Fire prevention has experienced several financial squeezes since the tax revolts began about 30 years ago. Those old enough to remember the book “Reinventing Government” by David Osborne and Ted Gaebler may now be reminded of its theme: that government must reinvent itself from within because unlike the private sector we don’t have competitors to keep our operations lean.
As the economy constricts now’s the time to improve from within. Accountants–those we derisively call “bean counters”–often seem to make life miserable by monitoring the costs of fire prevention and life safety services. But by anticipating their scrutiny and that of other key decision makers you might be able to save your prevention program.
Pay as You Go
With tight budgets we are left two steps for survival: 1) Prove our impact and 2) find other funding sources.
Charging fees for prevention services in my part of the nation began in the 1980s and ’90s. Fees for development-related prevention programs came first because developers required the service to do business. Political pressure to meet code requirements in new buildings was and remains high. Fees became part of the cost of doing business. We received few complaints about these fees because development is a priority for both developers and politicians. Growth you may have heard is good for the economy.
Next on the funding scrutiny list: code-compliance inspection programs. Fees for these services arose not out of business or political demand but because prevention programs needed the money and local decision makers didn’t want to assume the liability of not performing inspections. These are harder to implement. The businessperson who avoids paying for expensive repairs doesn’t miss code-compliance inspections–especially when they must pay for any repairs in addition to inspection fees.
The Costs (& Benefits) of Fees
The downsides to this kind of fee-based prevention program are clear. It’s much harder to manage an inspection program when we must add financial management to the already difficult task of spotting and abating fire hazards.
And no one is happy about the fees. I’ve survived the implementation of such a program and am currently going through the pains of establishing another in my city. At best we can hope that customers get used to it. The only way this will happen is by explaining to every person who receives an inspection the value of this service.
But there’s an upswing too: Charging fees makes us act much more like a private business so our operations must be efficient and effective. We must create fee schedules that can survive the scrutiny of our customers as well as financial managers within our own operations.
In a fee-based world it’s critical to remember that we must also explain to business owners why we must perform code-compliance inspections for commercial occupancies which traditionally have low fire-incident rates. Recent examples of low incidence/high-risk fires like The Station nightclub fire in Rhode Island remind us that the business isn’t all that’s at risk: Patrons and employees of the business are also in danger of being hurt or killed when a fire occurs. Our standard of care is to provide regular code-compliance inspections what we call “public/private benefit ” and business owners who understand this are more likely to accept paying for it.
As businesses face financial crises of their own the pressure to act like a private business is going to grow more acute. Justifying our existence is going to become part of our day-to-day business.
What’s Next?
I’ve learned the hard way: When the economy shrinks the grants and donations that see us through disappear. We’ll be challenged to consider other services for which we can charge fees.
Fees for services are painful to manage and messy. But when the decision makers are deciding where to cut it adds a level of discomfort to look at cutting prevention programs that are fee-supported for one good reason: For every position cut the savings to the general budget is only a fraction of that amount–because fees will not be charged in that employee’s absence.
Many accountants are solidly behind public safety services. But the yin and the yang of fire service fees balance out when these same people we sometimes deride for watching our finances become supporters who shelter prevention programs for solid financial reasons.
