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Introduction to the Master Plan
The Montgomery County Fire & Rescue Service (MCFRS) is required by law to publish a Master Plan. The Master Plan tells you how we plan to deliver fire and emergency medical services for the County over the next six years.
What is a Master Plan?
While the plan has little direct authority, it is an expression of our intent for the future and provides guidance to accomplish that vision.
The MCFRS Master Plan is the document that elected officials, planning officials and the fire service use as the starting point for conversations about fire, rescue and emergency medical services in the County. The Master Plan is not binding, but it is still a very important part of the conversation because it provides guidance for the future. This website is just an overview of how we think about ourselves and how developed the 2024-2030 Master Plan.
The benefits of a master plan include:
- Consistency in decision making. The plan gives decision makers a point of reference for taking action and offer coherence across the department.
- Ability to make informed decisions. The plan provides facts on existing conditions and trends, enabling decision makers to better understand the impact of their decisions.
- A framework for prioritization. The plan includes information from different departments and sources to be used in deciding and prioritizing which actions to take.
Our Purpose As Assigned by the County Council
The purpose of MCFRS is to ensure adequate public safety, health and welfare through an integrated fire, rescue, and emergency medical services program that is highly competent, highly trained, efficiently delivered, equitably administered and is provided by County, local fire and rescue department, and volunteer personnel.
Our Basic Jobs in Your Communities
Providing injury & fire prevention | Delivering expert medical care | Limiting the damages from fire
Your Expectation of Us
You told us throughout the planning process that you’re generally pleased with the services MCFRS delivers. You expect us to:
- Treat you and your property with respect
- Be experts in our work
- Provide elected officials with a range of valid options
- Be aware of what matters in the communities we serve
- Be good stewards of your tax money
Our Old Thinking & Our New Thinking
We want to provide world class service.
It is still our job to think hard about how we protect people and their property from fires, how we rescue them from other dangers, how we educate them to prevent fires and injuries and most importantly how we provide expert medical care when it is needed.
The world and our county are presenting us with new problems and more complexity.
Our old thinking focused on deciding where to build a new fire station, even though resource constraints prevent us from building new fire stations. Our old thinking focused on response times, even though we know that just being fast is not enough.
Our new thinking is about having the right ideas in place and about having the tools we need to notice change early. We believe that if we have the right tools to notice change early we will also have more time to react (adapt) to that change. Our old thinking was about the fire department. Our new thinking is about a broad spectrum of emergency services that work together (good relationships) with other agencies like public health and emergency management. The old plan did not focus on racial equity, the new plan is based around ideas of racial equity. While the old plan was about accurately predicting the future, the new plan is about building a system that can be successful in whichever future emerges.
Mission & Vision Statements Updates
Our mission and vision have not changed. What changed is how we express them. This was designed to:
- Reduce barriers to understanding
- Foster a more adaptable mindset
- Introduce the idea of adding community value as a driving force
The mission of the Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service is to create and enhance public safety through measures to reduce vulnerability and improve resilience.
Our vision is t be a learning organization that consistently executes the mission, while evolving to maximize value for our communities.
Our Goals & Values
Goals
- Maximize protection for life and property
- Maximize volunteer participation
- Optimize personnel practices
- Ensure accountability
- Improve operations and administration
- Integrate well with other agencies and plans
Values
- Commitment to duty
- Respect for others & the organization
- Integrity
What We Think The Next Six Years Will Bring
- Novelty. We are expecting to see new problems. New technologies are a benefit but they can also come with some downsides. This can be as dramatic as a hacker disrupting the electrical grid, turning off the oxygen supply for the home bound dependent on oxygen or this can be as simple as a rash of fires caused by improper disposal of batteries.
- Complexity. Our world is highly connected. It is not hard to imagine events that can also disrupt our ability to respond. We must be prepared for complex challenges.
- Uncertainty. The world is changing quickly. Much of our future operations will require us to be able to act despite uncertainty.
- Resource pressure. We assume that we will be under pressure to reduce costs and/or adjust to unforeseen economic uncertainty. There will be tremendous pressure for MCFRS and the whole of government to reduce cost while maintaining value. Resource pressure can also spur innovation, which is exactly what we want to do.
Our FOCUS AREAS for the Next SIX Years
- Be Concerned about the Wellbeing of People. MCFRS must maintain its focus on people. The well-being of those people includes the preservation of the things that matter to them such as their property, their pets, items/places of cultural significance, and critical infrastructure.
- Ensure Value for our Communities. We have an obligation to our communities to use their resources in a way that maximizes value for them.
- Build Capacity to Communicate with our Communities. We have an obligation to build a capacity to identify the core characteristics of a community and to develop ways to engage in a two-way conversation with those communities.
- Build Capacity to Understand Racial Equity. We need to work towards a meaningful approach to equity.
- Build Community Resilience. We believe that both equity and risk are correlated to social vulnerability and that if we can help to increase individual and community resilience we can reduce vulnerability and risk.
- Build Adaptive Structures. We believe that future space will require us to be nimbler and more dynamic in our response to a changing operational context.
- Foster Relationships. We will not be able to fully express our mission without effective engagement with partners.
The Strategies for Achieving Our Goals
- Be Able to Notice. Configure our systems in such a way that we can notice changes in context
- Be Able to Relate. Develop a capacity for effective communication of information
- Be Able to Adapt. Have the capacity to adapt to change in response to what we notice
- Do No Harm. Do not add to the community burden
MCFRS remains steadfast in our commitment to provide world-class emergency, fire and rescue services to those who live, work and visit Montgomery County.
Montgomery County Fire-Rescue Master Plan 