By Elisha Sauers
The Capital
ANNAPOLIS, Md. — During one of his first days on the job, Annapolis Fire Department Chief David Stokes noticed his secretary had left a “While you were out” memo on his desk.
He told her not to bother writing down a phone message next time. That’s when he learned he - along with everyone else in the city’s fire department - didn’t have voice mail.
“I thought she was kidding, but she was dead serious,” Stokes said.
Two years later and more than a decade into the 21st century, Stokes is still waiting for voice mail. The fire station is the last of city facilities to get upgraded phones, Stokes said. And while city leaders already budgeted new fiber-optic cables this year, there’s such a backlog of work orders with Verizon that the station might not get the service for another six months or more.
Within the city’s government, every department has its own aging equipment and obsolete technology. During budget season, department heads pitch wish lists to the City Council. When money is tight, city leaders pick and choose where they’ll invest.
The fire department isn’t alone. The Information Technology department has asked to replace 70 laptops in the next year. Public Works wants two back-up power generators for its Spa Road plants. One of the generators, at $40,000, would support the fuel island every city vehicle uses. Today, no one can pump fuel during power outages, officials said.
Yet among the dozens of requests for new supplies and equipment, many will go unfunded.
“The city has not been replacing a lot of our equipment — everything from our vehicle fleet to desktop computers,” Mayor Josh Cohen said, “and that’s an example that the layoffs and the cutbacks and the response to crisis (two years ago) are not sustainable, given our organization.”
For now, Cohen says he’s trying to restore funding “in small bits.”
Funding pensions
Cohen’s plan has about $4.4 million of new spending for next year, a small portion to replace and retrofit old technology. He’s proposing a property tax increase to help offset the bigger budget. Much of the spending centers on funding the police and fire pension and retiree medical care.
The IT department’s request for $400,000 for equipment and software is already down to $250,000 in the mayor’s proposal. Other big-ticket items, such as technical and mechanical upgrades for the city’s water and sewer system, are rolled into the $14.2 million capital improvements budget.
Over the past two years, the city has put money into few tech upgrades. The major investment has been a citywide software system for automating accounting, billing and payroll. The system has cost more than $1 million. Officials said up until the new software was installed, the Finance Department was still working off paper.
The city also spent more than $11,000 on iPads for the City Council and some staff this year.
Alderman Ross Arnett, who is chairman of the Finance Committee, said his philosophy on spending is to pinpoint equipment posing safety hazards and phase those out first. Instead of automatically increasing funding for those purchases, though, he wants the department heads to find trade-offs in their budgets.
“My basic mantra is if you really want something, figure out what you want to give up first,” said Arnett, D-Ward 8. “Then, we’ll talk about spending new money.”
Catching up
For Stokes, phones are just one of many antiquated machines that makes his job difficult.
The city’s three fire engines have repeaters — equipment that strengthens radio signals in buildings - whose systems are analog and don’t communicate with digital frequencies. The city’s repeaters have been on loan from Anne Arundel County for years. But because of budgeting issues, the county doesn’t plan on replacing them, he said.
Fire departments all over the country are dealing with repeaters that don’t work, Stokes said.
“That was one of the problems on Sept. 11,” Stokes said. “They couldn’t talk to people inside (the buildings) because of the density of the construction to tell them to evacuate.”
The fire department is trying to catch up in other ways. The county bought a 911 dispatching system, which doesn’t communicate with the city’s fire trucks. The equipment uses satellite-based locator technology to identify the closest crews to an emergency. Stokes is asking for money to buy the devices.
Arnett said he’s not sure the city needs to buy the dispatch terminals now. The county is still adapting to the system, he said.
“Let the county work out the bugs before we jump into that,” he said.
To replace the repeaters and the terminals would cost $96,500. Cohen is recommending the City Council approve funding for both requests and included them in his proposal.
Holding the line
The mayor is holding the line on other requests, such as hiring staff or the Eastport ladder truck. That was a cut made in 2010 after several firefighters took buyouts. Cohen said a dual staffing arrangement will have to suffice for now.
For other equipment needs that don’t make the cut, the mayor and aldermen look to grants and cost-saving measures to get by.
“We’re starting to see some light in terms of our finances,” Cohen said, “but that doesn’t mean we need to put the gas pedal to the floor and go full speed ahead.”
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