Last night's ESD meetings were definitely eye-opening. It's certainly no mystery now why the ESD is into September and still struggling to get a budget together. There is no leadership to be found anywhere. This post goes beyond numbers and deadlines and more into the general dysfunction of the entity. While all the individuals involved may be decent people and have made undeniable contributions to our community this board does not function well and the relationship between them and the Executive Director is definitely not one of trust. I'll go into more detail on ideas to improve that in a future post.
For two and a half hours last night the board hashed out relatively minor budget items. At first I thought "wow, they are really detail oriented now, it's too bad they haven't run like this for the last few years", but as the night went on I realized they just don't really know what to do with most of the budget items. The bigger deals like employee compensation and benefits didn't get nearly the deliberation you'd think they would. The board is absolutely lethargic. I wondered sometimes if they were even awake. Shoulder shrugs, mumbles and blank stares are the consensus displays by which Executive Director, Joey Reed gets to progress to the next item. Thankfully there were a half dozen fire department leaders in the room to provide feedback and answer questions from the board. Other than those pesky Truth in Taxation laws I don't think there would have been a need to call a public hearing on the tax rate last night since every meeting is run like a town hall only with less order. It's just a bunch of people sitting around trying to figure out what to do with a pile of taxpayer money.
When they finally made it down to the one budget item that still has "X" as it's value, Fire Fighter Staffing, 10 minutes of discussion was apparently too much for President Glenn Reue. At 9:30 pm nearly mid-sentence in the discussion he decided that was enough for one meeting so he gingerly tapped the gavel and called it a night. Why settle a budget item today when you can do it next week is the recurring theme at the ESD. Perhaps it's because Keith Kelley, the apparent mastermind, decision-maker for this subject was not in attendance last night. They've set their date to elect a tax rate, but they don't really find much connection with getting a budget established before that. First order of business is how much money can they get and secondly, figure out what to do with it.
I was a bit surprised to hear one of the fire chief in support of the ESD hiring the fire fighters that they want to staff certain departments with. If I were in charge of a department I would want to retain that control over the budget and personnel. As I stated in my previous post I think having employees of the ESD in a fire department supposedly under the command of the department chief is setting up a scenario for chain of command and conflict resolution issues. Not only that, but how will morale be when you have two paid fire fighters (if the department has any paid staff) working side by side with differing pay scales and benefits packages? If the answer to that is the ESD will match that of the department then why not let the fire fighter be an employee of the department instead? I'll tell you...trust. The ESD doesn't trust the departments to make good decisions with the money they're given. How ironic is that?! In fact they don't trust the departments enough to even know that they will use the "extra" money to hire fire fighters at all. They may go blow it on equipment and if you've been around Joey Reed for any amount of time you know - "Equipment doesn't put fires out, fire fighters do." I'm pretty sure an additional $300,000 to a department specifically for staffing would not result in a new fire truck on order, but that's why you have a contract when you provide the funding.
A.J.
For an additional perspective on the subject visit Joshua Councilman Jerry Moore's blog as well.
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