Ok everyone, really great stuff.

A few more clarifications and updates.

1. The position of Emergency Management Coordinator is by appointment, not election. I am recommended to the governor by the members of the Board of Supervisors and the position is held until someone else is appointed or I'm dismissed by the board of supervisors.

2. The position of Emergency Management Coordinator is unpaid.

3. It's a small township - very small, and as was pointed out here, my annual budget is vanishingly small. How small? Well, let's just say that if I bought a mid-range laptop and a tank of gas, I'd blow through my budget.

4. I have a major advantage in that I'm known in the community and I have a good network of people who are willing to help both with the planning and operation of emergency services. I have a strangely high number of ex-military folks (one of whom I think just joined us here - he was in the Navy and commanded a sub, another was an MP Sergeant in the Air Force in Iraq, the and next was a combat helicopter pilot in the Marines). I have high confidence in their ability to help out.

This letter - and you have to understand that this is a first for the community - will have more impact that you might think, because it represents the first time Emergency Management as a concept will be clearly tied back to the Township. Until now, it's been ad-hoc and reactive via the Fire Company.

In addition, I'm operating and planning in the context of my (much) larger neighboring townships - although we're not an actual regional emergency management entity, I am working so closely with them that we're acting as a regional entity.

I think it's important to understand that Bucks County is almost at large at the state of Rhode Island, and it's got three distinct "zones" if you would. The southern zone is a crowded suburb of philadelphia, very dense. The middle zone is a blend of open space and broad suburban tracts of housing. It's very nice, very "Norman Rockwell" in many ways.
Then there's the North section - where I live. Up here, it's still rural. There are hunting grounds, people have rifle ranges in their back yards, you'll find wide open spaces and huge forested areas. There are plenty of places up here with no cell service. We have no police department, just a state police barracks. Townships are the government entity and they are small and provide very limited services. For example, the township we're talking about with this letter has no full-time administrative staff. The board of Supervisors consists of three people, all part time. There's one person on the road crew. They own a small dump truck (a Ford F550) with a plow and a front loader. There's no "township park" There's no pool, no library - really nothing much more than a roads department, a zoning officer (part time) and meeting minutes for the township generally take up one sheet of paper.

So into this context, we bring in a new government "service" - which is mandated by state law. They have to have an emergency plan. They have to keep it up to date and they have to provide the county with the plan. So it's into this context that "Emergency Management" will be introduced. Thus my need to set low expectations from the get-go.