NIMS is well-developed and well-understood in my area (the San Francisco Bay Area). I'm in an amateur radio club that is affiliated with a local fire department in one town and a police department in another, and we use NIMS. My CERT group is affiliated with a different FD in a different town, and we have regular training where NIMS is used. I'm looking at the Incident Action Plan from a 2009 exercise, and it's all on ICS forms over the name of the fire chief for the town.

I think NIMS originated in CA because of widespread fires that covered different counties and different government agencies, and they needed away to coordinate control and costs, so that each area/agency bore its appropriate expenses. If your agencies' admin skills were stressed by your events, I'd suggest more training, not giving up on NIMS. To each his own.