Special Board of Aldermen 03-23-2021 Page 11
So | am going to move to the next thing which is morale. Far and wide we heard in all the meetings and the
interviews showed us that there is a morale problem with Nashua Fire Rescue. Members felt very strongly
that communication or lack thereof, was the biggest Department issue. People just weren’t getting
information they needed, it wasn’t consistent and that makes people uneasy, people want to know what to
expect, they want to have a level of expectation of where they sit in the system. If they don’t have that
information they get unsettled and that leads to bad morale. So there is a morale problem in Nashua Fire
Rescue; the good news it is absolutely fixable with a little bit of time and resources.
We did hear repeatedly throughout all of our meetings, members want to see a more consistent
accountability system with the Nashua Fire Rescue. They want to see Chief Officers holding members
accountable from the top down, they also wanted to see their own union holding their members
accountable from the bottom up. They felt by and large that not everybody was treated the same way in
certain circumstances and part of that is just the communication. There may be circumstances that required
different responses, there may be people that are being treated the same but they don’t have that
understanding because they don’t have the information. So some of that is creating more of a transparent
process, understanding that not every detail of every situation can be shared, but there should be a
baseline expectation of what can be shared and people should know what they can understand here, again
knowing where they fall in that system and how they fit in.
The fifth big issue that came up was training and members across the board repeatedly identified that
training is truly one of the biggest weaknesses within Nashua Fire Rescue. We are going to talk about
some ways that that can be fixed, because it is absolutely fixable. So we gave you dozens of
recommendations and the important thing is that while all of those need to be addressed and looked at
going forward, you have to look at the morale, the communication, the accountability and the training before
any of the other things can matter. We need to do all of it but it is almost like triaging a patient, it doesn’t
matter if their big toe is broken, if you don’t get them breathing it is not going to matter. So the focus really
initially needs to be on your morale, your communication, your accountability and your firefighter training.
ESCI suggests the most effective way and the immediate way to address all of these issues is really to look
at restructuring the Administrative Division to include an Assistant Chief of Uniform Professional Standards.
And this Chief would report to the Chief of the Department. And the reason we recommend this are that
they would have the ability to investigate all the internal affairs type activities. So right now, that’s additional
work on top of the current Chief and Assistant Chief. And they have got their plates full. You’ve got a very
lean staff administrative division, they are trying to do a whole multitude of things and when all of these
internal affairs things come in it is just more work on top of what they are doing and there are only so many
hours in the day. So now they’ve got to make decisions about what are they going to do and what are they
not going to do to get those things done. So if we could create that third position and take all of those
internal affairs issues off of their plates, what we are creating is that level of consistency that the members
are looking for. We have one point of contact between the Fire Department and Human Resources, one
person that is addressing it, one person that Knows past practice, one person that is making sure that there
is a consistent metric that is being applied across the Board.
This position could also help develop the Management and Communications Plan. You know, again,
people want to know, especially in this day and age, where they fit in the system, what to expect, what is
going to happen and that is a critical weakness right now. You’ve got those two people — the Chief and the
Assistant Chief — they are trying to get as much done as they can during the day. They don’t have
(inaudible) to sit down and have a planned out mitigations program where they can go ahead and get that
information out to them. What | would tell you is that issue is going to continue to fester, unless we can find
a way to deal with it and get that information out to them.
The other big issue is the recruitment of new firefighters. Right now the Training & Safety Division is
spending a significant amount of time recruiting and vetting out new firefighters and getting them on line.
Honestly they have bigger issues and the bigger issue really should be focusing on training your
firefighters. You should be getting these trained instructors out there training your firefighters and perhaps
reassigning this recruitment duty to this Assistant Chief who can then make sure that that happens but
