Fire Service Operations - Essay Example

After reading Bland’s book on which tax revenues are more likely to be budget neutral, I took some interest in the capital improvement plan and the ways to finance the proposed project in the government’s public sector as per the views of the publication called A Budgeting Guide for Local Government. In order to understand the ways of funding the given project in the capital development plan, one needs to get acquainted with the purpose of the intended project(s). The main drive of planning is to match and forecast projected capital and revenues needs over a given time frame, for instance, a year, six months.

The capital improvement plan is inclusive of information such as a listing of the capital projections or equipment intended to be purchased, the priority list for a given project, the plan for funding the projects, the defense of the projects, as well as the elaboration of all the expenditures for the given projects (Bland, 2013).The fire department’s development plan that needed further analysis is the section concentrating on the financing choices for the project of around $1.3 million.

Well-wishers, national government, and local government can fund fire services’ projects using a pay as you use option. In the first option, the government depends on the existing revenue sources to fund different projects in the emergency services, fire department. These revenues get sourced from diversified sources such as current taxes, for example, petroleum taxes for highway developments, grants courts, and reserves accumulated over time. When the needs to finance a definite project is more than the present revenue available to fund the project in question, Bland argues that the best option that the government may consider is to use pay as you use the option to finance the project since almost all fire department do not engage in any income-generating activities (Bland, 2013).

Most individuals still hold firefighters in high respect, but officials from the fire department say there’s a mounting faction that considers them a financial drain on the nation’s finances due to salaries, pensions, and other benefits having in mind that most laborers are usually volunteers. Emergency services, fire departments, are among the departments that attract a large number of a well-wisher and people feel that their effects are not felt when it comes to the budget (Ballam, 2013).

According to Bland (2013), budget-related problems in fire departments are mainly caused by the ever high budget despite the fact that people do not have frequent fire incidences like they used to have some decades in the past. Therefore, there’s a perception that the huge number of firefighters in the fire department is not worth it (Ballam, 2013).To sum it up, having the correct budgetary tools and defendable figures in place will greatly help in stopping this perception. Proper and transparent financial management is also important.

The finance department in the fire department may opt to reduce their budget with a given percentage for instance 30% which translates to a budget totaling to $48.3 million from $69 million (Ballam, 2013).