Fire chief doing a poor job controlling overtime
This editorial appeared in the Derry News on April 26., 2007

To the editor:

I was rather surprised by the shallow statement attributed to fire Chief George Klauber at the recent council meeting, who said that, “You can’t reduce overtime without reducing service.”

On one hand, it is totally preposterous that routine fire and EMS services can only be provided through the regular use of expensive overtime. To say so indicates that effective management decisions have not been made in the past and are not being examined nor employed today.

To say that grossly immoderate overtime is the only solution to our Fire Department’s provision of service to its citizens is to admit managerial defeat, to show that our current union contract is unable to provide for our daily safety and well being, and, on the other end of the spectrum, that the chief’s statement may be construed as rank political blackmail directed at our Town Council and our taxpayers.

On the other hand, Derry routinely and continuously responds to numerous false fire alarms at the same locations with exactly the same lavish response in equipment and manpower every single time. This activity reminds me of the definition of addiction, where one does the same thing over and over while hoping for a different result.

Unfortunately, little has been done to address and reduce these increasingly expensive false alarms. All across the country, other departments, plagued by this false alarm epidemic, have instituted viable long term solutions and reforms to both reduce the costs of response and to limit the department’s liability during response.

Plastic covers with local enunciators can be placed over interior pull stations prone to transmit false alarms, just as voice enunciators can be used to summon ambulances, fire, and police in the place of the traditional and increasingly obsolete mechanical fire alarm box. And lastly, the department’s response can be tailored to the boxes which routinely transmit these false alarms in a process called “adaptive response.”

These ideas are not new; they are in place all over the country, and they serve to conserve precious emergency resources for the calls that are determined to be real. There is simply no good managerial reason to dispatch every piece of fire apparatus in town to repeated false fire alarms at the same old locations without taking concrete action to maximize their employment for real emergencies and to reduce the town’s growing costs for these frivolous activities.

Chief Klauber’s statements, however, indicate that his management tenure remains devoid of the wide ranging ideas and the managerial excellence demanded from his expensive leadership position. In fact, his words indicate that he too is a victim of a department which he can neither reform nor lead more advantageously.

While the chief can be praised for finally hearing the enraged sentiments from a public jaded by his department’s protracted use of expensive private gymnasiums for workouts which can be easily provided at every fire station in town and are all over the country, this brief tilting of a cap towards the increasingly penurious public does little to address the growing managerial shortfalls routinely demonstrated by our all too expensive and top heavy local fire service.

It’s high time for a professional management study of the Derry Fire Department.

John Burtis

Derry