Dream Job

The Fire Department has, quite simply, failed to file the overtime reports the law requires. And the Board of Supervisors, which adopted the law, has not bothered to ask for them.

In the face of this apparent indifference, it's easy to see how the department's inefficiencies have gone uncorrected for so long. Soon, though, the decades-old system of dispatch-by-firefighter will come under siege.

Plans are under way for a new city communications center, estimated to cost $67 million. The center, which will consolidate police, fire, and paramedic dispatching services, is scheduled to open in 1999.

The city officials planning the new system want its dispatchers to be cross-trained, so they can dispatch all emergency services -- fire, police, and paramedic. And if these city officials have their way, all the new dispatchers will be civilians.

But seasoned observers consider such an outcome to be extremely unlikely. They note that the city administration has had its way so rarely with the Fire Department through the years as to be charged, quite reasonably, with sleeping on the job.