Term Limits for Officers

Does your service have term limits for officers ?

  • Yea

    Votes: 8 34.8%

  • Nay

    Votes: 15 65.2%
  • Total voters
    23
E

eynonqrs

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Does your service have term limits for line and or executive officers ? If so, do you agree or disagree with them ?
 
I will get the ball rolling on this. In my squad, there is no term limits with the only execption of the president, who can not be in office for more than 3 back to back terms. I feel this is a double edge sword for the following reason:

Having no term limits means that if someone else wants a shot at it, it gets hard, especially if someone has been in there for a long peroid of time. On the other hand, if the officers are doing a good job, then there is no need to put that kind of restraint on them.
 
Each year we vote on officers with the trustees with a 5 year term every year a trustee goes out of office they can run again if they wish to..


president 1 year term
v-president 1 year term
sec 1 year term
tressure 1 year term
trustee 5 year term every year a trustee goes out.
 
Don't know as I am EMS and do not have "officers".

R/r 911
 
hmmm. Line Officers, are those like supervisors???

Only "Officers" I have are in my non-EMS volunteer work.
 
YES Sapphyre line officers are volunterr where i'm from.I'm a officer with my fire dept.
 
My service does not elect any officer. We have a co-ordinator and he's appointed by town council like any other dept head the town has.
 
From a SAR standpoint, we are elected to a 2 year term and are eligable for reelection as many times as we desire. We stagger the elections so that half are elected one December, and eh other half the next. We elect a Chief Administrative Officer, a Deputy Administrative Officer, a Team Secretary, a Training Officer, a Family Liasion, and 10 specialty Team Leaders (Ropes, Swiftwater, Search, Dive, ATV/Snowmobile, Nordic, Mounted, Medical, Canine, and Air Ops - most of us hold more than one administrative position). We have no problem with term limits, becasue we always seem to vote on the best suited person who is willing to take on the thankless job.
 
The exec board of my college EMS has a term limit of 3 years per position. Since we are college students, that is as long as anyone could be on board anyway.
 
A few good folks have already hinted towards my similar feelings. As EMS should be and in many places is a medical profession, SUPERVISORS and MANAGERS should be HIRED based on their education, proven track record, and expertise.

An opinionated popular vote should never determine the leaders of a professional medical organization. Just my humble $.02 worth.
 
Are we politicians, or professionals?:rolleyes:<_<
 
BLSBoy said:
Are we politicians, or professionals?:rolleyes:<_<
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Unfortunately, most fire and volunteer EMS groups are inherently political or social organizations.

I will add a caveat to my earlier statement. My organization selects two clinical supervisors each year (after accepting applications from interested parties), selected by the previous supervisors based on merit, skill, etc and confirmed by our medical director and Chief of Police...no politics involved. They are the onces making the treatment and patient care decisions.
 
We have a paid supervisor. They are there till they quit or are fired. This is not a popularity contest, this is peoples lives we are dealing with. You hire the best person to continue moving patient care forward if they fail you fire them and hire someone else.

The good old boy system needs to die so EMS can move forward.
 
emt.dan said:
Unfortunately, most fire and volunteer EMS groups are inherently political or social organizations.
Click to expand...

medic417 said:
This is not a popularity contest, this is peoples lives we are dealing with. You hire the best person to continue moving patient care forward if they fail you fire them and hire someone else.

The good old boy system needs to die so EMS can move forward.
Click to expand...

Somewhere the Medical part of EMS has been forgotten. But, that sometimes happens when too many letters are memorized without the education and a little ambition to go with them.
 
You know, I wanted to have a normal conversation on here, but here we go again. I guess some of you people don't think before you open your mouths. Just as a paid service has supervisors and CEO's and other administrative functions, so does the volunteer services do. Yeah, sometimes it is political. But isn't it that everywhere ? It's apparent you don't get the facts straight.
 
eynonqrs said:
You know, I wanted to have a normal conversation on here, but here we go again. I guess some of you people don't think before you open your mouths. Just as a paid service has supervisors and CEO's and other administrative functions, so does the volunteer services do. Yeah, sometimes it is political. But isn't it that everywhere ? It's apparent you don't get the facts straight.
Click to expand...

It has been a normal conversation until this post. You asked for opinions and got them...even if they weren't what you wanted.

Anytime an election is involved, there are two things you can be sure of - popularity and politics will play a role.
 
The volunteer dept I started in was a non-profit corporation. The members had to vote on the board of directors, I their terms were 3 years long. I can't remember if there was a limit to the number of terms one person could hold.

As for the Lts, Capts, and Chiefs it depends. The two paid Chiefs were hired by the board of directors. The Assistant Chiefs are all volunteer and were appointed by the chief. The Capts are paid, and were hired by a 3 person hiring board. The Lts are volunteer and tested into their positions.
 
eynonqrs said:
You know, I wanted to have a normal conversation on here, but here we go again. I guess some of you people don't think before you open your mouths. Just as a paid service has supervisors and CEO's and other administrative functions, so does the volunteer services do. Yeah, sometimes it is political. But isn't it that everywhere ? It's apparent you don't get the facts straight.
Click to expand...

eynonqrs, you will notice a large part of this forum is here to discuss progression and improvement in EMS. This is accomplished by objective, candid discussion where feelings can be hurt. These feelings do not serve us as a profession or our patients, who deserve the very best from us. None of us here come to specifically "bash on" volunteers. However we recognize that a lot of progress in education has been stalled by the efforts of fire based and volunteer based EMS. No one here is arguing that you are trying to help your community, but sometimes even benign activities have unexpected larger effects on the world. Just open your ears long enough for us to show you.

If you continue to post at EMTlife, you will notice that a lot of what you say is picked apart. Same thing happens to me all the time. A lot of what I considered BS, some forum members here did not let up on me until I reexamined my beliefs. I am better for it. No one is here to pat you or I on the shoulder.

You have my sincerest welcomes, because we invite everyone to our table here. Just keep in mind what I have said.
 
I appreciate the welcome. Sometimes I might go overboard. I am not here to get a pat on the back either. EMS is my life. I am hoping to have many interesting conversations with everyone here.
 
This is perhaps where a comprehensive college education, including english classes, would benefit us all. If there was one class in college that has allowed me to see the truth from other people's perspective, it had to have been my english classes.
 
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