HARRY R. CARTER, Ph.D., MIFireE

Many times over the past several months, I have spoken about the need for you; yes YOU, out there across America to get more involved with local government. I have listened to people who would spend a great deal of time sitting at the kitchen table in their fire station grousing about everything that was wrong in their community.

I have heard these firehouse planners holding forth so often, that the conversations have blended together over time. Their plans for the future were manifold and great. They all ran along the following lines:

• The mayor doesn’t care about us.
• The city council would rather plant trees than hire firefighters.
• Those darned commissioners just don’t understand what it is like to be a fire chief in 2001
• Now, if I were in charge.

And on it goes. These people would much rather complain than work to become a part of the solution. They would much rather run their mouths than their cities. They are having far more fun, and have far less responsibility.

Do they actually accomplish anything? I think not. I have suggested that we should begin to step up to home plate and take a cut at the fastball of government, as it comes speeding toward us. It is easy to complain. It is quite a bit harder to actually perform. I have often said that we have to do more for the communities that we serve. How can we ever make any progress in improving our service delivery system, if we don’t tell the public what we do? And I think that it would be better if we were all to lead by example.

Having said this, let me tell you a little bit about one of my dear friends in the American Fire Service. Shane Ray is a career firefighter in the Brentwood Fire Department, located in Brentwood, Tennessee. He is also a volunteer firefighter and Chief of Department in the Pleasant View Volunteer Fire Department. He has made the fire service his life. But this is not really that uncommon, as I know of many who do the sample juggling act in many places around the country.

What makes Shane’s life somewhat special is the fact that he is also Mayor of the Town of Pleasant View, Tennessee. Shane has long been an active member of the fire service. I first met him when he was a student in the Fire Administration Program at Eastern Kentucky University. We spent a great deal of time together every year at the Fire Department Instructor’s Conference, first in Cincinnati, and later in Indianapolis. And he has spent a number of years on the Board of Directors for the International Society of Fire Service Instructors.

He seemed to be a real go-getter even back then. He definitely wanted to be a career firefighter. And he most assuredly wanted to rise to the chief level. One of my continuing threads of advice to the younger people with who I counsel involves the need to become involved in the community. It is one thing to belong to a fire department. It is another thing to give in other, less exciting, venues.

Shane has done just this. He has served as Mayor of Pleasant View Tennessee since December of 1998. Prior to that he served as an Alderman. But let me allow Shane to tell you his story in his own words. " … I ran for council because the town I live in had recently incorporated. They had a mayor and two aldermen. They hired a police chief at a salary of $45,000, and applied for a COPS grant. The volunteer fire department, which has existed for 24 years before there ever was a town government, was receiving a $15,000 donation, and no one was receiving any compensation."

It appears to me as though Shane was a little perturbed about the law enforcement versus fire funding situation. In order to be sure that he was on solid legal ground, he contacted the State Attorney General to see if he could serve as both an alderman and a fire chief. A positive answer came back from the state capitol in Nashville. Back to Shane’s story, "… I was most fortunate that the opportunity to run came up when two more alderman’s positions were added to the governing body."

This is a critical story, because Shane could have sat back, complaining and hurling invectives, but he chose a different path. After his election as an alderman in 1994, he was selected by the Board to serve as Vice Mayor. Shortly thereafter, the Mayor resigned and Shane was appointed as the Mayor. He was recently elected to a full, four-year term in his own rite.

Let me now share some more of his words with you. "We have been successful. I cut the police chief’s pay and cut out the COPS grant. I did not do this out of spite. All actions were based upon the identified community need here in Pleasant View. We use the Sheriff’s Department for coverage. Five of their members live in our community. So naturally they patrol here. We have also begun to develop the proper planning and research to determine levels of service for each department."

Lest you think that Shane Ray is the only member of his department that has taken up the banner of service in Pleasant View, Tennessee, there are also fire department representatives on the planning commission, the county commission, the county planning commission, the Governor’s Three-Star Award program, the Civitan Club and the local Chamber of Commerce.

Chief Ray’s department has also improved the level of donations to their organization. According to Chief Ray, " … our government donations and contracts have gone from $3,500 to $147,000." He attributes this to the dedicated involvement of a wide range of fire department members.

The Fire Department that Chief Ray commands protects two full cities and parts of two counties. He has a simple philosophy when it comes to representing his department. "I cannot be at all of the meetings, but you better believe that I have a uniformed person sitting in on all of them."

So you can see that here is one Fire Chief in the United States of America that knows how to take care of business. He can take care of both the business of being a fire department leader and the business of being an active participant in the life of his community. These are the things that I keep preaching about. Money doesn’t fall from the sky. You have to go out and earn your way in your community.

The same holds true in the world of national politics. As one who has spent a great deal of time fighting for funding for Congressman Pascrell’s FIRE Bill, I have been tossed for a loop since the President’s Budget Message included a de-funding of our $300,000,000 for Fiscal Year 2002.

Thanks to the gang at Firehouse.com, I know that there are a number of concerned and caring members in the American Fire Service. The problems that we have stumbled across in the area of the FIRE Billhave shown me just how many dedicated people have wanted to be a part of the battle. I have been privileged to review a number of missives from you kind folks out across America.

I personally want to thank each of you who have chosen to share your thoughts with the President of the United States. I really want to thank those of you who sent my commentary, I Am An American Firefighter to the President. I know that I did.

Let me close this commentary with a few words from Firefighter Brian Gilmore, from Pennsylvania. These words are a part of his letter to President Bush:

"Dear Sir:

I am a volunteer firefighter in Delaware County, PA. I would like to comment on the response that your spokesperson gave to the Firehouse.com website regarding your decision not to fund the FIRE Act for FY2002.

In your message, you cited the appropriateness of the federal government's role, then followed by citing statistics on the decline of deaths and injuries (both civilian and firefighter) from fires in the United States. You then stated, "Firefighting is largely a local government responsibility in this country and establishing a permanent new program of federal grants to local fire departments has not been justified."

I would seriously question the logic of this conclusion. How can you ignore the fiscal losses caused by fire when it is greater than any other industrialized nation in the world? And most importantly, why does law enforcement rate so much financial assistance, when there is so much overlap ('duplication of efforts') between local, state, and federal agencies, all of which are completely funded by tax dollars, unlike the fire departments in America, a majority of which are volunteer organizations?

You claim that fire suppression is a local issue, yet you support the allocation of almost 5 billion dollars for police departments across the nation to supplement their ranks. You are willing to spend money to pay more people a salary and benefits to enforce our laws, but you are thumbing your nose at a group of people who donate their time without compensation to perform a task that requires so much training that it may take even more time than their full-time job. How can anyone, regardless of what their title is, whether they are compensated or not, who puts their life at risk to aid their fellow man not be considered worthy of financial assistance?

This nation is protected by over 800,000 volunteer firefighters. There are 2,464 volunteer fire departments in the state of Pennsylvania alone. Without these people giving of their time to attend training, sell raffle tickets, host pancake breakfasts and barbecues, hold bingo, and stand in the streets, soliciting contributions, the communities they live in would not have ANY protection from the ravages of fire.

I know that the trend is moving towards fewer fires, but we have been saddled with increasing requests for medical assistance, responsibility for mitigation of domestic terrorism, hazardous materials, building collapse (in the older towns) and construction accidents (in newer ones), all with increasing education and compliance requirements from regulatory agencies, skyrocketing costs for apparatus and equipment. I realize that 800,000 people are but a small part of the population of the country, but as we learned during last November and December, a small number of people can be VERY important.

I would not ask you to choose between the importance of law enforcement versus fire protection. It would be an exercise in futility, as they are both vital, and crime is a hot-button issue in the political arena. I will make the argument that the fire service is in greater need of assistance. Consider the hundreds of departments across the nation, including your home state of Texas, who operate without the proper equipment, such as vehicles, protective clothing, and air masks. It is more than improper, according to the regulations imposed by OSHA, it is a major violation- departments using this equipment who are unfortunate enough to suffer a member injured or killed could then also be susceptible to heavy fines and civil lawsuits."

I want to thank Brian for sharing that letter with me. Thank you Shane, and thank you Brian. And thanks to all of the rest of you out there. Let us step up to the plate and tell the public just what it is that we do. Come on gang. I cannot do this thing by myself. We need literally thousands of Shane Rays and Brian Gilmores. Go for it.

The commentary in this column does not necessarily reflect those of Firehouse.Com, Firehouse Magazine, their employees or parent company Cygnus Business Media. Harry R. Carter, Ph.D., MIFireE, is an internationally known municipal fire protection consultant and contributing editor to Firehouse Magazine. He recently retired as a Battalion Commander with the Newark, New Jersey Fire Department. His commentary appears regularly on Firehouse.Com. For more commentary and information, visit Carter's web site at www.harrycarter.com Harry has published several books available for online ordering, including Firefighting Strategy and Tactics and Management in the Fire Service