By GARY LUDWIG

It has been a long and vexing road, but it finally appears that members of the Davie, FL, Fire Department have overcome many obstacles in their attempts to maximize their department's value to the community.

Davie, located in densely populated southwest Broward County, is a cross between the wide-open spaces of the frontier and an emerging community. In 1989, residents voted to pay $10 million for an open-space program to preserve pastures and pines and to re tain Davie's small-town image. Many of the town's residential areas are zoned at one house per acre.

Davie measures 42 square miles, has 60,000 residents, and a variety of neighborhoods, shopping centers and commercial buildings. Unique to Davie is its downtown area, where a western theme dominates because of an ordinance requiring buildings to feature s igns and architecture common to 19th-century frontier towns.

For several years, the firefighters of Davie have fought one barrier after another for the opportunity to provide emergency medical transport. In 1995, the town awarded a contract to Life Fleet Atlantic to provide ambulance transport. The contract took ef fect in 1996 and stopped Broward County Fire & Rescue (which had been supplying EMS and ambulance transport services in Davie) from providing the service. Under terms of the contract, Life Fleet would receive $684,000 a year, plus whatever revenue it coul d derive from transports.

The awarding of the contract angered a few firefighters. At the time, Davie Firefighter/Paramedic Rudy Marsala told the Miami Herald, "We wanted to have the chance to supply rescue services ourselves, rather than an outside entity."

The contract, which expires in October 1999, also gives the Davie Fire Department the right to slowly assume EMS responsibilities and services once it had the necessary ambulances, training and manpower. Undeterred, the department set its sights on the go al and began purchasing advanced life support (ALS) supplies and started providing advanced training for personnel.

The road, however, was filled with political land mines and opponents of fire service EMS transport. Life Fleet, which eventually became American Medical Response (AMR), had hired the biggest political gun in town to help it obtain the EMS contract. The l obbyist was Judy Stern. A June 22, 1997, article in the Miami Herald said of Stern, "She's not the mayor of Davie, but she likes to relax in his chair. She's not a council member, but she parks her car in their spaces at Town Hall." Stern also managed the election campaigns of Davie Mayor Harry Venis, Vice Mayor Terry Santini and Councilman Jim Bush.

But the firefighters of Davie were so committed to providing EMS transport to their community that they made major concessions in their union contract in order to make it more economically attractive to Davie's city fathers to provide a fire-based EMS sys tem. Those concessions included:

• A reduction in the number of employees permitted to schedule time off at one time, from four to two.
  
• A reduction in monetary incentives for continuing education.
  
• A 29% reduction in the number of unused vacation or sick days that can be carried over from one year to the next.
  

The firefighters agreed to pay cuts, reduced time off and other concessions for one primary reason: in return, they will assume emergency medical transport and rescue services from the private company that now provides them to the town. But town officials kept making it more difficult for the department to reach its goal. Jim Bunce, the president of Davie's International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) Affiliate 2315, said, "Yes, we're more financially competitive. But as we keep moving toward their (town officials') goals, the carrot keeps moving further down the road ."

Davie's city fathers first told the firefighters that when the fire department had enough paramedics, it could slowly assume EMS transport through a station-by-station transition. But the rules changed when the department, which by now had 20 certified pa ramedics in its ranks, was later told it could assume EMS responsibilities only when the town built its fourth fire station. Then, town officials backed down from that promise.

"Our people have stepped forward and gone to school," Bunce said. "We made concessions. We would like the town administration and elected officials to stop making EMS a political issue."

In the first full year of private EMS service, firefighters filed 58 written complaints against AMR; the firefighters later learned that the town administrator had said the complaints were dismissed. However, public-record requests revealed there was no d ocumentation supporting the statement that the complaints had been dismissed. And, by the terms of the contract, Davie could have withheld more than $100,000 of AMR's $684,000 payment because it repeatedly failed to meet contractual response times. Davie Town Administrator Bob Flatley admitted AMR's response times are not what its contract demands, but he told the Miami Herald, "there's no way I'm going to withhold their money."

But even more roadblocks came, according to the firefighters. This year, just before an important election, the firefighters were notified they could not take an active part in any political campaign, solicit or receive any contributions for any political purpose, or engage in any other type of political activity. The notification came right before one of Davie's hottest campaigns in recent memory in which candidates fell into two categories: those who want Davie's own firefighters to handle EMS and those who think Davie's private EMS should remain in place with AMR.

The firefighters supported lawyer Richard Weiner and teacher Judith Paul. Weiner opposed Santini; Paul was pitted against two candidates who both supported leaving the EMS contract in AMR's hand. On the day of the election, all of Davie's 21 voting center s were staffed by firefighters in bright red shirts that read, "Your Firefighters – Ready – Willing – Able."

Firefighters greeted nearly every voter with pro-Weiner literature. Weiner won his election easily. Paul, considered a weak contender in the three-way race, won by a slim margin in a victory that took many by surprise. Paul was able to build last-minute s upport after casting her support for Davie firefighters. Her yard signs appeared with Weiner's, and as the campaign heated up, Paul strengthened her pro-firefighter platform. Firefighters "put me over the top," Paul said. "It's like getting an entire fami ly behind me. Their endorsement turned everything around for me."

Now the firefighters had two voices whom they helped get elected on the five-person city council. Venis then also swung his support to the firefighters, giving them three of five votes on the council. This sent a clear message that the firefighters were a force to be reckoned with after having so many political barriers hurled in their path.

The Davie administration was ordered by the new town council to undertake a study outlining ways Davie could operate its own EMS program. The study produced three options. Further, a month after the election, Weiner proposed two motions: to buy two emerge ncy vehicles and hire two new firefighter/paramedics; and to withhold 20% from the latest payment to AMR for not meeting its response times.

AMR replied by threatening legal action if 20%, or about $17,000, of its monthly payment was withheld. Bob Eberhart, AMR director of government relations, said, "We are doing a great job, and I don't think we should be penalized for that." He added, "Davi e is getting one of the best response times in the county, if not the best." (The only other town in Broward County contracting with AMR is Wilton Manors, which does not have its own fire department. Twelve other municipalities in Broward County operate f ire-based systems and the county fire-based EMS covers the other unincorporated areas.)

Finally, after much discussion, debate, workshops and recommendations over the past several years, the town council in May 1998 made a definitive move toward incorporating EMS transport into the fire department. The decision is that firefighters will take over EMS operations at the town's Flamingo Road station on Oct. 1, 1998, and at another station in March 1999. The council also agreed to buy two ambulances and hire two more paramedics.

The reality is that sometimes there are politics involved in EMS delivery. The firefighters of Davie were forced into the political arena. A tip of the helmet goes to these firefighters for their relentless efforts to focus on their goal and vision of pro viding high-quality service to their community.