What Happened?
University Heights and Shaker Heights, Ohio, recently proposed a merger between the city’s local firefighters union to reduce the cost of emergency services for taxpayers. The new plan is based on the findings of a study conducted by Emergency Services Consulting International that found consolidating the departments would be cost-effective without negatively impacting response time or place residents in danger.
So What?
Under the proposed plan, the two departments would be integrated, without decreasing or streamlining the administrative side of fire services. Less fire fighters on call and vehicles requiring maintenance would save taxpayer money in both cities. Both cities received a $25,000 grant from The Cleveland Foundation to conduct a study on ways to reduce spending on emergency services, and $15,000 to cover implementation costs of the new shared fire services.
Study Breakdown
According to the Emergency Services Consulting International’s study, emergency services efficiency can be measured by delivery and performance metrics. To provide sufficient services to residents, fire departments must receive notification of an emergency, offer rapid response with appropriate resources and deploy a plan of action, aiming to respond to 90 percent of requests within five minutes. The study broke down each community’s services efficiency based on:
- Service demand
- Distribution of resources
- Ability of each department to concentrate resources
- Reliability
- Response performance
The study then considered the cost benefits of cooperative strategies to determine if increasing shared services would help meet budgetary obligations. Breaking down each city’s emergency services budget, the study pinpointed overlapping costs that could be reduced through cooperative resource use and staff placement.
Strategies and Issues
To help municipalities implement sustainable shared services program, the Emergency Services Consulting International research team discussed three methodologies: functional, operational and legal unification of emergency resources. These approaches range from changing very little apart from consolidating physical assets, to integrating operational aspects of the departments and completely merging departments into a full service emergency department able to handle both cities’ needs.
With each strategy came potential pitfalls that, when ignored, could counter any savings from the project with operational disruptions and inefficiencies. The issues centered on:
- Command: Leadership in emergency services from both cities must agree upon policies and guidelines to ensure consistency and enforcement at all levels. Miscommunication within management can lead to conflict that reduces the program’s benefits.
- Communication: Bringing together two emergency services requires transparent channels of communication to ensure all new plans are understood by both entities. Disjointed dissemination of information can lead to costly delays or oversights.
- Control: Each emergency department has its own hierarchy in place, but leaders must collaborate on a hybrid system for oversight and leadership. New roles must be created while others are eliminated to meet the needs of the new force.
- Culture: The newly merged emergency services must develop policies to encourage socialization and camaraderie. Collaboration is enhanced when two joining organizations create a close relationship.
Other Plans
Two fire departments in Wisconsin recently merged together to achieve operational and cost efficiency without sacrificing quality of services to residents.
Gov1 also wrote about virtualization of dispatch for regionalizing public safety.