Where did the '80s go? For that matter, what about the '90s? Remember when our normal call activity was an occasional house fire, a sick-case transport, a few public service calls, a car wreck, the "smell of something" and several cases of the "vapors"?

Now, a typical day sees us responding to multiple structural fires, vehicle crashes that require specialized extrication equipment, public service calls have turned into technical rescue and hazardous materials incidents, and the "vapors" are now medical incidents that require us to travel with a portable emergency room that we deliver to our customers' homes. If you are like most emergency service organizations, our duties have drastically changed with each additional responsibility requiring additional staffing, training and equipment to meet these ever-increasing calls for service. There is only one sticking point, and we all share this misfortune: someone needs to "show me the money."

We know money is not the end all, and simply throwing funding at a situation is surely not the complete answer. However, we need adequate funding to ensure that our organizations have the funding to provide firefighters and medics with the equipment required to meet our customers' ever-changing needs. In addition, we must secure funding to ensure that our members have the proper knowledge, skills and abilities to safely perform their constantly changing tasks.

In addition to all the responsibilities we have in managing an emergency services organization, we struggle daily with the fiscal challenge of running our departments and we must never lose sight of the importance of our organizations' fiscal strength. Depending on our organizational structure, funding could come from one or more of many sources. Most organizations no longer have the generous funding resources that were so abundant in past years. Money has become tighter, more scrutinized and less available. How many of us rely solely on tax dollars to fund our operations? How is that working for you? How about those of us that get no substantial funding from a tax base and rely on the community for support; is that working well for you?