Beach Fire to address department issues
An anonymous letter sent to the Fort Myers Beach Board of Fire Commissioners regarding process and procedures of the Beach Fire District has sent an alarm of sorts to senior management of the affected department. The content of the letter was discussed during a Fire Board workshop last week.
Questions about scheduling, the recording of promotional processes, low test scores and a “broken” work environment were raised. Commission chairwoman Carol Morris also mentioned that the labor force was dealing with a hostile work environment.
Assistant Fire Chief Tom May told Morris that the latter situation has been looked into. In fact, Lee County Critical Incident Stress Management Team member John McMahon was recommended then hired to first perform a series of firefighter classes, some of which dealt with traumatic events. He then reportedly met with individual management officials and three labor shifts on an individual basis.
The local Critical Incident Stress Management Team is known to be “a group of individuals trained to support public safety personnel who have been involved in critical incidents and assist them in mitigating long-term effects of stress.” McMahon, a retired deputy fire chief, has referred to his team’s work as “crisis intervention for emergency service workers who are experiencing normal reactions from an abnormal event.”
“(McMann) defuses possible situations,” May told the commissioners. “He addressed some critical things that we were doing that needed to be improved. We’ve put corrective measures in place to take care of that.”
McMann’s survey was reportedly provided to the shift workers, and core values were revamped and reiterated.
May defended the work that Beach fire fighters and paramedics are doing “in the field,” but cautioned there is still conflicts within.
“Labor is doing a phenomenal job with customer care still to this day,” he said.
The assistant fire chief called the department “broken” from past dramatic collective bargaining agreement meetings and salary reductions/ benefit package cuts.
“As commissioners and senior management, we have some serious work ahead,” he said. “There needs to be some healing and focus on the healing moving forward. There needs to be some direction.”
An out-of-station communications meeting without uniforms and badges will be held to “clear the air” in March. It is expected to involve strategic planning, mission and vision statements and long-range goals.
“We are going to develop an organizational committee with representatives from every level in this department,” said May. “I was glad to see that the board was willing to participate in it. That is a big benefit. Collectively, this organizational committee needs to be able to listen and address issues.”
Beach Fire officials know the solution in the process will not happen over-night.
“We are turning a big ship really slow,” May said.
Morris stated the reputation of Beach Fire has been “real low” lately and inquired what administration officials would do about it.
May refuted that comment when he was contacted a day after the workshop.
“We are one of two fire department transport agencies in the county and, with me coming from the outside in, it’s amazing to see how superior our quality of care is and how fast we are,” he said. “The measuring stick that I use is that we have no citizen complaints and we provide a good quality of care to our citizens and visitors in the district.”
There were questions about schedules for some fire administrative officials as far as out-of-office work. Besides calling specific personnel, the District has a Mircosoft Outlook calendar system to help in locating staff.
“We do try to track that to an Outlook calender,” said Fire Chief Darren White. “It’s hit or miss as far as the record keeping of time when it’s not feasible to use a time clock anymore, but we try to use the Microsoft Outlook program as much as possible.”
Morris was curious and queried about the situation.
“It’s important for us to be connected,” she said.
A verbal agreement between the fire chief and union representatives regarding promotional processes was also questioned. Morris thought that a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was needed to properly record the processes, but administrative personnel replied that was not the case.
Testing was also discussed as low test scores were seen as a poor reflection on the district. Both White and May assured commissioners that a new process that involves assessments was being measured and that the second round of tests would prove differently.
“The assessment process is the way that the National Fire Academy level is going,” said May.
Meanwhile, the Beach Fire Board is is in the process of re-writing a current fire chief job description to better mesh with a performance appraisal document, an evaluation report that will be processed by both the board and the chief. More discussion on the topic will occur at a future workshop. White’s contract is up for renewal in September.