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Master Plan

Section VII. COMCIUSION..........cccceceeeee eee ee ee eee eee ee ee eee eee ee een ee aa ee ee eee sees sees ease nae seas seaeeanae 156
Appendix A: Internal Customer ASSeSSMENM .........ccceeeee eee ener ee ee eee eeeeae ee eeeeee a neeeeeaeeeeeseaeeeeeeee 157
Appendix B: Development of Response Standards and Targets ........ccceeseceeeeeeeeeeeeneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen 164
Appendix C: Table of Figures........0.eee erin tr in i in i i erin i iii niin eeaeneeeeeeennneeeeeaeneeeesaneeneeees 170

ESC Emergency Services
Consulting International

Nashua Fire Rescue, NH

Master Plan Nashua Fire Rescue, NH

Executive Summary

BACKGROUND

On December 13, 2019, the City of Nashua, New Hampshire, contracted Emergency Services Consulting
International (ESCI) to produce a Long-Range Master Plan for Nashua Fire Rescue. The purpose of the study
was threefold:

1. Evaluate current operational service delivery.
2. Identify future service delivery needs.

3. Provide recommendations for operational service delivery.

SUMMARY FINDINGS

Nashua Fire Rescue is a historically proud and very traditional New England Fire Department.

Operationally, the fire department meets most of the national standards for the provision of fire and rescue
services. Staffing and deployment are adequate in the Emergency Services Division, however there are a
number of administrative and support functions that are woefully understaffed. The staffing evaluation is
included within the Staffing section of this plan.

Fire department infrastructure will require significant financial investments in the coming years. While the
city has done a good job maintaining and replacing the apparatus in its fleet, four of the six fire stations are
more than 40-years-old. Many of these fire stations have outlived their useful life and some are no longer
located in the optimal location to meet the current service demands in the City of Nashua. Consideration
should be given to relocating some of these stations as they come due for renovation. GIS Models for Fire
Station Optimization are included within the Long-Range Deployment Options Section of this plan.

While the number of staff and fire department infrastructure are both critical components of Nashua Fire
Rescue's ability to serve the city, this plan would be doing the fire department a disservice if it didn’t identify
that Nashua Fire Rescue has a very significant and deeply embedded morale problem. ESCI’s interviews and
survey both revealed five common themes that stood out within Nashua Fire Rescue. These themes were:

1. Nashua Fire Rescue members are proud to be part of Nashua Fire Rescue.

2. Nashua Fire Rescue members almost unanimously agree that the people that make up the
department are the department's biggest strength. Members repeatedly cited the “manpower” and
“aggressive firefighting” as specific examples of this strength.

3. Morale isa problem. Members overwhelmingly believe that communication (or a lack thereof) is the
biggest contributor to the department's poor morale.

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Master Plan Nashua Fire Rescue, NH

4. Members very directly stated a desire for consistent accountability within Nashua Fire Rescue. They
went so far as to request that chief officers hold the members accountable from the top-down while
the union holds the members accountable from the bottom-up. There were repeated concerns
voiced that not everyone was being held equally accountable.

5. Training was repeatedly identified as one of the biggest weaknesses within Nashua Fire Rescue.

While this report includes 41 specific recommendations, the critical issues of morale, communication,
accountability, and firefighter training must be addressed before Nashua Fire Rescue will be capable of
working toward implementing any of the other recommendations in this report.

ESCI suggests that the most effective and immediate way to address these issues is to restructure the
Administrative Division to include an Assistant Chief of Uniform Professional Standards. This Assistant Chief
would report to the Chief of Department and be tasked with:

= Investigating all internal affairs type activities, thus removing this work from the Chief and
existing Assistant Chief. The single point of contact within the fire department as well as close
collaboration with Human Resources will better position Nashua Fire Rescue to address these types
of issues more consistently and to hold members accountable as appropriate.

= Develop and manage a communications plan for regular and consistent communications with
the Operations Division. Communication has been a critical weakness within Nashua Fire Rescue for
decades that is getting progressively worse. This problem will continue to fester, thus further
negatively impacting morale and the operations of the fire department until such a time that there
are focused resources dedicated to improving this deficiency.

« Manage the recruitment of new firefighters, thus removing this work from the Training and
Safety Division. Training was repeatedly identified as a major weakness within Nashua Fire Rescue.
The reassignment of recruitment duties to the Assistant Chief of Uniform Professional Standards will
allow the Training and Safety Division to focus their efforts on improving the Nashua Fire Rescue
Training Program.

= Oversight of the Nashua Fire Rescue Training Program. As previously noted, training was
repeatedly identified as a major weakness within Nashua Fire Rescue. Placing the Training Safety
Division under the direction of the Assistant Chief of Uniform Professional Standards will provide the
oversight that is necessary to establish and then achieve simple, manageable, achievable,
reasonable, and timely (SMART) goals to systematically improve the Nashua Fire Rescue Training
Program.

» Manage the promotion process in conjunction with Human Resources. ESCI recommended within
the Promotions Processes Section of this report that Nashua Fire Rescue re-evaluate the merits of
including the civilian Board of Fire Commissioners within the promotional process. It is ESCI'’s
suggestion that Nashua Fire Rescue may be able to improve the current promotional process by
allowing the professional human resources and fire department personnel to conduct the entire
process, thereby eliminating the potential political influence that could be introduced by the
inclusion of the elected board. The Assistant Chief of Uniform Professional Standards would be well-
positioned to facilitate this process on behalf of the fire department.

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Master Plan Nashua Fire Rescue, NH

= Develop, implement, and manage a Professional Development Program for Nashua Fire Rescue.
Officers who fail to learn leadership skills are challenged almost immediately upon promotion. As
detailed in the Career Development section of this report, both Nashua Fire Rescue and its
employees stand to gain from the development and implementation of a Career Development
Program.

It is worth noting that morale, communication, accountability, and training are deep-seated issues that
permeate the culture of Nashua Fire Rescue. In 2001, Municipal Resources, Inc. completed an Organizational
Assessment, which included a survey of Nashua Fire Rescue members that yielded very similar results. Almost
20 years later, those issues still remain unresolved. These issues will continue to degrade until Nashua Fire
Rescue and the City of Nashua commit the necessary resources to address these problems.

ESCI recognizes that this report contains a multitude of recommendations that cannot all be accomplished
simultaneously. Nashua Fire Rescue should facilitate a Strategic Plan to consider and prioritize the goals and
objectives that are recommended within this Master Plan.

The strategic planning process would ideally result in a three-to-five-year work plan, intended to guide the
work effort of the entire organization toward a common set of goals and objectives. The process should
include representation from every major interest group in the organization. Each person in the Department
should feel that their interests are represented by someone in attendance on the planning team.

Asuccessful strategic planning process will result in a plan for Nashua Fire Rescue to systematically implement
the recommendations that are contained within this report. Organizations that do not engage in the strategic
planning process often fail to benefit from the master planning process because Master Plan
recommendations co little more than exist in the report if they are not implemented.

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Master Plan Nashua Fire Rescue, NH

Section |. Introduction

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ESCI would like to thank the members of Nashua Fire Rescue as well as the elected and appointed officials of
the City of Nashua for their assistance with the Nashua Fire Rescue Master Plan. This project would not have
been possible without their support.

EMERGENCY SERVICES CONSULTING INTERNATIONAL TEAM

The ESCI Team for the Nashua Fire Rescue Master Plan was comprised of the following members:

Stuart McCutcheon, Director of Business Intelligence
Mary-Ellen Harper, Director of Operations
Andrea Hobi, Business Manager
Melissa Vazquez Swank, Quality Assurance Specialist
Otto Drozd, Associate
Michael Gulino, Associate
Dan Machande, Associate
Kerri Reynolds, Associate
Jason Smedick, Associate

Michael Tucker, Associate

PROJECT METHODOLOGY
The City of Nashua contracted ESCI to develop a Long-Range Fire Department Master Plan. Specifically, the
project has three primary deliverables:

1. Evaluate current operational service delivery. Using information provided by Nashua Fire Rescue,
ESCI was tasked to establish an informational baseline, benchmark emergency operations
performance, and provide a detailed analysis of existing conditions and emergency operations.

2. Identify future service delivery needs. ESCI was tasked with providing a basic community risk
assessment to identify potential service gaps and redundancies, considering community
expectations, needs, and resources.

3. Provide recommendations for operational service delivery. ESC| was tasked with identifying
system strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats for a SWOT analysis and developing
recommendations to improve and enhance emergency services delivery for both the intermediate
short-term and long-term. Where possible, recommendations were to include consideration of
cost/benefit analysis, benchmarks, standards, and best practices.

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Master Plan Nashua Fire Rescue, NH

Using organizational, operational, staffing, and geographic information system (GIS) models, this evaluation
provides a comprehensive appraisal of the City of Nashua's emergency operations as found upon ESCl’s
completion of fieldwork and data collection in July 2020. ESCI based this evaluation on data provided by the
City and collected during ESCI’s fieldwork. The information is evaluated against a combination of New
Hampshire state laws and regulations, National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) standards, Commission
on Fire Accreditation International (CFAI) self-assessment criteria, health and safety requirements, federal
and state mandates relative to emergency services, and generally accepted best practices within the
emergency services community, as well as the experience of ESCI’s consultants.*? Each section in the
following report provides the reader with general information about that element, as well as observations
and analyses of any significant issues or conditions.

STAKEHOLDER INPUT
The ESCI project team conducted more than 22 virtual and in-person interviews, meetings, and facility tours
to gather information from key stakeholders to provide context for the recommendations identified within
this study. The purpose of these interviews is to gain an understanding of the current issues, concerns, and
opinions related to Nashua Fire Rescue’s emergency services delivery system. General topics discussed
during each interview included:

= Perceived strengths and weaknesses of the current system
" Identified strengths and weaknesses of the current system
" Opportunities for enhancement to the current system

= Future challenges that may warrant attention

ESCI’s interviews with Nashua Fire Rescue stakeholders included, but were but not limited, to the following
individuals:

Figure 1. Stakeholder Input

Stakeholder Interviews

Mayor
Members of the Board of Aldermen
Members of the Board of Fire Commissioners
City Directors and Key Staff
Fire Department Executive Staff
Fire Department Division Heads
Uniformed Members of Nashua Fire Rescue
Automatic and Mutual Aid Partners

Emergency Medical Services Partners

1 NFPA, National Fire Protection Association is a standard developing organization. Standards developed by NFPA are "voluntary
consensus standards," created through procedures accredited for their consensus decision-making, openness, balance of interests
represented, and fairness by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).

2 The CFAI organization is now a subsection of the Center for Public Safety Excellence (CPSE) but maintains its prime function of
accrediting fire agencies.

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Master Plan Nashua Fire Rescue, NH

Section II. Community Profile and Risk Identification

NASHUA, NEW HAMPSHIRE

Nashua, New Hampshire, is located on the southern border of New Hampshire in Hillsboro County. The city
is 31.9 square miles and houses the second largest population in the state. The city was first settled in 1653
and was originally part of a 200 square mile area called Dunstable that included Nashua as well as ten other
towns in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

After the governors of the two states resolved a dispute over the border location in 1741, approximately half
of the land area remained in the State of New Hampshire and kept the name Dunstable. Dunstable was then
incorporated in 1743 and renamed Nashua in 1836. Nashua was again divided in 1842 when the parcels
located on the north side of the Nashua River were established and the community of Nashville and became
incorporated. In 1853, these two communities rejoined and were incorporated into the present-day City of
Nashua.

Figure 2. The City of Nashua, New Hampshire

@ Fire Station hi i
D Nashua Boundary ‘i , ’
["] _ Fire Districts :

5 ;

Nashua Fire Rescue, New Hampshire

ities

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Master Plan Nashua Fire Rescue, NH

The following communities and rivers border the City of Nashua.

Figure 3. Nashua’s Borders

Border Direction

Merrimack North
Pennichuck Brook North
Litchfield Northeast
Dunstable South
Tyngsborough, MA South
Merrimack River East
Hudson East
Hollis West

NASHUA FIRE RESCUE

Nashua Fire Rescue was established in 1853 when the towns of Nashville and Nashua combined to protect a
growing mill town with 7,000 mostly immigrant workers. The Department was organized as a volunteer fire
department and transitioned to being a career fire department in the 1950s.

Governance and Lines of Authority

The City of Nashua operates under a Mayor-Alderman form of government. The Board of Aldermen is a 15-
person legislative body that is elected to either a two- or four-year term. There are six at-large aldermen that
are elected to four-year terms (with three of these elected in opposite cycles every two years). Each of the
nine wards has an elected alderman whose terms are two-years. The position of Mayor is elected every four
years.

The Board of Fire Commissioners is the elected board charged with the responsibility of the operation of the
fire department. The City of Nashua Charter is the foundational policy document for the establishment and
operation of the Fire Department. Specifically, Subpart A §73. Fire commissioners, how chosen. This document
establishes the Board of Fire Commissioners. This is a five-member board, and each is an elected position.
Each term is four years, and they are elected every two years.

According to this chapter, the Board shall exercise all powers and perform all the duties that the laws and
ordinances now prescribe, or will be hereafter.

In Subpart B-Related Laws §§ A-101-A-1214 of the same document, Chapter 7 provides additional legislation.
Chapter 7. Fire Department, states in summary that the fire department of the City of Nashua shall consist of
a Board of Fire Commissioners. These are elected officials (as indicated in §73), and they cannot hold any
other municipal office. The Board of Fire Commissioners will select one member to serve as the chairperson
of the Board. They will also select a clerk. The Board is responsible for making rules and regulations for their
own government and the government of all other officers and members of the fire department. In addition,
they are responsible for all buildings (including the land) and apparatuses.

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Master Plan Nashua Fire Rescue, NH

Organizational Design

Nashua Fire Rescue operate six fire stations, a dispatch center, and a training site. The Fire Chief is the head
of the Department who oversees:

Administration Division: Assistant Chief and two Administrative Assistants

Emergency Response Division: Four Deputy Chiefs, seven Captains, 29 Lieutenants, and 112
Firefighters

Training Division: Captain, Lieutenant, Administrative Assistant
Fire Alarm Division: Superintendent, Assistant Superintendent, 12 Dispatchers
Mechanical Division: Superintendent, Assistant Superintendent, Mechanic

Fire Marshal Division: Fire Marshal, two Inspector/Investigators, Administrative Assistant

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Master Plan Nashua Fire Rescue, NH

Figure 4. Nashua Fire Rescue Organizational Chart

Board of Fire
(Oye ele

Fire Chief

Administrative Administrative
Assistant Assistant
XS ela
Fire Chief

T T
ee Fire Marshal Training and Fire Alarm Mechanical
Seton Paola) Safety Division Paola) Division

1 Deputy Chief i

and 1 Shift
Management

T
Training
Captain

Superintendent Superintendent
Technician Per | |
Shift
A shift Administrative Administrative Assistant Assistant
CS) Assistant Assistant Superintendent Superintendent
So 2 Inspectors/ Training i; 3 Dispatchers
members per shift, Investigators Lieutenant eae
including

-—

Cup)

1 Captain per
tation per shift and
1 Officer (Captain
or Lieutenant) per
apparatus per shift

(4 shifts)

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