ogre

LOOK AT ME!!! LOOK AT ME!!!
I'M IN A FIRE!

This fight has been going on for at least 20 years. I can remember as a young buck when they were first establishing the 911 system, people realized that the numbering system was both random and really stunk. There were several proposed new systems, all of which were met by senseless arguments. They ranged from "who is going to renumber our vehicles" to "my department number from the state has a leading zero, what are we going to do with that" (not really a senseless argument, since it causes havoc in many computer systems) to "we're department 36, we don't want to change our number for the county" to "we've been doing it this way for X years, why change". Well, as usual, politics being what they were, we've gone 20 years and no improvement in the system.
The first solution to this "problem" is having command officers familiar with the capabilities of their neighboring departments. Nothing will ever be perfect for the mutual alarm assignments as you can cross battalion, county, and even state lines but you should know what your neighboring departments' equipment for the first few alarms. For example, my department was dispatched mutual aid to a bordering department with a FAST team several years ago and, at the time, our FAST team's response was with our rescue. We were instructed by command (via county, a whole different communications issue) to hit the hydrant at the corner of street A and B. I was absolutely appalled that the command officer of a bordering department didn't know that (1) our rescue was coming with our FAST and (2) the only pump on our rescue was a portable pump.
Once the poor training of command officers is dealt with, the poor information availability at county needs to be dealt with accordingly. Trying to make a standard list of equipment that has to be announced with every transmission to county is just making life more difficult for everyone and it will never deal with every special request. Get back to the basics: engine, tanker, ladder, tower ladder, rescue, utility, boat, misc. (add in squad or light rescue if it really meets your fancy). If you need a specific resource as command and you are beyond the area that you know, that's fine. "KEE-315, 36 Control, Orange 911, I need the next available heavy rescue, high volume engine, high volume hose vehicle, etc. etc." The CAD system should be able to have qualifiers on each piece of apparatus and allow the 911 center to dispatch the closest available unit to meet command's needs (that's if they listened to me because I failed to wait to be acknowledged). That's where your additional information is placed, not on some radio identifier.
Departments also need to get over the whole "my department number is whatever follows the 360xx in the state system". The state system is not a perfect fit for your department's radio ID, nor was it designed to be. For example, Ulster County did not eliminate trailing zeros in their system, which is a communications nightmare. For example, is "Car Eighty Three" the third officer of New Paltz Rescue or the first officer of Mobile Life? Changing the radio identifier to "80 dash three" to eliminate this confusion was a patch, not a fix. It's only good until the first person forgets, then you have confusion. The Dutchess system starts at 31 and has no trailing zero companies, thus eliminating that confusion.
Learn from the past mistakes or things that don't work quite right in other neighboring systems and come up with something that makes sense for Orange County. Put aside politics and petty gripes and get the knowledgable people in our county together at a table and let them hammer out a system that is truly beneficial for fire response. While they're at it, maybe they should look into an avenue for common communication between fire and EMS. The OC911 center is so concerned about the traffic coming through their radios, why am I always tying up 2 dispatchers and 2 frequencies to transfer information between fire and EMS? There are a lot of good ideas roaming around the county system, they just seem to all be off on different tangents.