Special Board of Aldermen 03-23-2021 Page 12
allow the Training Division to focus their efforts on training the firefighters which would address the issue of
the training deficiency that was brought up by the membership.
And then again the training program in general, if we put this Assistant Chief over that and take off the
workload from recruitment and retention, now we have somebody that is going to manage the training and
safety division, help them achieve SMART goals that are smart, measurable, reasonable and will be done
in an appropriate amount of time and we have accountability there. So the person is overseeing it, we’ve
taken some workload off the Training Division and now the Training Division can be focused in on really
getting firefighters trained to the level that they need to be.
Then the fifth issue is the professional development program. You know, you’ve got people moving up
through the ranks, but they are taking classes here and there and there’s not a systematic program to move
people from where they are now to where they want to get. So we could create a formal career develoment
program and show people career paths, if you want to do this job, these are the programs you need to do.
If you want to do that job, this is what you need to do and give them something to look forward to in the
future. People want to see that there’s hope and that they are going to move up and that they can promote
and they want to know how to do that and how to prepare themselves for it.
So in summary the communication, the accountability, the training and the morale — those are your big
issues. | would tell you that in 2001 Municipal Resources Inc. came in and completed a similar
organizational assessment and at that time, they had the same results. They felt that the morale, the
communication and the accountability were issues. So here we are 20 years later and those issues are still
unresolved and not only are they unresolved but they are going to get worse if we don’t start doing
something to address them. And we need to put some resources towards giving you the people that can
focus their efforts on dealing with those issues specifically so that they don’t continue to fester and get
worse.
| guess the last thing | would review is, again, there is dozens of recommendations in this Master Plan. You
don’t have to like them all, you don’t have to do them all and that’s designed into the process. The most
important thing out of this is to agree that all of this is important and needs to be looked at and then to
move into the strategic planning process. And that’s what comes next ideally in a good situation. What you
want to see now is the strategic planning process is going to be your 1 to 3 year plan; the Master Plan was
just a look ahead. Now we looked at all the issues that we could see on the horizon for 15 years, but ideally
you would want to engage in strategic planning next and that is bringing the Nashua Stakeholders, through
all different levels of the organization and say, “OK out of all these recommendations what are our priorities
here in Nashua, what do we want to do and what do we want to do first”. And we want to see everybody
from elected officials to Chief Officers to new firefighters to get all of you in on the same page and say, “Ok
this is what we are going to do in the first year or the first three years” and to do that.
And | would tell you that if you don’t engage in that strategic planning process and you don’t make a plan of
how you are going to start addressing things, what often happens is these Master Plans become a report
on a shelf and that’s absolutely not what you want to do. You have a lot of people that were engaged in
their process and gave their opinion and were looking to see change happen and the best way to do that is
to bring them back and to do this strategic planning process to figure out where do you as an agency want
to start and what are you going to do.
In conclusion, your successful strategic planning process would get you an ability to systematically
implement the recommendations that are in this report in a way that is good for you and your stakeholders.
And with that, I’d open the floor for any questions?
President Wilshire
Thank you, Mary-Ellen, does anyone on this Board have questions? | don’t see any hands up.
Alderwoman Lu?
