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Special Report:
Public Safety at a Crossroads
By Mike Thompson
A 6-3 majority on the Saginaw City Charter Review Commission is proposing a major merger of operations, including Public Safety. City Manager Darnell Earley strongly opposes the plan, slated to go before voters in May.
But a study commissioned by Earley
himself, with the City Council's support, takes a small step in that
direction.
The International City/County
Management Association, known as ICMA, says the Fire Department
should use its "relatively large amount of non-committed staff time" to
assist the Police Department.
ICMA is a staunch defender of Saginaw's
so-called "council-manager" form of government with a full-time
professional manager, which Earley and most City Hall insiders want to
preserve. The Charter Commission is advocating an elected mayor with
administrative authority and a district system of bridge-wards extending
across the city to elect a truly representative council.
Despite its connection with the city's
leadership establishment, ICMA has suggested a series of changes in how
Saginaw provides public safety. These proposals are tiny baby steps in
contrast to the Charter group's plan, but they are changes nonetheless.
Earley rejected suggestions that the
ICMA report is evidence that the Charter Commission is on the right
track, or that he asked for the report as a buffer against far larger
consolidations that the Charter group is seeking.
"Reviewing all services is a part of
good management that we would have undertaken regardless (of the charter
group's existence)," Earley said, "but you cannot mandate these changes.
The Charter Commission has gone way too far."
Allan and Greg Schmid
comprise the father-son team that persuaded voters in November 2004 to
establish the Charter review group. They have responded that Public
Safety and overall city government require a major phased-in overhaul,
not just gradual changes.
They add that Earley's tacit endorsement
of the Charter Commission approach to public safety consolidation is
proof of the adage that "when the people lead, the politicians will
follow".
"Charter Commission members are all just private sector citizens elected by other citizens to say what the citizens expect out of their government," explains Greg Schmid. "Citizens want fundamental change from a city that tried for so long to be everything to everyone and is now too broke to be much of anything to anyone."
"We need to fix Saginaw, and so we can't
care what the insider politicians think of our work. They are the
architects of our current failures, and change threatens them."
As to criticisms from Earley, Schmid
remarked, "Darnell Earley is interested in Darnell Early. He is
afraid of losing his authority as the unelected Czar of Saginaw."
In addition to the firefighter proposal,
ICMA reported that the city response time for both police calls and
fires is slower than national norms. The consultants also cited flaws in
assembling crime report statistics that are needed as a basis for policy
decisions.
City leaders say a private source, which
they mysteriously refused to disclose, paid the $28,000 study
cost.
More Roles for Firefighters ICMA data indicates a firefighter on a 24-hour shift spends less than an hour actually fighting fires, and less than two hours responding to overall service calls. These numbers vary day to day, of course. Firefighters were far busier during the post-Halloween arson spree, for example, but had few calls during the recent cold snap.
The consultants reported: "While
firefighters have taken on additional responsibilities such as equipment
maintenance, and while they routinely perform additional duties such as
training and station maintenance, it seems clear that there is ample
opportunity for line firefighters to perform additional duties between
calls for service."
The Charter Commission would merge
not only police and fire, but also rescue, homeland security,
inspections, zoning, environmental and public health services.
ICMA stops short of combining even just
police and fire, asserting that similar moves in communities such as
Kalamazoo have required "years of hard work to accomplish (with)
significant leadership challenges."
Earley agreed.
"This is not the time," he said. "We
have to spend what resources we have on fixing our current structure,
not trying to shoehorn another entirely different structure into
Saginaw's police and fire operations. That would take a number of years
to show dividends."
Instead, the far smaller initial steps
that the consultants suggest would train firefighters to: 1)
Handle "certain types" of routine calls, either over the phone or by
citizens going to one of the four fire stations to file a report. 2)
Computerize data on patrol activities that are not handled by Central
Dispatch, in order to "track, summarize and provide reports on the
effectiveness of crime suppression actions." 3) Convert the fire
stations (Central, Hess, Fordney Park, State Street) into "neighborhood
mini-precincts" to fight crime through citizen action and other
community resources.
Earley said he supports the ideas and
plans to pursue them.
Consultant seeks gradual change Leonard Matarese of Buffalo, an ICMA senior consultant, said he advocates public safety mergers. He says Michigan is the nation's leader in combining departments, starting with Grosse Pointe Shores nearly a century ago.
Still, he insists that steps are gradual.
"You can't take a Fire Department that's
not fully succeeding, a Police Department that's not fully succeeding,
and simply put them together and hope for a better product," said
Matarese, who has experience as a City Manager, a Police Chief and a
Public Safety Director.
"You have to solve the base issues
first, and Saginaw does not yet have a good grip on those base issues.
Those are the issues we have addressed in our report," he said.
The firefighters' labor contract expired
at the end of June 2006. Maurice Patterson, president of
Saginaw Firefighters Local 102, said any proposed changes in duties
are subject to bargaining.
"There were a lot of issues on the table
already," said Patterson, whose union in recent years has pursued
minimum manpower provisions in the face of widespread cutbacks..
In the meantime, Patterson is riled by
the ICMA charts that depict firefighters responding to blazes for less
than one hour per day on average.
"If you watch TV and see the news anchors
for only a half-hour, does that mean that they're only working for a
half-hour?" he asked. "The people who did that report didn't take into
account everything else that we do - the prep time, the studying, the
research. It was all pretty ridiculous. We're fighting fires virtually
every single day, and that makes for a very busy Fire Department."
Saginaw has 63 firefighters, down
from 133 seven years ago before cutbacks started.
Matarese said the ICMA authors did not
intend to criticize firefighters. "We realize they are doing other
things when they are not fighting fires," he explained. "Our point is
that those other duties are interruptible, duties in which a firefighter
could stop for a moment to take a police report from a citizen."
He added that a city proposal to the
union could stand as "optional" for individual members. A firefighter
who accepted the additional duties could receive incentive pay, while a
co-worker in the same station could opt out.
Most fire departments join their local
ambulance companies on medical runs, but past Saginaw leaders cut the
city's program four years ago. ICMA said City Hall, as a result, needs
to constantly monitor the private service provided through MMR,
Mobile Medical Response.
"Far more people die in their homes from
heart attacks than from house fires," Matarese noted.
Getting the facts together ICMA was sharply critical of data collection, especially in the Police Department. "Without access to and regular review of this information, public safety managers cannot possibly make accurate, critical decisions on resource allocation so important to providing high quality, cost effective public safety services," the trio of consultants wrote.
This statement takes added significance
because crime-fighting "resource allocation" in the city is receiving a
boost in three different ways:
1) The city hired five new
officers to boost the count to 97, and now is filling three vacancies
that have occurred since then. Earley has said the count would have
dropped to 66 without last May's voter approval of a 6-mill tax for five
years. Still, the number is far less than the 154 deployed seven years
ago.
2) State Police have made a
major two-year pledge to add patrols and even bring in a helicopter on
occasion. City police last deployed their own helicopter during the late
1970s.
3) Members of the Saginaw
Police Officers Association have narrowly given preliminary approval
for a switch to 12-hour shifts, which will give them more time on the
streets.
ICMA asserts in their report that
Saginaw County "made a major investment" in Central Dispatch, but "has
failed to acquire software capable of producing the kinds of reports
necessary for Saginaw City officials to understand law enforcement
workload within the city."
The consultants did not delve into the
background: City police formerly operated their own dispatch in the
basement at City Hall.
A former councilman, the late John
Dankert, was a sheriff's deputy at the time. Nearly two decades ago,
he vigorously protested the countywide switchover and warned of negative
consequences.
Central Dispatch Director Tom
McIntyre said that despite the wording of the ICMA report, the
county has the necessary data and the duty to improve software is on
City Hall's shoulders.
Earley agreed. "We are reviewing this
whole issue with Central Dispatch, and we believe we are already in the
process of making some changes toward reconciling the matter."
The city has identified some of the things that we need to do," Earley said. Not Taking the Blame Earley said he would study response times through an in-house City Hall work group. In a related matter, McIntyre said city police - not Central Dispatch - are responsible for response time given to various 911 calls for service.
Two residents during recent months have
complained at council meetings regarding response time. Mayor Carol
Cottrell has told them that their concerns are beyond the city's
control, because the county dictates the dispatches.
"That's not accurate," McIntyre said.
"It's the responsibility of the local department's command staff to
monitor calls and make the decisions for assigning cars. It's not the
dispatcher's job to say a city police car should go here, or another car
should go there. The key is to work through the shift lieutenants and
shift sergeants who are on duty."
In response, Cottrell said she believes
her responses to public complaints about response time are on the mark.
"I don't see that Tom McIntyre and I
disagree," she said. "I believe that we are both correct. The city does
not take 911 calls, Central Dispatch does. The city assigns them after
we are made aware by Central Dispatch."
ICMA reported that the main problem in
police response time is a wide variance.
For example, the beginning of response
for the most serious "Priority 1" emergencies is less than one minute
for more than half of the calls. But for 10 percent of the calls, police
take more than 15 minutes before they begin heading to the scene.
Police often blame slow response on
lack of manpower. The consultants said they accept the explanation in
some cases, but not in all.
"Patrol workload data analyzed by the
study team cannot explain the root cause of the problem," ICMA reported.
At press time, Police Chief Gerald
Cliff had not returned Review Magazine's repeated
phone calls and e-mails.
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