Subject
title
Emergency Management Overview
end
Department
City Manager's Office (CMO)
Recommendation
Staff recommends that the Mayor and Council receive the presentation
Discussion
Purpose
The purpose of this work session is to provide an overview and an update to the Mayor & Council on Emergency Management in the City of Rockville.
Emergency Management Position & Budget History
The Emergency Manager position was created and funded in the FY 2020 budget. The first full-time Emergency Manager was hired in August 2019 and placed in the City Police Department. Prior to the creation of this new position, Emergency Management was handled in the Police Department as collateral duty of a Command or Supervisory level police officer. In 2022, as a direct result of the experience during COVID-19, the Emergency Manager position was transferred to the City Manager’s Office.
No funding has been regularly budgeted to support Emergency Management beyond the position itself and related professional development needs (relevant conference attendance, etc.). In FY 2023 one-time funding was appropriated to support the planning and exercise process for the comprehensive redevelopment of new Continuity of Operations (COOP) and Emergency Operations (EOP) plans for the city. Plans and funding were included in the Taft Court project for the design of the first dedicated Emergency Operations Center (EOC) for the city. In FY 2024, the city received a Congressionally directed EOC grant through the Federal Emergency Management Agency to defray the cost of outfitting the EOC. The FY 2025 budget contains funding to support the maintenance of the EOC as there are operating cost increases associated with the opening of the Taft Court facility.
Emergency Management as a Government Function
Emergency Management is about coordination, it is command and control. It is about orchestrating the actions of operational departments to increase the likelihood of seamless response across departmental and jurisdictional responsibilities. It is about building preparedness and is most certainly never truly complete. One need only to look to the coordination failures in the examples of Hurricane Katrina (2005) and the challenges associated with the response to the breach of the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. In Emergency Management there is no “Mission Accomplished” banner, rather it is ongoing and never-ending cycle.
2024 Continuity of Operations Plan
The first component of our post-COVID-19 preparedness was the redevelopment of a Continuity of Operations Plan. The planning process was completed in May 2024 with publication of a written COOP Plan after a year-long planning process and exercise. Ninety-seven essential city government functions are identified. It considers scenarios for loss of facilities, loss of systems, and loss of staff and identifies courses of action to continue essential functions that include redundancy-in-place, total relocation, distributed operations, virtual operations, devolution, and manual workarounds.
The Emergency Management Ecosystem
We have an Emergency Management ecosystem that flows from the federal government and federal, law, policy, and plans through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the core disaster legislation in the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act. These dovetail to State law, policy, and plans, then on to County law, policy, and plans, and finally to municipal law, policy, and plans.
Rockville has a shared and limited role at the municipal level for incident management. We do not have the legal mechanism in Charter or Code to declare a disaster and thus defer to County Code and the County Executive’s authority, the Governor’s Authority, or Presidential Authority to declare a disaster. At times during COVID-19, we had all three, in addition to activated authorities for the County Health Officer under State law and the authority of local Boards of Health at the County level.
Each Emergency Management entity under State law has a Governor’s Authorized Representative (GAR). In Montgomery County and for all its municipalities including the City of Rockville, the Director of the Montgomery County Office of Emergency Management and Homeland Security (OEMHS) serves in this role and is officially designated by the Governor of Maryland.
Emergency Plan Integration: County and City Emergency Operations Plans
The City of Rockville’s responsibilities for emergency functions are delineated in the Montgomery County Emergency Operations Plan (MCEOP). It designates the following roles and responsibilities for the city during emergency operations:
1. Provide available staff, resources, and facilities to support emergency operations.
2. Coordinate damage assessment operations with the County’s Department of Permitting Services (DPS).
3. Provide damage assessment reports to DPS, as requested.
4. Provide damage assessment for water supplies at the Rockville Water Treatment Plant used for drinking, sanitation, and recreational purposes.
5. Provide damage assessment for City of Rockville water distribution systems and related facilities.
6. Coordinate debris removal and disposal operations within the City of Rockville.
7. Maintain law and order and provide for the security of critical facilities and resources within City of Rockville.
8. Order and conduct evacuations as necessary and provide access control.
9. Provide traffic and crowd control.
10. Appoint a disaster assistance representative to coordinate locally sponsored disaster victim assistance activities within the City of Rockville.
11. Provide a list of buses, Emergency Response Vehicles, other apparatus, and equipment available to assist in logistical operations during mass care and feeding in an emergency or disaster within the County.
12. Make available equipment, facilities, vehicles, and personnel for mass care, feeding, and logistical support during an emergency.
Rockville’s own EOP is currently in development and begins with these roles to ensure they are assigned within city government and that any necessary supplemental plans, policies, and procedures are linked. A draft document is expected in December 2024. A tabletop exercise with key city staff plus invitation to county partners is expected in January/February 2025. The EOP will specify a role for the Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion function in city government during emergencies.
Emergency Management Trends in Maryland Municipalities
Emergency Management has grown at the municipal level in Maryland over the last several years. In 2024, the Emergency Management Department was created as part of the Maryland Municipal League. Recently some municipal jurisdictions including the City of Laurel (2020), the City of Bowie (2022), and the City of Frederick (2024) have become legal jurisdictions for emergency management under state law. Traditionally this list of jurisdictions has included just the 23 counties, Baltimore City, City of Annapolis, and the Ocean City. The designation as an emergency management jurisdiction comes with the direct 24/7/365 responsibility for the emergency management function at the municipal level. This entails direct contact between the municipality and the State of Maryland for resources requests and results in the need for a fully staffed emergency management function at the municipal level.
The Montgomery County Office of Emergency Management and Homeland Security is well staffed with 19 County staff and 4 contract staff. The City of Rockville maintains a strong relationship with OEMHS because of our shared responsibilities.
Mayor and Council History
Mayor and Council received regular briefings from the Emergency Manager during the COVID-19 pandemic.