Question For PSD Team Leaders

[dmmike]

Just came back from a meeting that had a PSD as its quest speaker.

What he had to say was quite troubling.......

That they are a UN-FUNDED division of the Police Department.

Which means they buy and replace thier own gear, beg, borrow, steal ropes, they had to have a person give them a small boat ( but no motor, or trailor, the head mech. felt bad and gave them a trailor and a 25 horse motor).

No room in the cars to carry the gear, and no safe place to store it.......

A used public transportion bus for thier future vehical ( not running at this time, as soon as they have personal free to work on it they will).

When asked if a some of the local dive clubs pooled some money a made a donation to help the team, he said that the money would be put into the general fund, and since they were UN-FUNDED there was a strong chance they would never see it.

So after this long post my question is how many TEAMS are UN-FUNDED and why is this. They risk there lives, dive in crap at at time any place, and they are UN-FUNDED.

Please help me understand..........

 

[Gary D.]

Why are they UN-FUNDED? Simple, The feelings of those holding the purse strings feel there is no need so NO MONEY. As long as the team keeps supporting themselves WHY should the jurisdiction pay for it?

We were there once. Take a look at this: ScubaBoard Gallery - Team training Aug. 8 1977 - Powered by PhotoPost It’s our team on a training dive in 1977. Does that look like a Sheriff’s patrol or dive boat? Does the gear look PSD? Been there done that.

Call load and type of requests may have a lot to do with why they are not funded. We have another thread going where they have had one call in 5 years. Not much argument on how much funding is needed.

As we got busier we got better funding. In the early years we had to beg borrow and steal, forget steal we’re cops, to get anything. A simple request for a $20.00 dive light took an act of congress. Now if we need it, it doesn’t take much to get what we need. An important thing is to not abuse the freedom we have. I have argued with the brass that we didn’t need something they thought we needed.

One thing that helps is having someone important of close to someone important need our services. It’s amazing how fast resources show up that didn’t exist before.

When it comes to funding you need the right people contacting the right people with the right approach and show a serious need for it. Then don’t quit fighting for it.

Gary D.

 

[tc]

We were unfunded until about 5 years ago. We were able to set up a non-profit corporation just for the very purpose you mention- keeping the donations out of the general fund. That takes time however.

They need to go out and sell what they do to the community- If there i enough community support the department brass WILL decide that they need to help out.

Another option for them is to go after grant money for the gear they need.

In the meantime you can help them by finding out what type of equipment they could use and donating equipment instead of cash- not likely to be diverted to the general fund that way!

 

[BladesRobinson]

DMMIKE,

If you care to donate to the team, you might consider sending funds to the local dive store, marina, etc, then the "services" or "equipment" can be donated directly to the team. The "general fund" can not use an Aqua Lung regulator, if you get my drift.

It strikes me that this agency might want to partner with another agency, possibly the VFD in the area, and let donations funnel back to the dive team in the form of gear, services, etc.

If they don't want to partner with the VFD, I can help and run the donations through the IADRS. I can promise that all funds recevied will go DIRECTLY to the team but I would like to speak to the chief and the team leader first.

If you have contact with the team leader and he is interested in learning more, ask him to contact me through the International Association of Dive Rescue Specialists at 800-IADRS-911.

Regards,

Blades Robinson
Executive Director
International Association of Dive Rescue Specialists - IADRS

 

[tbone5587]

My team as well are 100% volunteer and use much of our own equipment, money, etc. We have been lucky enough to get a few grants over the years, but really lack the expertise in finding the money. We are the smallest county in Michigan, so our call volume is next to nothing. Kinda hard to ask for money from the county. Our marine patrol stays quite busy as we have many rivers and lakes, including Lake Michigan. Some grants that they recieve benefit us..i.e. boats. For now, we are trying to fix up a 16' pontoon that was donated without a motor. We still have fun, do a lot of training when we can, and are on standby from our "regular jobs" until the day we get a call. I know the pain that is felt with a non-funded team. I am there now.

 

[Desert Pirate]

Ive only been with our team for 4-5 years, I gotta say its humbling to see the position some dive teams are in. I feel really fortunate that our team was well set up when I arrived, and close to 50% of our call outs are dive related (the other biggest call out is snowmobile related) that being that our SAR is 100% volunteer, the county has been good enough to give us a budget each year, it seems like nothing but compared to stories of some counties, and past stories.. It doesnt feel so bad. Our county has a segeragation between our marine patrol deputies, and our diveteam, so it gets in a sence.. funded twice? not sure how that works. But our Marine Patrol has been AWSOME at takin care of our needs, they want us to shine, cuz that makes them shine. one thing we have done besides cross train, with them is by being in the public eye while we cross train, and then the public isnt quite as tight fisted when something big comes up and some donations are needed to fund.
DP
The more I learn the more I realize I dont know..

 

[ReefGuy]

I've been a member of our dive team for 2 1/2 years now. Our team was virtually unfunded until just before I joined. With our current administration we have nothing to complain about (although, of course, a bigger budget would be better).

With the elections this year, though, you never know.

 

[bridgediver]

We are fully funded by our FD but I think what's more important whether you're funded or not is to ensure that your team has the proper gear and training to do what it intends to do. If you do not have the minimums in place, you shouldn't be doing it. A common pitfall is for teams to use the excuse of not performing a dive properly because they don't have the money to get the right training, equipment or personnel and do the dives anyway - this is by in large how PSD get hurt.

Even though I say we are fully funded, there are of course limits to our funding as well. We don't have the funding for SSA for example.

Our team used to do PSD ice diving. The guys took ice dive training from the local dive shop instructor in much the same manner as any ordinary padi ice diving course -- nothing wrong with this for SPORT diving. They then applied it to PSD and labelled the team as PSD ice divers. Bad idea (and whole other thread).
Until the funding becomes available (in our case from management)to PROPERLY train for PSD ice diving our team will not do it. period. Our team is all on the same page on this even though a good portion of us ice dive for sport regularly

We aren't a very busy team either. Every 2-3 years I have meetings about how they'd like to cut money to our team. I'm adamant that if they don't fund our team properly they will NOT have a diving component to our team. So far so good, I've always been able to leave these sessions with MORE money then when I walked in with. But if the day comes where they call my bluff I'll have no problem shutting our team down even though I've poured my heart and soul into it for years. Its not worth risking my guys

The point is. To run your team with less than what you really need in the hopes that they will one day give you what you want (or you'll one day find what you need by charity, lottery, falling star etc) aint going to happen. In today's society of "Do more with less" you'll never get more when you're already doing it with less.

mark

 

[absolutecountry]

I just got appointed dive team leader for Berkeley County Rescue Squad, in South Carolina. We are an entirely Volunteer agency, and not a huge organization, and the dive team is an even smaller core group. While we do get most of what we need from the general fund, special equipment (expensive) is often a hard sell to the board. One of the guys that started the dive portion of the squad back in the day told me that if I was the one that acquired the funds (solicited donations), I could have the donors write on the check or "earmark" the funds for the dive team. It works. We are getting ready to purchase at least 10 new tanks, safety sausages, and possibly a locator system thanks to donations collected by a recent open water student of the school I teach for, and our local electrical cooperative.

 

[NorthWoodsDiver]

I too am part of a volunteer team and our SAR unit is all volunteer. We are supported by the sheriff's dept with a $5000 budget each year that comes from county money. There are a small number of members currently working on grants and we are shooting for the sky on those. Our future grant proposals are going for a new dive vehicle ($180-220K), complete gear for everyone, training for everyone, and the big one is a building to call our own with drive through vehicle bays and gear lockers and a meeting room.

I ran numbers once and discovered that to fully equip one member of a team you need between $5500 and $8500 depending on gear selection but that includes AGA's, comms, tanks, ponys, drysuit, wetsuit, bp/w, etc. If you have a team like ours with 14 members thats $77,000-119,000 just for gear. Of course if you buy everything at once you would get discounts and you could save more by going online or working a deal with a your LDS. Now add on additional costs every time a new member joins and gear maintenance and what do you do if a member leaves and his suit is a XXXL.

Now add on a dive vehicle to carry people, equipment, and basic necessities to the dive site. Our current one was donated and is valued at scrap metal prices but the one we are getting built is worth about $200K without being outfitted with tools, O2, first aid supplies, and what ever else you would need in the vehicle. so look at spending about $220K on the vehicle package and it will transport only 8 people.

Now you need air, fuel, maintenance, space, gear storage, and whatever else for your new stuff so you have to arrange for a building. We have a retired county garage right now but its packed with not dive team or SAR team stuff and offers little space for anything. A building for us to house the 3 SAR trucks, 2 SAR boats, 1 dive van, SAR trailer, SAR command center, 4 stage compressor with cascade system, meeting area, private gear storage for dive team and SAR team (SAR has over 30 members) and bathrooms or what ever. Thats gonna be upwards of $600K.

Now look at the fact that in 2007 the dive team had 1 evidence recovery and no body recoveries, and SAR was called out almost 30 times but most were false alarms and you dont have much of a cause to justify spending a MILLION bucks to support at most 50 or 60 people who are rarely needed. The county would never give up a years budget for us so we have to turn to grants and our biggest claim to fame with grants is we dont just serve our county, every surrounding county is worse off than us so we go to them if they need help. I would estimate that our SAR and dive teams serve about 1/8th of Minnesota including much of the iron range and a large part of the northern part of the state. Maybe I over estimated but if another team asked for help most of us would go help even if they are a couple hundred miles away.