Thursday, May 29, 2008
Editorial: A mutually beneficial arrangement
A city review of a mutual-aid pact with the county is about economics, but it could be used politically.
From the RoundTable blog
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Roanoke County supervisors can't know yet what Roanoke Mayor-elect David Bowers intends to do about the city's fire department budget, but they're worried -- with good cause.
Bowers has blistered the current administration for budget cuts that have left the fire department short six positions. Coincidentally, that is the same number of city firefighters assigned to Roanoke County's Clearbrook station under a mutual-aid agreement.
So it naturally followed that the knee-jerk reaction to the cuts sounded like this: The city cuts manpower at its own station yet still gives the county firefighters. Incredible!
The city isn't "giving" the county firefighters, of course. But explaining that staffing is part of a mutual-aid agreement that is mutually beneficial to the city and the county is dismissed as mere opinion. Unless, that is, there are hard numbers to back it up.
City Fire-EMS Chief David Hoback is gathering those numbers now, so council and administrators can logically evaluate the costs and benefits of working with the county to serve each other's bordering neighborhoods and highways.
At least that is the intent of the plan. But intentions can change, especially when new administrations are seated, as soon will happen with Bowers returning to the mayor's office.
The new mayor and council will review Hoback's report, and no one knows whether it will be used as a political tool rather than as an analytical instrument.
"I thought we would be expanding working agreements where things were working well, not contracting," county Supervisor Joe McNamara said this week. "This tells me where we stand."
Well, not exactly. Not yet, anyway.
McNamara and his fellow supervisors might be prematurely nervous -- but, then again, they've encountered Bowers before. It would be a shame if regional efforts were stymied rather than expanded. Bowers would do well to put the supervisors at ease.
The political jurisdictions share overlapping interests and should be looking for more areas where they can work together to provide better services with fewer costs. Mutual-aid agreements for fire and rescue generally serve this purpose as costs for stations, equipment and manpower are shared instead of duplicated.
Agreements sometimes need to be tweaked to reflect actual service calls and changing circumstances so that they remain mutually beneficial. As long as Hoback's report also includes accurate information from the county, it should bring clarity to the current arrangement.
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