Welcome to RichardSpackmann.com! I post various activities I participate in with the Maple Avenue Fire Department, and personal opinions surrounding my position as Fire Commissioner of the Greenfield Fire District. The most recent entries are listed first, but you can also sort based on the categories listed below, or search by date via the calendar to the lower right. (All times are in Eastern Standard Time [GMT-5])
Wednesday, September 10
Gear Delivery Schedule - UPDATED!
The gear delivery schedule has been changed due to the rescheduling of the last fit test:
Tuesday, September 2nd: Greenfield Center firehouse 7 pm
Tuesday, September 16th: Porter Corners firehouse 7 pm
Tuesday, September 23rd: Middle Grove firehouse 7 pm
Tuesday, September 30th: Maple Avenue firehouse 7 pm
Remember that if you can't make your particular firehouse evening, simply contact myself or our purchasing agent and make arraignments to make one of the other delivery nights.
This update will be posted in each of the firehouse's district bulletin board and talked about tonight at our commissioner's meeting (at Porter Corners firehouse).
The following gear delivery schedule has been set:
Tuesday, September 2nd: Greenfield Center firehouse 7 pm
Tuesday, September 16th: Middle Grove firehouse 7 pm
Tuesday, September 23rd: Porter Corners firehouse 7 pm
Tuesday, September 30th: Maple Avenue firehouse 7 pm
If you can't make your particular firehouse evening, simply contact myself or our purchasing agent and make arraignments to make one of the other delivery nights.
I touched base with Saratoga County personnel today.
Currently Maple Avenue is the only company programmed into their system, and apparently this is just a test situation.
I have been following testing of the current Rip and Run software very closely, and I relayed to county personnel that testing has been going very, very well. The only issue I did raise was that I have seen a discrepancy between dispatchers - that is, some dispatchers send it to just the one fax, instead of sending it to both (the second being the Rip and Run server). So sometimes we get the second fax, and sometimes we don't.
This is after all to be expected as the new protocols become second nature - and besides, this is still in the testing phase, so not all the dispatching personnel have been informed of this change. Ultimately this discrepancy between dispatchers should resolve itself over time, and it should become second nature to fax the rip and runs to the second fax.
Regarding the programming of Porter Corners, Middle Grove and Greenfield Center into the Rip and Run system, apparently this has been momentarily paused as there has been problems in the past with second fax lines. Apparently a few months ago there was a station in the southern county which had two fax lines programmed into the system - and this created a few problems with the system.
To be clear, it is indeed possible to add second lines to the system, but these problems need to be addressed with the vendor. The county will be meeting with the vendor and I have a follow up phone call the Sunday after that (14th). I'll post back once I know more information.
A few firefighters have requested to be added to the testing list - if you want to be added, just let me know. I added these firefighters in less than 24 hours after I got their emails - its a relatively painless process to do.
I have just received word that the gear is tentatively scheduled to be delivered in September. The tentative game plan is to deliver gear at each station - just like we have done in the past two years.
I am also researching the possibility of getting some repairs done this year as well. I will be discussing repair ideas with the officers at the commissioner meeting later this month.
The problem is that this will take some time to setup so I appreciate everyone's patience as I research this option. This is ultimately why I feel its so important to keep the gear rotation established - ultimately I want to have two sets of gear per firefighter - one old "backup" set of gear, and another "new" front-line set of gear. The idea of course is that if you need to repair the front-line set of gear, you can use your backup set while its out of service.
We have had a few repairs this year already, they typically take 2 weeks or so to complete - so that's a significant amount of time to take gear out of service - which makes the second backup set ever more important.
I'm pretty sure that next year actually marks the 4 year anniversary of the gear initiative - boy did time go by fast! That means that the firefighters who recieved the first round of gear will be getting a new set. I'll be surveying the district inventory to see how that first round is holding up - I know my personal set is showing signs of wear as its approaching 4 years old.
There is only one remaining item left - and that is to complete the fire police order this year. If you recall, this year's proposal allocated a portion of the funds to purchase fire police equipment. I will be following up with the fire police this month to close the loop on this component of the gear purchase.
If anyone has any questions, please feel free to contact me.
I took two vacation days to facilitate the installation - and I spent yesterday evening testing the server, all appears well.
The server is located in the Maple Avenue firehouse - just because its much more convenient for me to access - rather than driving each time I need to the district office, for example. This will be the server for all four GFD fire companies however - so we are able to use just one server to process the data for all four fire companies (this is the optimum solution as this minimizes costs of the system).
Just a point of clarification - the current rip and run faxes and numbers are NOT affect AT ALL by the addition of this server and testing. They are completely different systems - and that is by design - one does not affect the other in any way.
The budget process is always a long and critical one - on a personal note, I find it particularly challenging when I have to make a decision to cut funds to deny a particular worthy request - but that's the balancing act that I strongly believe the Commissioners must play - even when its unpopular.
I wanted to share some preliminary thoughts on what I would like to focus on for next year's budget.
Generator service contracts: the fire district is committed to installing generators in each firehouse - and they all come with a heavy (but worth it) price tag. We really should be focused on protecting these investiments by getting annual service contracts. Furthermore, as emergency generators - we should really be ensuring that they are maintained so that they do work when they are needed. We discussed this idea in yesterday's workshop, so I will know more about costs in the following week or so.
Maintenance Personnel: some Commissioners have suggested that we get a maintenance person(s) and have them available to fix the variety of maintenance issues that we have in the district. Certainly that as these buildings age and get used more frequently, they will require more maintenance to maintain them - that's not a far fetched concept to grasp. I don't however see this coming with a small price tag, so its something that we will have to balance
Access System Finalization: part of the access system initiative this year was to continue with installing interior doors at various locations throughout the fire district facilities and to enable the system for remote configuration (via internet). Next year should mark the last of the installs - hopefully completing the access system initiative. In addition, there have been some suggestions of hooking the system to our siren/pagers to have it automatically unlock doors when we get a call, etc. This has already been discussed with the security company, and its a very inexpensive option that I believe we should explore.
Equipment Reserve Savings: it's clear that the ladder situation is indeed an important one to the fire district, and a costly one to the taxpayers. We have already seen that had we purchased the trucks two years ago - we would have saved over $100,000, but that is water under the bridge. The Board is now looking at consultants to determine what our ladder truck requirements actually are, and so I'll speak more about that when their report is finalized. That being said, we know that the cost to purchase a new ladder is going to be substantial, so we should try and shift as much money as possible into the Equipment Reserve in preparation for this purchase.
Software Initiative: we are currently evaluating software to streamline ALL of the paperwork processes in the GFD, something that will save our personnel and firefighters countless hours. Depending on where this evaluation goes will determine additional costs, so in the next couple of months I'll know more about what will be required for this initiative - but this is a very important initiative (and one long time coming).
The trick now becomes how achieve the above goals (hopefully all) without raising taxes (and I have some ideas on that, but those require a lot more thought).
Some have argued that it is negligent if we don't raise taxes at least a 4% standard raise - because what happens is if we don't, we end up having to raise taxes a significant amount a few years later to make up for that difference. And as I have discussed in the past, this is precisely the predicament the GFD found it self in a few years ago when I first became a commissioner.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing with that argument, but I think we can do much more with the current budget before coming to the conclusion of raising taxes. That being said, we may have no choice but to raise taxes even after restructuring line items and moving funds around. But we'll see what happens after the Board works numbers out...
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Wednesday, September 10
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