Participating Member
Re: 6 months later.
Midtowner,
If we had a high priced PR firm would that make a difference to you? Why?
The media as a whole doesn't have to air or print anything they don't see fit.
Andy, I'll work on hitting the high points of the study for everyone, but i feel that it's time wasted. They asked for the studies and ppt's to prove the point, but I don't think they care enough to read through them and then ask questions. If i condense it, it could be construed as my opinion rather than fact.
Re: 6 months later.
There are plenty of solo practitioner PR folks out there. You don't have to hire Ackerman McQueen to have someone as a designated spokesman, to monitor your public image, to write regular press releases/VNRs, etc.
VIP Member
Re: 6 months later.
No, those were calls where in many times lives were being saved but they weren't PR-related calls. To say so is a drastic misunderstanding of the practice of public relations and proves how badly you guys need a professional communicator. I keep going back to the your experience here at OKC Talk (and I'm sure many have been served by the fire department over the years) - how many people have you converted to your side of this issue? How many have you turned off? And if, as either you or another firefighter said, it's not your intention to persuade anyone on this site to support your cause, than exactly why are you continuing to argue for it here?Originally Posted by Mikemarsh51
I suspect you're taking my words as an attack on you, but if you stop, think it over, you'll realize that if these words were coming from the mouth of someone like Mark Schwartz, you'd be giving serious thought to all this.
One more caveat - if you do hire a public relations person, be careful in who you select. I remember the FOP hired a public relations person during the Glitter Dome mess who was, at the time, one of the most disliked PR people in the news business (this person, for those who know who I'm talking about, has changed a lot since and is no longer hated). Amazingly, though, even this person made a slight difference for the FOP at the time.
VIP Member
Re: 6 months later.
If you preface this by saying it's time wasted, than yes, it's time wasted. Another trick you could learn from a PR professional.
Participating Member
Re: 6 months later.
Midtown. It’s hard to face a city government whom has ties to the wealthiest biggest names in the city. Even if he had the PR firm of the century I do believe that we wouldn’t get our message across. Why. One of which being that we have 1 newspaper. 1 option that everyone or most people read and believe like that 6 page slander they published just before maps came out about how much they think the ff makes. It stuff like that we are up against. I am not sure how to convey the message to the general public of what good equipment means to us as far as safety.
Yes we understand and accept the risks that the job has but to take risks because we have faulty equipment isn’t right, no matter what the job or business is.
Look I was against maps, I do think it will be good for the city I don’t think it was the right time as stated but we won’t go down that route as the issue is dead. I am not mad maps passed. I am upset that the promises made to the general public in which I feel was to gain more votes, has proven to be a lie. Like others said the way the city will look at this is yes lose 29 positions but f they hire 10 then technically they have increased fire protection. It’s a play on words. A play in which the common public wont understand I think that even RC math could understand how that can be confusing to some.
How do you know that we didn’t talk to over 75000 people last year as PR? We talk to school kids all the time. We constantly have people calling the station for tours in which we TEACH about different issues such has fire safety. The decrease in fires means that we have been doing our job in education.
Everyone loves the job and we have and I know that I wake up EVERYDAY looking forward to going to work. I graduated college in 2005 and took 3 years to get hired. I know many others that have been trying o get on the FD for 9 years. We thank the public for giving us the job we have. We constantly are getting thanks everywhere we go. It not us that should be getting thanks. It’s the tax payers that support us that give us the opportunity to help them.
We may sound like we nag or complain but we are trying to get our message out in a known media biased city. If we never went against maps then there would even be LESS coverage over the issues with the police and fire than what you see now. WE might not have won the vote but we got the monkey out of the closet.
Why don’t you see the problems we are talking about first hand? Because of what the fire chief said to the city council. That we will respond to the best of our abilities and give everything we have to the citizens and provide them with the best FD we can offer with what we have to offer them. That right there should say that we love our job and our citizens and that we are looking for their best interests when it comes to their safety.
Midtown as stated on a different post I agree about the whole EMSA is a money hole lol. Well I hope that this might put a different spin on things as I am one of the newest members of the FD, and how my feelings about my job are seen in barnold whom has been on a long time and others whom have since retired or will retire and comment on this. We just want what’s safe for us to let us go home at night and for your needs when you call.
Participating Member
Re: 6 months later.
yes. I finally used spell check.
VIP Member
Re: 6 months later.
..................
Participating Member
Re: 6 months later.
Steve, I guess you know best. After all you said so.
Participating Member
Re: 6 months later.
In direct conflict with promises made during the campaign (see previous posts by others)
Summary of budget cuts in each department | NewsOK.com
Summary of budget cuts in each department (Oklahoman, 6/21/10)
and for RCjunkieFire
With 29 fewer firefighters, one fire engine and three brush pumpers will be taken out of service. The cuts will mean slower response times to emergency calls.
Police
Several programs will be cut as the department loses 22 sworn positions and four civilian jobs. Among the programs being cut are the mounted horse patrol and educational programs encouraging children to avoid gun violence and Internet predators. Derelict vehicle enforcement and drug interdiction also will be reduced.
The Myriad Gift Shop is already closed, isn't it?Parks and recreation
In addition to losing 11 positions, several park programs will be reduced or cut completely. The city’s municipal gyms will have reduced operation hours. Nature programs will be reduced at Martin Nature Park. Carson Pool, at Sellers Park, will be closed. The Myriad Botanical Gardens gift shop will close. The James Stewart Golf Course restaurant will close.
Participating Member
Re: 6 months later.
It was closed for the remodel of the Myriad Gardens, now the closer is permanent. (I hear there are volunteers that would like to reopen, and run a smaller scale gift shop)
VIP Member
Re: 6 months later.
I examined the shorter document since it related to OKC. The larger document takes aboslutely nothing into consideration for OKC. It's a national prep document.
From your own documentation, 78% of your calls are EMS incidents, not fire. only 14% are actually fires (page 22).
You currently meet your responce time goals 90% of the time (page 44).
In comparison to a very similar city (Jacksonville, FL), we have jsut about the same station per square miles, but with a LOWER population in that square mile...which cancels out the higher station per mile rate. Staffing and Engine Companies in that same comparison show we are in line or doing better than similar cities. (pages 62-63)
Compared to JAX, we have almost HALF the fire calls per 10K citizens. So again, the numbers say we're doing fine.
It does appear that dispatch is behind the curve on getting from 911 to dispatch the truck. That's an administrative role, which appears to be pretty bad at the moment. (pages 67-71)
The areas that need expansion are currently rural. They need expansion to meet responce time goals, not because service is lacking. Some of the "goals" include redundancy. Part of the recommendations include restructuring responce areas to adjust the load on staations (80) If you look at page 82, you'll see how the 4 minute window is covering pretty much everywhere there is a population density (as it should be). So why does the study not reflect that?
Page 96 is a perfect world scenario that won't ever happen. You always shoot for the sky and expect less. But the city can sustain this type of deployment. OKC is simply too distributed to make that reasonable. The following pages who that most stations aren't recommending any changes, just shifting equipment.
I'm not going to examine EMS in this. Until EMSA and the FD are one, there will always be a redunant service provided.
Participating Member
Re: 6 months later.
i am glad you read that bomber. Some have posted about how we run 4 man ALS engine companies and 3 man ladder and bls engine companies. I just read an article in a Magazine two days ago that talked about the proper staffing that is need to do the job affectively along with safely. the study was done in Montgomery County MD at the training facility there.
The study consisted of 22 tasks that the companies were to perform and timmed from start until finish. it shows that a 4 man Engine company can accomplish those tasks in 25%faster than 3 man crews and 30% faster than 2 man crews.
Now you may ask what that means. Basically they found that a 2 man crew would take aaprox 22:16min to complete the taks 3 man- 20:30min and 4 man 15:44min. now you are going to ask so what it s 5 min. it takes under 5 min for a fire to develop into a full room and contents fire and fire doubles in size every 30 secs. you can youtube that and see some amazing training videos to prove that. those 5 minutes mean a lot as far as saving someones pictures or personal belongings or even a life. We dont need to cut staffing just because we have less fires. Have you heard the news about how fat america in general is? 4 ff helps a lot and sometimes we need 7 plus emsa to help lift people.
Bomber you are right. we would like t have more stations inthe rural areas and have them be ALS becuase if our response times are loner you KNOW EMSAs are even LONGER and providing the medical care needed is something we can do, but we cant staff those stations at the staffing levels we currently have.
VIP Member
Re: 6 months later.
There is a nice chart showing the growth of a fire, I forget what page it's on. I believe the same chart shows by 16 minutes, you can assume the structure is destroyed.
I wouldn't dismiss your statement about the improvements the additional manpower would make. But at the same time, I still the same issue that EVERYONE is having to make cuts right now, and have been for some time. I'd rather see the expansion go to coverage for the 4 new stations first and fill in manpower in existing locations later. That doesn't seem to be the main point of the arguements the users here make. All they say is "we need more people" without any specifics on how they do that. Simply adding more bodies doesn't always help. it's adding more bodies in the places they can best serve.
Looking at the dispatch times tells me if the dispatch center can be expanded and the lag between 911 and dispatch can be improved, several minutes could be made up. That in itself could help to reduce the response time. Get to the fire more quickly, and there's less fire to work.
EMSA sucks. They don't have the manpower to do their job efficiently. It's no surprise and it's been that way as long as they've existed. It's a crooked organization that is long past it's usefullness. They should have folded into the FD decades ago. But the same issue comes up, it's a redunant service. If you provide medical services out of say a rescue squad vehicle, why are you doing so? You do so to provide EMS care to stabilize a patient....why not transport the patient too. Again, why have EMSA at all? I know that's not the FD's fault or anything that can be controlled, but as long as it's a redunant service, you won't get more dollars from the city. They'll simply try and push them to EMSA instead.
Participating Member
Re: 6 months later.
Bomber you are smart man. we need staffing in general before we are able to open new stations. when you open new station you promote the persons that have made the highly competative list of either 25 for SGT/lt/driver or 15 for capt/major/ officer. But it also takes ff below driver and officer to open a new station. Let sy we plan on putting just a BLS engine at 2 fire stations SW part of town like banner road. it would take 4 men per shift X3 shifts X2 stations. thats 24 personal just for the engine. Now being rural you would have to figure that they would more than likely have a brush pumper which would add at least 3-6 guys plus maybe a tanker which would add another 6 so looking at approx 36 persons to open two new stations.
Did we mention we are already short 29 persons if NO one retires right now? so 29 +36 = 65 persons just to get us staffed IF we opened the two new stations. I realize and know that everywhere in the NATION they are making fd cuts and there have been reports that due to those cuts people civialian have died just a couple blocks from a fire house that was closed down in Boston. The issue is like we said that City promising and not keeping it. If they never planned on giving us more personal they never should have made those statements ina political move. Plain and simple. Maybe i am too simple minded.
Participating Member
Re: 6 months later.
RC. Chef, A guy i work with with 30 years on says that if you at ten killer this weekend he wants to meet at Barnicle Bills at noon Saturday June 26th. H will bring his info and stats and would like ot have some luncha nd talk more about this in a civilized manner and a cold beer. He is old so take it easy on him. lol
Participating Member
Re: 6 months later.
So Bombermwc, did it say anything about shutting down any companies? Remember 2 stations are being rebuilt. There is no change with that. We voted in 2007 to build 3 new stations. That will have to add at least 45 more people. As of today our dept. Manpower is 922. In late 1989 we voted to add 200 firefighters, the number of employees at that time was 748. The public safety sales tax that we as citizens are paying for is now only providing 173 positions. The simple math is They are collecting a tax for 200 and spending the money for 173.
If our city is required to run on a balanced budget how are they carrying a negative balance of 15 miilion dollars from fy 09-10 into fy 10-11?
Participating Member
Re: 6 months later.
I leave tomorrow for a motorcycle rally in Tennessee, does he live at Tenkiller, I would love to meet and chat with him someday, and of course I'll take it easy.
Participating Member
Re: 6 months later.
Have a quick question for those that are knowledgeable about the City Budget...
Other than the plain & ordinary meaning, what does it mean when it says in the City Budget Report "Transfers between Operating Funds" that “Fire Sales Tax to General Fund” & “Police Sales Tax to General Fund” are (est) $11,263,377 & $8,647,270 respectively?
As it does on page 43 (52 of the PDF) of the latest City Budget Report available for download from OKC.gov; finance tab.
VIP Member
Re: 6 months later.
This is the root of the issue here folks....you think that because it was promised years ago, that it should happen today.
All of this was "promised" back when OKC was protected from the economic downturn, and was actually doing better than everyone else. Once it caught up with us, things changed. Mayor Mick is far from the first person to not be able to deliver on something promised in the past. Budgets dictate what can get done...if there isn't money to do it, there isn't money to do it. Hell, check out ODOT and how they've operated on a 1980's budget ever since then. The only reason why they get anything done is because they get dollars from federal programs like the stimulus (which is what kept the I-40 project alive).
Perhaps that's also a better place for the department to start looking for cash. It could be a turning point in how the department budgets. Instead of looking for so much of the budget coming from normal city budgets, why not instead search out the federal grant money for supplies/equipment. Same goes for some bond projects. That frees up normal budget money for manpower because you NEVER want to use temporary money to fund a person.
If you want to look at someone that has become a master at it...check out our favorite money suck, Mr. John Whetsell. He's got more toys than FAO Schwartz. He's managed to buy a bunch of crap he doesn't really need and didn't really wisely spend that money, but the base concept is still there.
So since we all seem to finally be able to discuss this like adults with real statistical data instead of children (and Im admitting that too), perhaps we can change this discussion to finding a way to get to the goal outside of playing the blame game. Let's be proactive and find a solution instead of simply complaining about it in a way that won't ever get anything done. I'm still 100% saying you won't get this money from the city, and the citizens still don't see the need. I understand what you're trying to say, but it's still not being said in a way that the average joe is going to get it or get on board with you.
Participating Member
Re: 6 months later.
Sorry, but that doesn't match up with the timeline of events. And by most accounts, we are still doing better than "everyone else"
Participating Member
Re: 6 months later.
Bombermwc,
I sent you the link of the Manpower, aka staffing study, because it is a Nationally completed study that directly relates how quickly a fire is extinguished and the safety of the citizens directly in proportion to how many firefighters arrive on an apparatus. It also directly addresses firefighter safety and injuries and relates how an increase of staffing reduces workers comp claims. Ie. adequate staffing reduces time lost, medical bills etc. which makes the additional positions a wash as far as the bottom dollar to the city goes.
As has been mentioned already, the study you referenced is a Fire Station relocation study that is 4 years old now with none of the recommended implementations complete. 2 stations are being built to close 2 stations. When these stations open/close, the current plan is to reduce total manpower of the fire department not increase it. You'll also note that the majority of the recommendations in the Fire Station relocation study are not being adopted as well. Why? The city believes it would cost them money rather than save them money.(my opinion)
Just because 8 fire trucks roll up on a house fire doesn't mean you have adequate fire protection. If those 8 are staffed with 1 firefighter a piece, it's just a dog and pony show that looks really pretty to the average citizen but those that are doing the work know the jobs that need to be done to protect lives and property are not being completed. While OKC is not nearly as bad as that, we are understaffed and shorthanded without adding 3 brand new fire stations the study recommends. I go back to the earlier reference of what you don't know or see as a problem doesn't concern you. We are the fire experts whether you like it or not. You don't tell your surgeon he's doing it wrong and it costs too much; then fire the nurses helping him. You become informed prior to the surgery and choose the most economical and safest path for your well being. We are telling all those here that we've been performing surgery shorthanded for years and some pt's are going to die if we don't improve services.
Our services have been delivered with lack of equipment, poor equipment and short staffed companies for years. The city is happy to pay more workers comp claims to injured firefighters and write off civilians lives that are lost. They don't see the cost savings even with the nationally studies and pretty charts and graphs.
You'll also note as we talk about money issues, that none of the comparison cities in the Fire Station report are supplemented by a dedicated 3/4 cent sales tax. The city is not spending yours, mine or anyone else's money in the most efficient manner when it comes to fire protection. That is the message we keep trying to tell everyone. Why does the city council ask for a $100,000+ study or recommendations from the Fire Chief only to tell the experts what they really need? If it's all about economics then we should just let every structure fire burn to the ground, write the owners a check for the building and funeral expenses and the city would be money ahead. History has shown us that while this is economical, it's not what taxpaying citizens want.
Take the time to read the Staffing study link I posted and you'll understand what I keep saying. Whether anyone here likes it or not, is won over or not, You are being informed of the situation and it is getting worse. It will continue to get worse even with an economic upswing. How do I know this? Long History of being in the civil service and I've been thru this before.
Participating Member
Re: 6 months later.
In this case it means one thing... Using dedicated and earmarked special purpose tax revenues to cover General Fund expenditures had the special not been created and accessible to provide financial/budgetary relief to the General Fund of the City of OKC. Plain and simple.
I have a question for you. Why does the City Council cease all General Fund expenditures for Council/employee travel and then give General Fund dollars to the Chambers Economic Development Foundation so they can travel all over the world as they see fit.
Participating Member
Re: 6 months later.
Always found it a tad ironic that the Chamber of Commerce is a not-for profit
Participating Member
Re: 6 months later.
I thought we passed a 75 mil. dollar G.O. Bond prop. for economic development so why are we still spending G.F. dollars?
Talk about irony, the Councilman that wanted all City travel to cease is the Chairman of the OKC Economic Development Trust, which gives the money to the Chambers Economic Development Foundation.
Participating Member
Re: 6 months later.
andy157,
And yet no one is curious as to why the council has funneled over $700,000 to this trust for the Chamber's travel and expenses this year alone. Do they think no one is paying attention to where the money goes? And the media is where? Oh, yeah the citizens of OKC should hire a really good PR firm in order for anyone to really listen.
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