2011 Fire District Budget Thoughts

  Thursday, October 21st 2010

There has been many discussions regarding the 2011 Greenfield Fire District budget, and I'd like to take some time here and reflect on some observations pertaining to recent budget discussions.

It's always difficult discussing the budget - I find it probably the most challenging part of being a Fire Commissioner. I find it particularly difficult making decisions that take monies out of peoples' pockets - but its the job I volunteered and was elected to do.

If there's one thing the GFD has a vast supply off, it is dedication and passion - but we also have a vast supply of opinions. And I respect them all.

But it does make it increasingly difficult to consider another person's viewpoint when their negative criticism is unfounded.

For the record, I'm not entirely 100% happy with the budget - there are somethings included in it that I don't entirely agree with. But at the end of the day, there were many concessions made during the budget's construction (on "both sides of the isle") - and that is exactly how it should work.

I have worked very hard to bring this fire district closer together, to make it function more like a business - and its been trying at times. So when I see a process that takes 3+ months, countless discussions, and 3+ meetings to create a budget that everyone had input into - I wouldn't have it any other way, its a great example of bringing the GFD together (As a side note, you need not travel far to find examples of frivilous spending in fire districts/local government - I know of no other fire district that spends 3+ months of time to create a budget in a transparent manner such as ours).

One of the deciding points for me to run for Fire Commissioner 6 years ago was remembering when the Board of Fire Commissioners asked the fire officers for a list of items that should be included in the budget. Once this list was received, Board members literally laughed and threw it into the waste basket (as a side note, while this action is exceptionally rude, I can find no better example of poor leadership than to deflate the morale of your employees).

Talk about a wonderfully poor example of the lack of teamwork and the lack of a budget creation process.

Fast forward to today, we have a budget process that:

1. includes firefighters
2. includes fire district officers
3. and now (finally!) includes taxpayers
4. we send out newsletters informing everyone of the budget meetings (I know of no other fire district that does this)
5. we post our budgets online (we did this before it was state law to do so!)

So these are just a handful of examples that show how far the fire district has come - even if some refuse to acknowledge all the work and progress we have made.

There is also some complexity to creating the budget that many residents don't realize. For example, the Board can calculate the tax rate per 1000, and have it *completely* change after all the property assessments are finalized.

This is entirely out of the Board of Fire Commissioners control - its just the system that we are given to use, and we have no choice but to use it.

For example, I believe it was five years ago that the Board created a budget that was actually like less than a 1% increase, but after all the property assessments and re-evaluations were done (after the budget was passed), it actually turned out to be like a 4% increase - which was totally not the intent of the Board of Fire Commissioners.

Last year, the tax rate actually went down - due to assessments that were finalized after the our budget was passed.

This is very frustrating, but as I said earlier, its the system we are given to use, and its beyond our control.

The point I'm trying to make is that the creation of the budget is by no means a trivial task. And as I always do, I encourage everyone to participate throughout the entire budget process - not just the one meeting where we actually show the tentative budget. At that point it's arguably too late. Still, if that's the only meeting you can make - then bringing suggestions and questions to the Board's attention would be beneficial to the overall budget process. That is distinctly different than spewing frustration and boundless criticism that adds nothing to the process, but rather detracts from it.

The fact is that the Board members (myself in particular) are extremely accessible - we are more than able and willing to meet/discuss with anyone any topic - in this particular case, anything regarding the budget. These discussions/questions do not have to wait until the formal budget hearing - which as I previously explained, is arguably too late.

Another point I want to illustrate is that the 2011 budget is monumentally and radically different from any other budget in the history of the GFD.

For the first time the Board of Fire Commissioners has removed the company allotments from the budget - this accounts for $22,000 out of the budget. I have been a proponent of company allotments over the years - I believe that they give our Chief officers a "piece of the pie" - some responsibility, and makes them a teammate in running the GFD. That being said, the Board collectively thought that it is far past time to start trying to "tighten the control" on spending, and to be more critical of spending overall. While this was met with some small frustration by district officers - they eventually understood and agreed with what the Board is trying to do. They realize that we all need to change our spending considering the current economic climate.

I can think of no other time in the history of the GFD where officers and Commissioners agree on cutting spending and the need to be more fiscally conservative - and I am very happy to see this new focus and direction.

A great example of the change in philosphy is that the Board is in the process of selling off two pieces of apparatus - ETA292 (Company #4) and ETA262 (Company #1). The Future Plan Committee has recognized the very real need to downsize our fleet - and is actively pursuing options to continue to downsize the fleet.

This mirrors nicely with the recent discussions of the Future Plan Committee - which was formed after many difficult questions were asked at the start of the year. As many recall, this year started off (with what some would mislabel as a "bang") with some very critical observations and analysis of the GFD.

I took the blunt of the blame for this, even though I was only asking questions on behalf of many other residents, but I'm okay with that because I believe its always good (and essential) for an organization to look within itself and ask how it can improve, how it can be better (and don't think that these types questions will stop being asked! We must continuously analyize ourselves and ask what we can do better!).

But there was a great conclusion that came out of these tough questions - and basically (and even residents went on record saying this) it was decided that the GFD should continue to function as it is currently defined (four firehouses) and continue to look at ways to improve itself - to make it leaner and meaner.

So while some don't subscribe to the fact that the fire district should exist the way its currently defined, unfortunately for them, that's what was decided after those meetings - and (now that we have this decided for us by our public), I plan on moving this organization into the future.

I have been no shy critic of the GFD at times. I could talk ad nauseum about the various issues and problems with the GFD - my whole career as Commissioner has been focused on addressing problems (and mistakes) generated by my predecessors. And simply put, you don't solve all of these problems without funding. But I consider it my duty as an elected official to make this organization better, to grow it into more of a business, and to bring it into the 21st century.

I realize that some disagree with this, they would much rather have their fire taxes cut in half - irregardless of what happens the GFD organization. But as I observed, and everyone who attended the meetings earlier this year observed, this organization will and must move forward as one unitied organization of four firehouses. My goal will be to minimize the funding needed to accomplish this, but rest assured, the many sizeable mistakes of my predecessors will not be solved without expense.

As always, if you have any questions regarding the budget, feel free to email me.

posted by spackmann in Opinions at 11:46 AM (472 day(s) old)  Permalink

District Year-End Monies

  Friday, November 27th 2009

As is the norm with municipalities, when the fiscal year comes to an end, any unspent funds are usually directed to savings acounts or to other projects. The GFD has an annual "year-end close of the books" meeting to expend any remaining funds and to wrap up business for the year (this year's "year-end meeting" is on December 30th at the Greenfield Center firehouse).

As is always the case, there is a lot of discussion about what we should focus on for year end monies. Generally what usually happens is that Commissioners field requests from officers for funding for various projects that were either (1) denied throughout the year (due to a variety of reasons - which could be financial) or (2) are "outreach" projects which aren't necessarily given a priority funding - but are "nice to have".

For this year's focus I would prefer to address the following:

1. Apparatus Equipment Mounting: one of the things that came out of the apparatus consultant survey was that we need to do a much better job of mounting equipment in our trucks - whether it is in the cab or compartments. The labor required to redo the mounting is fairly large per truck, and the mounting parts aren't the cheapest either - considering their NFPA design requirements.
   
   As this is a safety issue, this should be given priority funding - and I'm pleased to see many of our officers already working on this task, in preparation for the year-end meeting.
2. Hose Replacement: this was the first year the fire district (finally!) tested hose across the district and we found a vast amount of the district hose inventory failed the testing, and had to be removed from service.
   
   Granted that not all this hose has to be replaced all at once, we can put it on a multi-year replacement schedule to help soften the expense - but we certainly need to replace the priority pieces - the one's that failed on our trucks for example. Naturally, I'll be looking to our officers to make that determination, and we'll try and accomodate that listing.
3. Fire Police Radios: with the county transition to higher-band radio frequencies, the GFD has already purchased some high-band radios, and we have discovered that they are actually much cheaper than their low-band counterparts. I have worked closely with the fire police over the past couple of years and I have discovered that they have been under-funded for many years.
   
   Their radio inventory is quite old and antiquated, and unfortunately, has taken a second place to other funding priorities - and this simply must be stopped. Communication when you are standing in the middle of a road is essential to our firefighter's safety, and the radios that are currently utilized by our fire police are half-broken, unreliable and are in need of replacing.
   
   I see no reason that we can't start replacing the fire police radio inventory this year.

Naturally this is not a complete listing and priority items identified by our firematic officers will of course get consideration.

In any case, I wanted to start the creative juices flowing, and to shed some light on what my preferences for year-end monies would be.

Any questions, please just let me know.

posted by spackmann in Opinions at 8:21 AM (800 day(s) old)  Permalink

2010 Budget Followup (Decrease in Taxes)

  Tuesday, November 24th 2009

I am very proud to see the 2010 budget with a decrease in tax rate.

You can view the approved 2010 budget online here:

1. http://www.greenfieldfd.org/documents/Approved%20Budget%202010.pdf

Unfortunately there were very little people who actually attended the public budget hearing - but those who did attend were a little concerned with the "perceived" 4% raise of the 2010 budget.

I use the word "perceived" here in quotes, as it was simply that - "perceived" 4% raise. The fact is, that while the budget grew in size 4%, the tax rate in the tentative budget was actually the same.

The Board later decided unanimously to cut a little more - which actually resulted in the tax rate going down for the 2010 budget.

Any questions, just let me know.

posted by spackmann in Opinions at 4:36 PM (803 day(s) old)  Permalink

Budget Hearing Follow-up

  Friday, October 23rd 2009

I wanted to share the questions (and more importantly the answers) that came out of our public budget hearing.

Before I do that however, I wanted to clarify a few things about the "tentative budget", and the budget process as a whole.

The tentative budget, as the name implies, is tentative. It's really just one step in a multi-month process which began back in July in drafting the 2010 budget.

I started putting ideas down on paper and researching their costs back in July, and as other Commissioners did the same, the Board began to have meetings and publically brainstorming the 2010 project. I believe, the Board had at least two or three meetings where the budget (or various aspects of it) were discussed publically well before the "tentative" budget was even put together.

What I'm trying to explain is just how lengthy the budget process actually is. The Board of Fire Commissioners takes the responsibility of creating the budget very seriously - and we stride to keep taxes low, and to maximize the return on our taxpayers monies.

And the Board of Fire Commissioners goes above and beyond what is required by law to be as open and transparent as possible as a local government. I was unable to find any tentative budgets on any neighboring fire district's websites (which is a requirement by law), nor do I know of any other fire districts that have newsletters (a compliment the Board received in fact during the public hearing).

So the GFD does a lot towards open government, and to inform our residents of the Board's thoughts regarding the budget.

As I've commented previously, there were some unfortunate false conclusions drawn about the tentative budget. For example, I heard that people believed that taxes were going up 4%. Granted the wording in the newsletter could have been better, but it was not misleading in my opinion. No where in the newsletter did it say "increase of taxes" - just that the overall budget size grew 4% - but the two are definitely not the same thing.

The fact is, that the proposed tax rate was less than 1 cent (yes that's 1 penny) more than last year - so for all intensive purposes, I commonly refer to that as a 0% raise. So how can the tax rate be 0% different from last year, and the budget grow by 4%? Its because we had a lot of new properties come onto the tax roles. Ultimately that means that we have more money coming "into the pot" so to speak.

I'm not able to speak for the rest of the Board, but I know that none of the Board members ever stated (or believed for that matter) that we should raise taxes 4%. Unfortunately, that at the press time of the newsletters, more information regarding the budget was not available - so the information regarding the budget was relatively brief (which is probably why it was a little confusing).

Now with that said, let's move on to some of the questions raised during the meeting (in no particular order):

1. Why do we have a line-item for vaccinations?
2. Why did you double the building reserve account?
3. Why do you have a line-item for hose testing and pump testing? that was only $2000 last year, and now its $13,500
4. I'm not happy about the maintenance person
5. $16,000 for phones seems like a lot, can you get a handle on that?
6. I think the EMS account should be increased, that is the majority of your calls - why is it only $9,000?
7. Why did you increase equipment repair - you got rid of the old 293, repair costs should be going down

So let me give you the answers to all of these, and paraphrase what was discussed during the meeting:

1. vaccinations are a NFPA requirement, and these have been paid for by the fire district in the past, its just the first time its actually showed up as a line-item. Usually we "steal" money from other accounts, which is - generally speaking, a poor accounting practice. A better practice, obviously, is to have this money allocated from the start and earmarked for vaccinations
2. the building reserve was doubled because of the pending expectation of building maintenance as our facilities continue to age. We are seeing the beginnings of this with the Porter Corners fire station.
3. This is the first year that we *finally* started hose and pump testing - and we've discovered that a large portion of our hose inventory is no longer in working order. As a personal note, I am very proud of this addition to the budget, our volunteers should be worried about training, responding to calls, and returning home safely to their families, not testing hose.
4. The maintenance person was added to address the rising, and frankly, out of control maintenance costs of the district fleet. That being said, we can look into the feasibility and benefits of the position for future inclusion in the budget
5. Phones are just one of those pieces of equipment that you wish you had during an emergency - when you really need it, you are glad its there, but no one can truly predict when that will be. That being said, we should look at the phones across the district, and investigate the possibility of removing some of the less used (i.e. less critical) ones.
6. While EMS is around 65% of our call volume, the EMS line item is strictly for operating expenses - big purchases for equipment generally come out of the EMS reserve account, or equipment reserve account. So the line item is fairly misleading, and it is believed, is sufficient for that purpose.
7. As previously stated, equipment repair is a serious concern and expense of the fire district. That's why it was discussed to add a maintenance person to address that very concern. Some other ideas have been discussed openly by the officers and Commissioners including changing repair companies to use more local companies, and optimizing of the district fleet.

One final comment, the Board unofficially agreed during the meeting to remove the "maintenance person" from the budget based on this (and other) feedback. I personally believe that someday we will need such a position, but the timing is off considering the economy.

This means that you will *most likely* see a decrease in the tax rate for next year - albeit, not a large one, but one none the less. I do not however know of the exact figures at this point.

If you have any questions, please just let me know.

posted by spackmann in Opinions at 10:24 PM (835 day(s) old)  Permalink

The 2010 GFD Budget

  Friday, October 9th 2009

I have received some concerns and comments regarding the proposed 2010 budget. As reported in the newsletter, the proposed budget shows a 4% increase in funds.

THIS DOES NOT NECESSARILY MEAN A 4% TAX RAISE HOWEVER

In fact, the tax rate this year based on our calculations will be $0.97 cents per $1,000 and 2009's tax rate was $0.96 - virtually the same.

How can that be? Well it due to a few reasons - there is some high priced properties that have come onto the tax roles - which ultimately increases the assessed valuation of our tax rate, meaning that we have a larger amount of properties (amount) to generate revenue from. Another factor is that the Town of Wilton went to 100% valuation - meaning that the two equalization rates (between Wilton and Greenfield) are now the same.

On top of this, the process that determines how budgets are calculated (per NYS law) is a little "hokey" at times. When I became a Fire Commissioner it was one of those things that made my head spin when learning the process. For example, the idea of "equalization rate" is still crazy to me. "Equalization rates" are used to determine the rate one town should be taxed compared to another town. This is particularly important when a local government spans more than one town - such as the Greenfield Fire District, which spans both the Town of Greenfield and a portion of the Town of Wilton. So it could be the case that one town pays slightly "more" into the overall amount compared to another town simply because of the equalization rate.

Note that this is not the case this year, as both the Town of Greenfield and the Town of Wilton are at 100% eval.

As a side note, sometimes the data coming from the County isn't correct. We've had one case (I believe two years ago) where the assessments and equalization rates given to us from the county were changed after the budget was submitted - and this changed the tax rate (and in this case actually increased it).

I guess the point here is that there is a lot that goes into determining the budget, and I'm very proud to say that on our side of it I can proudly say that the Board of Fire Commissioners does a very sound and responsible effort into its creation.

If you want to hear all about our budget - I strongly encourage you to come to our public budget hearing on Tuesday October 20th at the Greenfield Center firehouse. The meeting starts at 7 pm.

In preparation for the meeting, you can view the proposed budget online at: http://www.greenfieldfd.org/documents/ProposedBudgetfor2010.pdf. (Note that the GFD posted budget information on our website before any neighboring fire district well before it was state law to do so - soemthing that I personally campaigned for)

As always, feel free to email me with any questions.

posted by spackmann in Opinions at 3:21 PM (849 day(s) old)  Permalink

2009 Budget Thoughts

  Friday, June 27th 2008

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.

1. 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.
2. 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
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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...

posted by spackmann in Opinions at 11:14 AM (1317 day(s) old)  Permalink