The Perfect Cost of Fire Service

How much fire department are we willing to pay for? What is a reasonable EMS response time on the Key Peninsula?

In business, a key function of a great executive is to stop organizational growth — the natural inclination of good people to improve what they do — and instead set acceptable metrics and not fund beyond that point. This is called intentional suboptimization: We do not want to invest enough resources to fully optimize a system.

In other words, we don’t want to pay for perfect.

Should we answer the customer service line on the first ring, or is it OK to have a bit of wait so people will first try to find the answer on the web? In healthcare, the common wisdom is that everyone understands there are limits like this — until they need care.

Does the KP fire headquarters have to be on more desirable and expensive commercial real estate in Key Center, or can it function on less expensive and readily available property within a mile or two? Do we really need three fire stations so close together, or does one larger, consolidated fire station make more sense? It would add time to some calls, but is that acceptable?

We, the taxpayers and customers of the system, have to decide what we are willing to pay for, and then expect our elected officials to execute. Perhaps the way to start this discussion is with specific questions such as “The current response time for an EMS call in Longbranch, at current funding levels, is X minutes. Is this acceptable to you? Do you want to pay more taxes to reduce it?”

Part of my concern is that the current board of fire commissioners does not seem to understand how to perform its role. If it wants the community to fund capability, the first step is to understand what capability the community considers to be important, not repeatedly survey us on how to fix their real estate woes. The commissioners need to put questions to the community that create an understanding of the cost of the service level.