ATLANTA -- Now is a difficult time to be a fire chief, given the economic constraints and all the regulations and labor issues facing the profession, says Dr. Bruce Moeller, the city manager for Sunshine, Fla., who is also a former fire chief.
Moeller spoke to a group of fire service leaders at the International Association of Fire Chiefs' annual Fire-Rescue International conference in Atlanta on Thursday.
"These are tough times, you know that," Moeller said in his presentation called "10 Things Your Boss is Talking About -- And You Don't Know." Moeller continued saying, "...and if you want to succeed, you're going to have to be a different fire chief."
As a city manager in the Orlando area, Moeller said his community is doing better than some others, but he's not happy with his lot.
"The economic outlook sucks," Moeller said. "It's going to continue to sputter and falter for a while. It's bad."
And the economy and its effect on budgets is the number one thing city managers – fire chiefs' bosses - are talking about, Moeller said. Sixty-three percent of Sunshine's $380 million budget is comprised of wages and benefits for the police and fire departments and a total of 74 percent of the total is made up of labor costs.
"The only way I can substantively reduce the budget is to cut people," Moeller said. "...That's just the harsh reality and you're going to have to deal with it... I am playing defense here. We are in a triage situation." The economic downturn reduces property values which, in turn, reduces the revenue received in tax dollars, he said. "My revenue goes down, but does my expenses?" Moeller asked rhetorically. "No, of course not."
Additionally, dips in the stock market affect investments made for retirement funds driving the real cost of retirements up, Moeller said. And politicians react to constituents who want lower taxes and more jobs, naively thinking that their particular communities can control external forces locally.
"It's like nothing else impacts your community," Moeller said. "It doesn't matter that Italy is about to tank and France is in trouble and the national debt continues to rise... People think you can influence anything locally."
The best any community can hope for when they seek to attract businesses is to "look better than the guy, or girl, next door," he said.
While businesses were quick to react to the economic rough water, municipalities were largely ignorant of the pending trouble, handing out raises and "acting like nothing was going on," he said.
Consequently, Moeller predicts it will take at least two years longer for cities and towns to climb out of the economic slump, after the "newspapers say everything is OK again."
Moeller said he has a good relationship with his fire chief, but said there's a "giant sucking sound" he hears whenever the chief walks into his office -- he knows he wants something and it's going to cost something.
"I don't care what it cost, I don't have any more to give," Moeller said, noting that a good chief should understand that it's no longer a question of "doing more with less" but in some cases it's doing less with less.
Today, a good chief knows how to have information available whenever taxpayers want it and often that means having presence on the Internet.
"You have to make sure your systems are in place to make sure information is available whenever people want it," Moeller said. He added that by being responsive to taxpayers, they will support you when you really need it.
Moeller also recommended that fire departments fully understand the issues when they ask for more money in their budgets for any purpose. Rather than just saying the department needs more staffing, it's better to say why it needs more staffing and to have all the information available, like costs, response times and consequences.
There really are only two areas city managers are concerned with - budgets and politics, Moeller said.
"I don't care what you are doing," he said. "Just tell me how much it is going to cost and I'll figure out if I can afford it and sell it politically."
It's also important to document why your department needs the particular request and have the information to back it up, Moeller said.
Building relationships with other agencies in the community, like the police department and public works will help a fire chief in the long run, Moeller said, as will being creative with finding policies as the solutions to taxpayers' and politicians' problems, he said. He added that it's often easier to advance policies when they are seen as solutions rather than initiatives.
Taking advantage of "focusing events" like 9/11 can also help advance fire departments' policies. Problems and politics more closely align themselves with policies during crisis than any other time, Moeller said.
"There's a window of opportunity of about six months after a focusing event to advance policies," Moeller said. "So, you've got to have your stuff ready to take advantage of the opportunity."
When the attacks of 9/11 happened, the federal government opened the flood gates of funding for fire departments, something that should have happened long before the tragedy, he said. The same is true for when Hurricane Katrina ripped through the Gulf Coast states, he added.
Finding "success in the sandbox" really depends on fire chiefs being aware of their situations, the politics of their community and the realities it faces, Moeller said.
"It's not brain surgery," Moeller said.
