Pork as "Protection"

Chalk up another local pork barrel project masquerading under the guise of "security spending." First, it was the tank that would protect Annapolis from the famed Al Quaeda Panzer Division. That was $1.4 million down the drain. Now, the County is applying for a $670,000 federal "grant" to buy a special boat that will allegedly "patrol Anne Arundel County waterways" attempting to "detect biological or chemical attacks and respond to nuclear explosions." According to Cathy Vitale, whose husband is a firefighter, "the boat will benefit the County." Sure it will. Sounds like a delightful place to have fundraisers.

Now first things first. County taxpayers foot the bill for federal "grants" just as surely as they do for the money the County spends, it's just that it gets to go to Washington first, and get mingled with the dollars from taxpayers in the other 50 states. If one considers this a waste of our tax money, we certainly shouldn't be burning the dollars of Montanans and Californians on it either. And, it is a waste.

The County already has a fire boat, the Lady Anne, that "patrols during major events like fireworks, sailboat races and the Bay Bridge swim." That would seem to mean that the other 362 days a year, it's free to putter up the Magothy, Severn, and South, looking for ill-intentioned ne'er do wells. Is it? If so, I've never seen it happen.

The ridiculousness of this whole episode is compounded by the fact that the County Department of Inspections and Permits is still relying on citizens, rather than its own inspectors, to catch violations along the waterfront, because it lacks the will or the money to purchase an inspection craft to patrol the most environmentally sensitive areas in the County, its 480 miles of shoreline.

So, while we're off asking for federal handouts for fire boats to sniff the trail of unlikely boogey men, we continue to allow the very real destruction of our County's natural resources on a daily basis for want of the ability to provide real monitoring.

Fire Department on Track to Blow Overtime Budget, Again

The Capital has put a pleasant spin on the latest overtime news out of the Fire Department, but the fact is, they're still on course to spend about $1.26 million more than they've been allocated this fiscal year ($4.4 million).

Fire Suppression in Annapolis

The Capital said it in Friday's paper, and I would like to affirm it and add to it here: The City Council and Mayor absolutely have to find a way to get sprinkler systems installed throughout the commercial corridor of historic Annapolis.

Sure, there will be some complaints from property owners, a share of whom work to extract as much as they can from their multi-million dollar property without having to maintain their aging structures. And, no doubt, there will be concerns from tenants about increases in rent. These objections are legitimate and deserve consideration, but in my estimation, they take a back seat to the fact that a significant blaze or two could destroy everything in Annapolis that so many forward thinking people have done over the past 300 centuries to preserve. There's no question that Annapolis is more than old buildings, but there's also little question that if Annapolis consisted largely of architecture like the modern entrants on Main Street and the Bank of America building on Church Circle the City would be poorer off for it, and its appeal would suffer.

All of this is to say nothing of the benefits to human safety that accrue from mandating the installation of sprinklers. For instance, in Scottsdale, Arizona, where sprinklers have been mandated for 15 years, the City has seen the civilian fire fatality rate reduced by a minimum of 50 percent [pdf], and millions of dollars in cost savings as a result of the absence of fire-related interruptions in commerce.

This is an idea whose time came a decade or two ago, and is well past overdue. Requiring sprinklers will allow property owners to convert their second and third floors to residential space, will dramatically decrease the likelihood of a catastrophic fire in the district, and will help enhance and protect our gem of a City for the next 300 years.

Leopold Moves Quickly to Action on Firefighters and Environmental Protection

Having been in office less than a full week, County Executive John Leopold is acting quickly to address some of the laxities that dogged the final days of the Owens' administration. First, Leopold tackled the issue of new firefighters skipping out of the re-payment of their training fees. Recruits who leave the department within 5 years of training are contractually bound to repay the training costs.

Under Owens, Acting-Personnel Officer John O'Conner and Fire Chief Ronald Blackwell asserted that such repayment could hurt future recruiting. Frankly, to have required repayment in the contracts, and Department Directors expressing these views is preposterous. Requiring repayment makes sense. Why should Anne Arundel County train firefighters for other jurisdictions? Perhaps one solution is for the Department to hold back $2,000 of salary for each of the first five years of tenure at the Department, releasing it in $2,000 increments at the end of each year, basically like a bond, rather than having to track down and re-coup the money from truants.

The recruitment and attrition problems at the Fire Department seem to go much deeper than this though. It's my sense that this Department is truly broken. There is often tension between the volunteers and career firefighters, there are horrendous problems with overtime, and the County has an attrition rate of 20 percent (compared to Baltimore, Montgomery, and Prince George's rates of 9 to 16 percent). Surely housing cost is an issue, but it's no cheaper to live in any of those jurisdictions. It's important for the public safety and the public coffers that Mr. Leopold and his new chief get a handle on this, soon.

Shortly after the Board of Appeals decision on the Little Dobbins Island home, Mr. Leopold signed an executive order showing his commitment to cracking down on environmental violators. His order states that violations "such as polluting waters with soil or sediment, grading or disturbing land without sediment controls, and developing without a stormwater management plan" will be sent to the Maryland attorney general for prosecution. Leopold offered, "My administration will not tolerate construction activity in the Critical Area without the required permits. Violation of the environmental laws will trigger immediate action by this administration."

For those of us focused on environmental conservation, Mr. Leopold also uttered some very important words: "[The land is not a mere commodity.] In fact, it is something to which we all belong. We are only stewards of the natural resources and we need to leave the land, if we can, in better shape for future generations."

Let's hope they are words by which his administration will live.

More Fire Department Mismanagement

It turns out that the Fire Department and the County have been extrememly lax in enforcing the requirement that recruits work in the County for at least 5 years after their training, or pay the County back. The training costs between $4,500 to $10,000 per recruit. Of the 80 former fightfighters who were trained, and have left, since 2002, only 7 have been billed, and only 2 have paid back any of the money. At this point, the County Auditor estimates that the County has lost between $325,000 and $730,000 in squandered training money.

The next administration and Fire Chief are going to have their hands full figuring out just how to clean up the mismanagement of the Fire Department under the Owens' administration.

Fire Dept. Poised to Blow Its Overtime Budget....Again

The County Fire Department is projected to spend more that $5 million over what it was budgeted for overtime this year.

Firefighters Needed

Twice in this week's Capital pieces appeared on the problems with overtime overruns by the County Fire Department, first, in a story on Sunday, and then in an editorial on Thursday. The Fire Department has spent $3.54 million on overtime in 5 months, when the overtime budget for the entire year consists of only $2.77 million. The Department is on a pace, by my count, to spend about $8.5 million on overtime by the end of the fiscal year.

The Fire Chief, Ronald Blackwell, blamed the overruns on "the high cost of training dozens of firefighters to become paramedics and specially trained medics." Again, by my calculations, that would work out to something like $41,824 per trainee, for each of the 137 extra shift members the Department is bringing on the force [$5,730,000/137]. Could that possibly be correct? Even spending this princely sum, the Department apparently hasn't been able to attract additional expert paramedics, according to the Chief.

Any chance we might get someone to call for an audit of how all these funds are being spent? It seems like it would just be cheaper to pay these folks better in the first place, so we could attract more of them, and stop having to pay the rest overtime, which can't be particularly good for their readiness or public safety. If you have any ideas about what's going on, or how to improve the situation, please drop me a line.

Playing Politics with Public Safety

The pettiness of some local politicians is legendary, and a recent audit of the County's 2004 fiscal records seems to have uncovered more. There has long been speculation that a new firehouse in the Annapolis neck area has been blocked by the Owens' administration, despite the dire need for one ¹, because of the Executive's oft rocky relationship with Councilwoman Barbara Samorajczyk (D-Annapolis Roads).

Now we learn in yesterday's Capital that the Executive laid off 16 police officers in a year that the County had a $59 million budget surplus. Initial projections were that the officers might have to be laid off because the budget would be tight, but rather than wait to see if the officers could be accomodated, Owens ordered the lay off the same night the Council voted against her wage freeze for County union members.

As a result of the layoffs, 8 of the police recruits found work elsewhere (while the other 8 were eventually hired by the County). By laying off the recruits, who had already gone through police academy, the Executive squandered the $560,000 it cost to train the officers ($70,000 a piece).

That's a hefty price for the Council and the citizens of Anne Arundel County to pay for the ill conceived whims of a vindictive Exec. Unfortunately, that's just the tip of the iceberg.

1 - According to the Annapolis Neck Small Area Plan, "based on Fire/EMS responses between 1998-2001 to the Outer Annapolis Neck south and east of Bay Ridge at Hillsmere Road and north and east of Bay Ridge Road at Edgewood Road, the average response time was 11½ minutes. The goal should be to achieve ... maximum response times of 6 minutes for EMS Basic Life Support (BLS) and 10 minutes for EMS Advanced Life Support (ALS) or for a full structure fire a minimum of 90% of the time."