Fire dept. plan offers guide for future
YFD’s improvement goals presented at City Council work session
The Yuma Fire Department reached out to all members, from administrators to young firefighters, for help in assessing how the department is doing and where it can improve.
Chief Steve Irr presented the department’s Strategic Management Plan for the years 2018-2022 during the May 1 council work session. He explained that the plan is needed to evaluate current service, provide vision for the future and set goals and direction.
“Our strategic plan gives us guidance. It allows us to take a breath and bring folks throughout the organization together and talk about our department and how we’re doing and what the needs are,” Irr said.
The plan also serves as a guide during the budgeting process and gets everyone on the same page, he said. “The nice thing is that this plan was developed by a large part of our organization, and I can tell you personally that I had discussions at crew meetings and department-wide meetings as we developed this plan, so every person that works in the department had input in some way.”
The department revisited its mission statement, tweaking it only slightly. “We’ve got such a young department, we wanted them all to have a say and have ownership of the mission. I thought it was great that it didn’t change significantly, there were only a few words that we tweaked,” he noted.
The mission is: “The Yuma Fire Department exists to provide professional services, protecting life and property, to its citizens. We ensure the safety and security of those we serve by delivering emergency medical transport, fire prevention, fire suppression, and education to the community.”
The department surveyed personnel to get a consensus on the department core values and came up with the acronym FIRE
as the new set of core values: Family; Integrity and honor; Respect for each other and the community; and Excellence and professionalism.
The plan focuses on five critical planning areas: material assets, succession planning, organizational culture, service delivery and organizational excellence.
MATERIAL ASSETS
The goal for material assets is to improve the condition of the department’s equipment, apparatus and fire stations. Irr said the department wants to make sure it maintains an adequate number of stations as the community grows as well as safety equipment for personnel.
One objective is also for response times to meet fire coverage standards and that its facilities meet current security policies. The department also wants to ensure that two sets of turnout gear are readily available to firefighters to reduce the number of times crews have to wear contaminated gear.
SUCCESSION PLANNING
The department wants to prepare employees for advancement and to take on leadership roles. One of the struggles has been having enough paramedics to meet the needs. Irr explained that the city pays to send personnel to the Arizona Western College paramedic program, but at a cost of $25,000 in tuition, it can only send three per year.
“Typically we have more people that want to go than the ability we have to send them,” Irr said.
Another option is attracting already certified paramedics with a sign-on bonus, instead of paying tuition. However, Irr added, some join the department with the expectation of becoming paramedics. If the department doesn’t offer these opportunities, “they will go somewhere else.”
Another goal is to continue having at least two qualified applicants for every engineer, captain and battalion chief promotional vacancy. Irr noted that the department was able to internally fill positions of assistant chief, battalion chief and a “bunch” of captains after a “mass exodus” four years ago, due to having adequate qualified applicants within the organization.
In addition, the department wants to have no less than three qualified applicants for every entry level and administrative officer position and increase the number of trained public information officers. Clerical staff will be crossed-trained to allow for coverage of all critical areas.
Another goal is to “continue
to have the best retention ratio of our current employees in the city of Yuma.”
ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE
Irr defined organizational culture as the department’s ties to the community and commitment to its values.
The department has made a lot of progress in the “safety culture” the last few years, Irr said, especially in the areas of cancer and post traumatic stress disorder. The department is working to prevent these rather than having firefighters deal with them.
The department also plans to improve firefighter and personnel safety and reduce the number of reported accidents and injuries. It will strive to increase non-emergency contacts with the community.
The objective is to “strengthen the fabric of our community anyway we can,” Irr said.
SERVICE DELIVERY
Irr defined service delivery as the department’s ability to respond to emergencies effectively and prevent the loss of life and property. Some of the goals are to meet response benchmarks and increase the number of new construction inspections as well as meet the needs of the community through its Public Education Program with classes offered throughout the year.
The department wants to create a cooperative relationship between business owners and the Community Risk Reduction Division to improve compliance using education and involvement.
ORGANIZATIONAL EXCELLENCE
The goal is to meet all required training for emergency medical services, fire, hazardous materials and technical rescue as well as increase the incidents of live burn training.
The training plan will reflect national trends, such as having an active shooter protocol “so that when we have an event, God forbid we ever have one here, but if we do, that we’re prepared and we can interact with the police department and handle the event efficiently,” Irr said.
The department will strive to improve EMS documentation to be compliant with Medicare standards and improve the ambulance billing collection rate. It also wants to maintain its Premier EMS Agency designation awarded by the Arizona Department of Health Services.
Ultimately, the goal is for the department to continue to serve the community at the same level they expect. “It’s all about service to the community,” Irr said.