Good luck and watch your back, Chief Gamble

This letter is response to the April 10, 2015, Frontiersman article introducing Chief Gamble as director of emergency services for the Mat-Su Borough.

Chief Gamble makes big plans to move the borough to a “districtwide EMS,” but this was already done for him and fully in place by last October 2014. In fact it is a restructuring process that has been going on since design and planning in 2013.

The necessity for change is due to the continual constraints of the borough’s EMS budget and a rapidly growing borough population. These factors make moving from a volunteer part-time EMS to a districtwide full-time EMS inevitable. The No. 1 goal for the taxpayers is the complete operation of five ambulances 24/7 within a 22,000-square-mile radius.

I can attest to the long hours the EMS district operations chiefs put into implementing improvements to the EMS system under these circumstances. I know, because my husband was one of the chiefs, and he supervised operations nonstop to keep EMS running more effectively for the safety and well-being of all of us for the past 6.5 years.

I also want to point out that the restructuring or moving to a districtwide EMS is exactly why this recent and abrupt EMS administrative turnover came about. In fact, it was the upward bullying of subordinates constantly complaining about the changes that convinced the MSBEA union to push unsubstantiated complaints into an unofficial smear campaign that finally broke the EMS chiefs’ drives to try anymore.

As we watched, most of the EMS managers walked away, despite their hard work over the last decade. They were overly tired of the constant battles and upward venality against their management decisions and professional reliability.

My husband, with a 30-year track record of supervision and management, endured attacks to his integrity and professional leadership and even let go the awkward and threatening frosty targets marked callously on his truck window during this fallout. Quite frankly, I am glad to be free from this absurdity and backwardness.

I think that the citizens of the borough should be made aware of the Mat-Su Borough Employees Association Union tactics, as in their constant push-back at management decisions, which made it impossible for the operations chiefs and their directors to succeed even in the union’s guise of the Article 48 Management Rights Clause, specifically:

“It is recognized that except as expressly stated herein, the Borough shall retain the right and authority to operate and direct the affairs of the employer in all of its various aspects, including, but not limited to, the right to direct the workforce; to plan, and control all the operations and services of the Borough; to determine the methods, means, organization and number of personnel by which such operations and services are to be conducted; to assign and transfer employees; to detemine whether goods or services should be made or purchased; to hire, promote, demote, suspend, discipline, discharge or relieve employees due to lack of work or other legitimate reasons; to make and enforce reasonable rules and regulations; to change or eliminate existing methods, equipment, facilities, or level of service, and to exercise those rights and prerogatives customarily reserved to management.”

Therefore, new Chief Gamble, if you plan on “not sugar-coating it’’ for the assembly, you might want to watch your back. The union bites hard, and that forced a group of valuable managers who spent years (24/7) improving the borough’s EMS system to leave so abruptly.

I am disappointed most in my husband’s subordinates, because I watched him coach all of you up for years. I watched him take pride in your accomplishments, support your career directions, and help you become better at your jobs. I know who he is as an EMS professional, and you let him down.

Good luck, new Chief Gamble. But be wise about what you do and say as a manager because the union takes care of its own while discounting the effects on the costs and quality services to the taxpayers during the Mat-Su Borough’s move to 21st century modernization.

Willow resident Lesley Ann Wallace is married to former Willow Chief Brian Wallace, who was terminated by borough officials April 2.