but ESD 4 is not your typical county fire department, in fact, some in the local fire community would say ESD 4 is a fire department in name only and as I noted in post 1, I certainly agree with that assessment.  ESD 4 has only two response areas, one East, and one West.  Each has just one station with an engine, a crew of 3 and a brush truck they can switch into for wild fire response.  Supporting these two stations (supposedly) is a Chiefs truck, with a Battalion Chief and a driver, located near North Lamar and Braker Lane.  The problem is nether station is close enough to support the other.  They are 17 miles apart and can’t possibly respond fast enough to the others area to offer any meaningful support.  Essentially each station is a mini fire department on to itself.  The Chiefs truck offers no help either because of the distance it has to travel to reach either response area.  Adding to this problem is the fact ESD 4’s West station, on City Park Road, is smack in the middle of what the Texas Forest Service considers the most lethal wild land fire area within the state.  When I worked for the Austin Fire Department, in the early 90’s, I participated in a city-county wild fire evacuation study on how residents could be moved quickly to safety during a catastrophic wild fire.   One of the area’s we looked at closely was Long Canyon because of its single entry / exit and potential for  high property loss and casualties.  I flew several missions over the neighborhood plotting out the threat potentials and assessing how fire crews could manage a fire and an evacuation simultaneously.  The American Statesman recently highlighted this same threat after last weeks wild fires and referenced both the Texas Forest Services wild fire categorization and a fire threat report by a colleague of mine, Kevin Baum, former Austin Fire Department Battalion Chief, who wrote his masters thesis on the area’s explosive potential for a wild fire to destroy property, injure and kill under the right conditions.  Those “right conditions” are what we are experiencing now in Austin.

To get a better perspective on this issue, I placed calls to several friends who have their fingers on the pulse of the local fire community to find out what they might know about ESD 4 sending its best resources to a mop-up fire operation.   I was told the Emergency Operations Center County Fire Resource Coordinator asked ESD 4 if it could provide some manpower and fire fighting support at the Pedernales fire.  Now the operational astute and experienced fire manager, aware of ESD 4’s severe operational limitations in providing even most basic fire protection to its two separate response areas and the fact the western jurisdiction is considered the MOST PRONE to DEVASTATING WILD FIRE IN THE AUSTIN AREA would probably have had the common sense to beg off the assignment entirely or offer to send in a contingent of off duty or volunteer staff and perhaps a reserve fire fighting vehicle.  But ESD 4’s management did just the opposite and sent their best fire vehicles from the City Park Station and back filled with a “reserve” engine, Engine 410 and a Brush Truck 401 from its East Travis County Station.  

For the uninitiated, back filling with a “reserve” fire engine might seem reasonable but for experienced emergency fleet managers, back filling with a reserve unit is a last resort and always has lots of unintended operational consequences.

The problem with “reserve” vehicles, especially for the small resource thin fire department like ESD 4, is they are not front-line quality apparatus. They were moved off of active duty because of their age, mileage and mechanical reliability.  The small fire department retains these vehicles because it’s the only option they have for a backup vehicle. Basically it’s either no back up or a back up vehicle with limited capacity and some backup is better than no backup. The vehicle can still pull limited duty, very short run but because they are older and more work worn they have a tendency to breakdown at the worst possible moments during an emergency. That’s exactly what happened the following day for Engine 410.  During a wild fire support operation with Austin Fire Department Brush Truck 31 reserve Engine 410 had a pump failure during a simple water transfer (about a minute and half into the operation). And this was the ESD 4 fire engine assigned for fire protection to my neighborhood, an area considered the most prone to destructive and catastrophic wild fire.  As a ESD 4 taxpayer, you would think I would benefit from and have priority for the best, most reliable emergency fire vehicles, since I am paying for the services, but in ESD 4 the taxpayer is not considered important in the framework of how operational decisions are made (reference post 2 about my encounter with the ESD 4 Board President)

In similar fashion, reassigning the brush truck from ESD 4’s East Travis County station to the City Park Road station in its Western jurisdiction was a rob Peter to pay Paul scenario.   It essentially took away the wild fire protection available to ESD 4’s eastern jurisdiction and for what reason?  To help mop-up a smoldering fire in another fire district, not even adjacent to ESD 4?  Help me Jesus!  Now they did eventually back fill the brush truck they moved to City Park Road, with a loaner from Manor, but again, why all the shuffling? Why not just let Manor send their extra brush truck and back fill with off duty staff or volunteer staff from ESD 4?

Given what I know about ESD 4’s limited operational abilities, and the high fire threat area we live in, this rob Peter to pay Paul approach struck me as terribly short-sighted on the part of ESD 4’s management.  If a wild fire begins in the area, and the wind is like it was during last weeks fire, I want to know ESD 4 has the best and most reliable vehicles on the front-line, not the reserves.  Time is everything in a fire; especially a fast moving wild fire and any delays because of a faulty vehicle will cost property and potentially lives.  My neighbors and I can’t afford for the fire-fighter’s we depend on to have any delays because the vehicle they are using does not perform as well as their front-line vehicle. ESD 4 taxpayers deserve the best in fire-fighting vehicles and equipment, not second best as we have now. 

NOTE: As of today Monday, September 12^th, we still have the problem of second best protecting our neighborhood:  Engine 410 (reserve) and Brush Truck 401 were still at ESD 4’s City Park Road Station 7. 

Bottom-line: ESD 4 would be better off getting out of providing fire protection altogether and instead contract for those services with the Austin Fire Department.  Austin Fire has generously offered to take over ESD 4’s services on more than one occasion for just the existing taxes, nothing more.  And what most do not know is that Austin already provides ESD 4 with over $315,000 in unreimbursed fire response annually.  For reasons only the ESD 4 Board can explain, they refuse to allow any formal dialog with Austin Fire.  Why the ESD 4 Board is so dismissive towards such a discussion can be explained by one word: INCOMPETENCE.  ESD 4 can’t touch what AFD would provide in services FOR THE SAME TAX DOLLARS!  AFD offers immediate improvement in service quality and would reduce homeowner insurance rates substantially because AFD has a much better ISO rating.   It’s time the ESD Board start representing the interests of the taxpayers and stop pretending its F troop operation can deliver the same services other fire departments can. It can’t!   Red fire trucks do not make a fire department.  It takes seasoned management with lots of common sense, the latest in fire resources and lots of them, quick response times, well trained fire-fighters and support services, none of which ESD 4 has now or ever will have in the future. 

Note: My next post will discuss why Travis County needs to either create a metro approach with the City of Austin for fire services and consolidate all city and county fire operations into one metro department WITH professional fire managers, or unify all ESD operations under one or two Super ESD’s using ESD 2 and ESD 6 as the day to day Super ESD managers.   These two ESD’s have exceptionally well managed fire departments with will trained staff, good equipment and career paths for its employees that includes health and retirement benefits (no one else, not even West Lake’s well funded ESD offers that type of comprehensive management structure). Travis County must get away from the unnecessarily expensive duplication of service with its 13 ESD’s (13 paid chiefs, 13 paid administrations, 13 paid command staffs), variable levels of training and service levels and eliminate once and for all the petty fire department fiefdoms managed by vain and self-serving personalities and incompetent oversight boards that plague a number of the County’s current ESD’s. Either way, the taxpayers will be better served and the quality of those services will dramatically improve.