On Wednesday, April 12, 2017 from 0900 to 1600 hours, the District conducted our annual Strategic Planning Workshop with all of their officers and staff personnel. Each year prior to the starting on the next fiscal year’s budget, all personnel submit their budget request for either new equipment, maintenance & repair of existing equipment, supplies and continuation requests.
At this meeting all of these requests are reviewed and any new equipment or ideas are discussed and voted on to determine if they will be included in the next year’s budget. Additionally, all of Station Officers and Program Managers had homework assignments prior to this meeting, they had to review our Mission and Vision Statements for any possible changes as well as they had to perform a SWOT Analysis over the District implementing ALS Non-Transport Engines.
We did some Team Building exercises with all of over personnel, the first being a fun exercise that involves Teamwork, Problem Solving and Communications. With the first exercise we broke the groups by shift, staff, and Fire Prevention. Each Team was given 6 plastic solo cups, 6 pieces of string cut into 24 inch lengths and 3 rubber bands (small, medium, large). Each Team had to build a pyramid of cups without touching the cups with their hands. We first gave them their supplies and let them to try to figure out how they were going to make this pyramid. Some Teams did figure it out by making an octopus with the rubber band and strings. All Team members, when instructed to pull, stretched the rubber band that could easily go over the bottom of the solo cup, then lessen the pull tightens the band which then allows the Team members to stack their cups. Each Team had to complete 3 exercises, 1st exercise was all cups were face down, 2nd exercise was with all cups upright and the 3rd exercise was a mixture or face up and face down.
We then reviewed FY18 revenue projection of our non-ad valorem assessment based on the March 28 release of the Personal Income Growth for Florida, which is 4.10%. We also reviewed the FY18 projected non-ad valorem assessment revenue based on this 4.10% increase. I advised everyone we would not find out about our ad valorem until the end of May or first of June.
We reviewed our Performance Measures based on FY16’s data, along with our FY16 Annual Report. At this point, Chief Bounds then conducted our 2nd Team exercise. This exercise involved uses wooden blocks (Jenga – Jumbling Tower). Each wooden block was identified with a label to indicate a part of this organization, such as Operations, Fire Prevention, etc. The instructions given to the each Team was to build a Tower, we did not tell them why the blocks were labeled. After each Team built their tower, we then talked about “Organizational Structure” and importance of each part of the organization plays in building a strong organization from bottom to top, top to bottom. After this, we then had each Team start pulling blocks that we called out, for example “Fire Prevention”, some were able to remove and keep the Tower standing, as more parts were named, the organization began to tumble and fall apart.
Prior to the conclusion of this year’s Strategic Planning Workshop I spoke to the group about ALS Nontransport Engines to dispel any rumors and to obtain everyone’s input over this subject as well as have them review as a group their SWOT Analysis that they conducted with their personnel, which will provide me with valuable information as I build the Business Plan for our Fire Commissioners. Before we concluded our workshop we did put this item to a vote “ALS Non-Transport Engines” and the results were “31 – Yes, 2 – No”, and out of the 2 that voted “No”, 1 of them thought that they would have to go to Paramedic School, which again was rumor and after providing clarification, he changed his vote to “Yes”.