Did you know each new day brings us 24 hours, 1440 minutes, or 86,000 seconds.  When we were kids, my mom used to say don’t waste a damn minute of your life because each second, each minute, each hour, is loaned to us by God.  One day when you meet him, he is going to ask you how effectively you used that time.  I developed the same fascination with time and when my kids were growing up, they would always say, “dad, do you have a minute?”  I would reply with a poem I heard or learned (can’t remember where or who wrote it).

I have only just a minute, only 60 seconds in it;

forced upon me; can’t refuse it;

didn’t seek it, didn’t choose it.

But it’s up to me just how I use it.

I must suffer if I lose it, give account if I abuse it.

Just a tiny little minute, but eternity is in it.

When you waste time on a useless task, activity or endeavor you are essentially choosing to squander 24 hours, 1440 minutes, or 86,000 seconds.  Now you are probably wondering why we are writing about time, well lately we have been pondering how much wasted time it will take our City Manager – Wes Pierson, Mayor Jeff Cheney, Bill Woodard, Angelia Pelham, John Keating and the rest of the council to “man up.” 

During the most recent election for council John Keating knowingly spread false accusations about his opponent from any microphone handed to him.  We were curious after knowingly spreading false lies and false accusations saying Retired Fire Chief Mark Piland was fired and the cause of the problem in the Fire Department, will he “MAN UP” now and publicly apologize after reading the 50+ page In-Service notes?  I mean he has the 2011 Climate Report and now 50+ pages of In-Service notes all pointing to the same person – Chief Lee Glover! According to his own soap box moment he should step up and do the right thing for our firefighters and former city employees because in a few years he is going to ask us to vote for him for MAYOR! 

In the world of a firefighter seconds and minutes in a fire fight are very important and as they are risking their life. That is why reviewing these 50+ pages of notes from the mandatory June In-Service Meeting are so important. For them to do the job well they need to understand the training and vision for the department.  According to the most recent in-service notes, the most alarming statement made was that the firefighters still have no idea of Glovers “vision” for the department outside of the Strategic Plan. 

Communication or should we say the lack of communication was the next big topic.  Firefighters have concerns over the lack of visibility and communications from Chief Glover.  It was noted that Chief Glover does not even take the time to send an e-mail to motivate the department after catastrophic events.   They also don’t believe Glover listens or consults with his committees which could help him build relationships with those under his command.

After reading the part about communication I thought back to a recent story on the news about the storms hitting Fire Fighter Row in Celina.  Imagine you are a firefighter enjoying a nice sleep and you awake to alarms and the sound of wind pushing in the walls of your home.  You quickly realize your entire street is in the eye of a tornado and when it is all over, several neighbors who are also firefighters in the same department have their homes destroyed and your normal life just became chaotic in minutes. Would you expect a phone call from your Chief asking how you and your family were doing?  Would you expect an email to go out from the Chief asking the command staff and front-line members to pray and donate their time to help with the clean up or whatever needs to be done? As the Chief, would you grab your clothes and tools and head out the door to support your brotherhood in person? The Frisco Firefighter’s Association showed up, raised money for the families, spent countless days cleaning up and lending hands. How long do you think it took Chief Lee Glover to do any of these things? Tick Tock, Tick Tock the seconds and minutes pass and the hands just go around the clock!

The firefighters feel they are on a path with the Fire Chief and City Manager of do more with less which the In-Service notes say is destroying morale.  The frontline feels they are falling behind and going backwards.  One comment was the firefighters have been left to drowned and the emotional and mental beat down is affecting the whole department.

What will it take for City Manager -Wes Pierson to drop his arrogant attitude, “MAN UP” and simply do his job?  What will it take for the Mayor and City Council to admit the problem was never Fire Chief Mark Piland but a problem of their own doing that was 1000% avoidable?  Rewind the clock and go back to the 2011 Climate Report that we talked about in our article Humpty Dumpty, which stated that then Fire Chief, Mack Borchardt and upper management command staff had run the department into the ground. That report led to the city council demanding he be “let go” but his good ole buddy City Manager, George Purefoy got him a nice and rather large retirement package. Then Purefoy gives him a golden parachute job in the City Manager’s office so the two best buddies could be together forever. Well, Purefoy retired but Borchardt is still with the city, in the same job today, making 6 figures and has a city vehicle? 

The 2011 Climate Report also named Assistant Chief Lee Glover at the time as part of the problem which is why he was not named Chief in 2012, and the city brought it in Mark Piland. Now they want to you to believe Piland is the problem – yet the Association did not go for Civil Service under Piland. There are no 50+ page reports of Piland’s bad leadership and his yearly EVAL’s have him top notch. We are not saying things were perfect nothing ever is but it does seem the department was making changes and progress in the right direction. Now the City Manager and Council want you to believe Piland is a disgruntled employee and the “cancer” that plagued the department, because they had to hide that HR falsified documents. Even though they knew Glover’s past and previous issues (of which there are many) they choose to make him the new Fire Chief. Now that the bubble has burst and the public knows the systemic problems of 2011 followed Glover (old dogs don’t develop new habits) into his role as the current Fire Chief, they want you to believe a new story. Now everything is the fault of the Frisco Firefighter’s Association because they want more personnel to do their job safely and better workman’s comp benefits.

Here is where we are hung up, why, in what world or universe, did the City Manager Wes Pierson or the Frisco City Council think making Lee Glover the new Fire Chief was a good idea?  A wise man once said if you repeat the mistakes of the past don’t expect a different outcome! After slowly making progress and change the last 10 years, in a department filled with trust issues, today our fire department is back in 2011. They are unhappy, the days of fear and lack of trust have resurfaced, have a City Manager who could not give two shXts and a City Council who blames the issues on the men and woman of the association, which is almost our whole department for the problem.

IT IS TIME FOR A COME TO JESUS as my mother used to say with the belt in her hand. Every single member on our city council, minus Brian Livingston have spoken against the men and woman in our Fire Department. Our City Manager has an ego bigger than the State of Texas and according to insiders in several departments, his arrogance is destroying the city from the inside out and he turns his nose up to the concerns of the Fire Department. At this point they will all have to pull a rabbit out of hat to blame next because we are pretty sure they are running out of employees to blame it on as they clean house to cover things up. Want the STEVE AUSTIN “COLD HARD TRUTH” …. The CITY COUNCIL IS THE PROBLEM; THE CITY MANAGER IS THE PROBLEM AND THE CURRENT FIRE CHIEF LEE GLOVER IS THE PROBLEM! Until citizens “wake up ” we will just let the clock go “Tick Tock, Tick Tock!”

Stay Tuned for Part 3…