A Tale of Two City's Fire Departments

[XLFD]

It may sound counterintuitive but according to a sourced Report: Volunteer firefighters in Michigan are as effective as paid at lower cost to taxpayers. It links to a new report which states that the 25 largest volunteer-led fire services in Michigan spend $19 million less annually than the top 25 largest full-time departments in the state.

"Local governments should be embracing unique ways to save money,” Holly Wetzel, communications coordinator at the Mackinac Center said. “When comparing volunteer-led services to full-time fire departments across the state, it is evident that volunteer forces save local governments money without sacrificing the quality of fire protection."

Insurance data suggests that volunteer firefighters are, on average, just as effective as professionals. There is no systematic difference between the two based on the Insurance Service Office’s “ public protection classification (aka ISO ratings),” Mackinac Center's Chase Slasinski wrote in the Lansing State Journal. Insurers use this metric of fire protection quality to determine property insurance rates for a given jurisdiction. The state average ISO rating is 6.4.

Slasinski compared the fire departments of Troy, which is predominantly volunteer, and Lansing, which has roughly an equivalent amount of full-time firefighters finding their ISO rating were equivalent, but each citizen in Troy only paid out $56, while citizens of Lansing needed to pay in $286 per capita to maintain their city's fire department.

Let's look at a geographically closer example of two similar sized departments and compare.

The Ludington Fire Department (LFD) and Manistee Fire Department (MFD) have the distinction of serving the two largest cities in a fairly good sized geographical area in northwestern lower Michigan. The fire station in Manistee was recently recognized as the oldest continually-manned fire station in the world.

To be continually manned you have to hire a fair contingent of full-time and part-time firefighters and you can guess that comes at a much greater cost than when you have only part-paid volunteer firefighters who respond only when they are paged by central dispatch, as the LFD has. To compare the costs of personnel and operations for both departments let's have a look at their 2020 budgets.

In personnel costs alone the City of Manistee spends $887,340. That's quite a bit of change when your total general fund is $6.35 million:

The operation costs are $218,000, making the annual MFD budget at $1,105,000:

When one looks at the same year's budget (2019) for Ludington, there are incredible differences. Their budget doesn't separate the two costs, so I have highlighted the personnel-type costs and the total budgeted cost.

The total budget, with personnel costs of $137,900 and operating costs of $95,600 is $233,500. Let's do a side by side comparison:

 

Dept.   Personnel Costs   Operating Costs   Total   Costs   City Population   Cost per capita
MFD         $887,340            $217,660          $1,105,000       6107 (2017)            $181
LFD          $137,900             $95,600             $233,500       8061 (2017)              $29

Manistee city residents pay over five times as much per person than Ludington citizens for their fire department. At that rate, one would think Manistee residents would have better protection from fire and that would be recognized by insurers by giving them a better ISO rating. Sorry, Manisteeans, not only do you have to shell out close to $900,000 extra per year to maintain your fire service than Ludingtonians, you have to pay out more for fire insurance too.

Recall, the average ISO rate in the state is 6.4, the MFD in 2016 went from a ISO of 6, which it had for 15 years, to an ISO of 5. Bad news? No, the lower the ISO is the better your department is rated, the lesser your insurance on average, the best departments have ISOs of one. MFD is above average in regards to other departments in the state.

But not better than the volunteer-supported LFD. They have an ISO rating of 4.4. They've had better ISO ratings over our neighbor to the north consistently over the years.  Even during the time they had all of these people on the department:

So let's appreciate and applaud the part-paid volunteers that serve Ludington, and those that serve Pere Marquette and Hamlin Townships-- and the rest of the county for that matter-- who help keep our taxes more manageable. Sacrificing their weekends and evenings for supplemental training in their craft, willing to sacrifice their spare time helping others through fires, crashes, medical emergencies and a host of other situations. 

Let's further appreciate and applaud our Ludington city leaders who would surely love to be able to support full-time firefighters, but have resisted the urge to explode the budget in doing so.

But finally, let's commiserate with the residents of the City of Manistee who not only seem to be subsidizing the Ramsdell Theatre, their city marina, numerous housing projects, etc. but also a somewhat inefficient and costly world-record-holding fire department.

[stump]

  I have a question on what firemen wear under their firefighting gear?  Don they stop at the fire department and change into special underwear , shirt and pants ?

[XLFD]

Let's call them firefighters, so we can acknowledge the sacrifice and dedication of a growing number of women in the business, as well.  Minus their shoes, it's usually whatever they were wearing when they received the call-- when you're talking volunteers.  

The exceptions would occur if you were in an expensive outfit and didn't want to risk ruining it or have it smell like smoke for eternity, so you'd take it off quickly before jumping into your turnout pants or if you were sleeping and wearing less than pajamas or other underwear, you might want to throw something on quick so that you're not streaking to the fire station and back.

Smart firefighters sleep with comfortable, expendable, loose-fitting clothing by the side of the bed or wearing them to bed.  In the warm months, expect to see all clothes soaked with perspiration when they come back from a call, unless they have spare duds in their vehicle.

[Du Wright]

Nice article! Thank you firefighters, especially volunteers. This article gives insight to the sacrifice they continually make.

[XLFD]

Some have made the generalization that I seem to only dwell on what's wrong with the City of Ludington rather than what they are doing right, and my foci in previous articles probably lend credence to those claims.  In my defense, there are numerous local media and agencies that seem to be willing to relay propaganda of the COL without any context or criticism, so such recantations of that pablum seem puerile and pointless to a naturally cynical idealist like myself.  

Besides, the praise that I show for the COL and the LFD in this article effectively contrasts the concerns I have over the City of Manistee's fire department budget bloat painted against the reality that the Victorian port city's economic future appears unsustainable.  The target of this article was actually painted north of the county line, transferred from the usual Ludington City Hall doors, where a 'Good Job' medal was posted instead.  Manistee is 3/4 the size of Ludington in population, but normally has a budget around 4/3 ours, and much of that is due to how we both approach fire protection.  With their world record, I guarantee the MFD will not change into a more economically sound policy w/o them going under state emergency manager control. 

[Du Wright]

it's good to hear good news with facts presented.

[stump]

The reason the clothing question was asked was the 2019 request for a $9,400 expenditure followed by $7,300 again for each of the next couple years. I did notice the Chief is getting a little hefty but $24,000 for the next 3 years?   2016 was  $1282.  It looks like some creative book work is going on .

[XLFD]

I never handled the budgeting issues of the LFD, but I would assume that due to the high numbers in the "clothing allowance" that it covers the purchase of 'turnout gear', including the bunker pants, reflective jackets, hoods (many wear these to further protect neck and face), helmets, boots, and even gloves.  In the rest of the budget no line seems to encompass those necessary purchases and replacements.

If that is the case, the price tag seems reasonable.  A full set of firefighter special gear can crest over $2000 each, experts say the life of gear for a middle sized department should be about five years-- their protective abilities wane through repeated uses and washings.  

Rationalizing all of this, if the LFD replaces each of their 20 firefighters working gear (@ $2000 each) every five years, they would be spending $40,000 every 5 years, or $8000 per year.  Nothing very creative needed to explain that expense, they even have their dress uniforms and vehicle extrication outfits to add on.