CalFire Proposal: Smoke and Mirrors?
Outsourcing San Carlos Fire Department to State Agency Sparks Firestorm of Questions
ALARMS are going off everywhere – except, apparently, in City Hall — over a proposal to outsource the San Carlos portion of the Belmont-San Carlos Fire Department to the state-run CalFire agency.
A report issued yesterday from City Manager Mark Weiss’ office suggested that the city could save $1.2 million to $2 million a year by turning over all firefighting functions to CalFire, formerly known as the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF). The idea is to help offset an expected $3.5 million budget deficit for the next fiscal year.
The San Carlos City Council will review the proposal, starting with a Saturday, March 13, budget work session that will be held from noon to 5 p.m. on the second floor of the library, with the public invited to attend. See the full city staff report.
In the context of these deliberations, there has been ongoing strife between San Carlos and Belmont over the cost-sharing formula for running the jointly-managed Belmont-San Carlos Fire Department. Reportedly more heat was generated this week at a meeting of the fire board, which includes two council members from each of the two cities.
Also, San Mateo County supervisors may have concerns over what might become of the department’s hazardous materials response team, which is responsible for serving the entire county. As the county’s designated hazmat unit, the department receives nearly a half-million dollars a year from the county. The team includes a vehicle, special equipment that can deal with toxic leaks as well as terrorist attacks, and special training for firefighters.
But there’s more – much more – that the city council is not getting from the city staff report, which was prepared by Assistant City Manager Brian Moura.
Apart from taking a hard look at the accuracy of CalFire’s numbers, or the city staff’s mathematics, there are major issues swirling around the operations of CalFire, its relations with communities that have contracts with the agency, and skyrocketing cost increases to the state government that have drawn attention in Sacramento and could well have repercussions for any community with a CalFire agreement.
Weiss is familiar with CalFire. Before becoming San Carlos city manager five years ago, he was assistant city manager in La Quinta, the desert resort town 120 miles east of San Diego, and city manager in Half Moon Bay, just over the hill. In press comments (The Daily Journal, March 8), Weiss pointed to La Quinta as a sterling example of the workability of outsourcing fire services to CalFire. Fire trucks bore the city’s name and, according to Weiss’ comments in the Journal, “To the outside it looked like nothing had changed.”
But, if he were to revisit his former place of employment, he might discover that things aren’t exactly rosy with CalFire. La Quinta’s fire services are provided by the Riverside County Fire Department, and it is that agency with the contract. CalFire bills the county for its services, and right now there’s more smoldering going on in the SoCal desert than a five-day-old forest fire.
The spark came from a Riverside County Grand Jury report that urged Riverside to dump CalFire and form its own locally-controlled fire district.
The reasons? Little ones like this: CalFire has been piling on huge increases in its fees to the county – in fact, more than double. “Over the last six years, state administrative charges have increased from a low of $5.5 million in fiscal year 2002-2003 to a high of $12.5 million in fiscal year 2007-2008,” said the grand jury report. Yet another fee hike was tacked on for 2009-2010.
Can we expect more of the same here if we get in bed with CalFire? Would it be like those lovely “teaser” rates the banks offered on mortgages before jacking them up the second year?
Another issue identified by the Riverside Grand Jury: CalFire does not have mandatory background checks on its new hires, meaning that people with criminal records might get on board. With the Belmont-San Carlos Fire Department, there are strict background checks on all potential firefighters, so that no one with, say, a burglary record, would have access to homes during fire or medical emergencies. Said the grand jury report: “Background checks are neither mandatory nor a requirement for CalFire applicants.” Really? Isn’t that something the public should know about?
Other issues cited by the report: missing county equipment under CalFire’s watch, and holding back the deployment of vehicles during calls so as to save money by summoning volunteer firefighters instead of sending the paid staff. The report said this latter practice could put people and property at risk in a major emergency. The grand jury recommended that the county explore the creation of its own fire department, just as San Bernardino County did 12 years ago when it voted to show CalFire the exit door after a similarly unhappy relationship.
Is there a pattern here, and should the city management have known this?
There’s more. Things aren’t exactly harmonious in Half Moon Bay, either. That city is part of the Coastside Fire District, which stretches north to Montara. A few years ago a dispute over fire services between those two communities – does that sound familiar? – led to the breakup of the locally controlled agency and the hiring of CalFire. But now, there’s a growing chorus of discontent with CalFire. Those towns might now be looking to find other partners – maybe even on this side of the hill.
Comparable to San Carlos’ hazmat squad, Coastside had developed an elite surf rescue team, another unique and localized service that is frequently needed when people get into trouble in the ocean. But, according to one coastal fire official that we spoke with, “CalFire’s idea of surf rescue was to back a truck to the edge of a cliff and toss a cable over the side.”
Also, when CalFire came aboard on the coast, well-trained local firefighters quit en masse, with one estimate putting turnover at 75 percent. And where did they go? Several of them came to – guess where? – the Belmont-San Carlos Fire Department.
Now, San Carlos faces a similar exodus of highly-skilled firefighters – people who know every street and every person who needs frequent emergency medical help – if CalFire is admitted into the city.
It gets worse. While the city manager report claims that neither of San Carlos’ two fire stations would be closed – with Station 16 on Alameda de las Pulgas the most vulnerable – don’t bet the farm that CalFire would be able to hold to that promise for very long.
Here’s the kicker: The State Legislative Analyst – the government watchdog office that peeks over the shoulders of state agencies – says that CalFire is not only spending too much money at a time when state finances are bordering on bankruptcy, but that the agency is straying from its core mission of fighting rural and remote wildland fires. It calls CalFire’s expansion of services beyond this as “mission creep.”
The report had plenty of criticism for how CalFire conducts business: “Our analysis indicates that CalFire’s budget for its core mission of fighting wildland fires has increased substantially due to the occurrence of large fires, increased labor costs, and the development of more housing in fire-prone areas. In addition, CalFire spends considerable time and effort responding to non-wildland fire emergencies. Because the department’s accounting system does not track the costs for these non-wildland fire calls, we cannot quantify the cost of these noncore mission activities. However, in 2006, department personnel spent about 30 percent of their response time on calls not related to wildland fires. We are concerned that the costs of expanding the mission of CalFire – a phenomenon often referred to as mission creep – are significant.”
And how does the Legislative Analyst believe that CalFire could reduce its costs? Among other things, by “closing low-priority fire stations,” that is, stations that are not used enough for wildland fire fighting.
So, if CalFire were running San Carlos fire services, since more than 50 percent of the calls to the Alameda station are non-fire medical emergencies, would this put the station into the “low priority” category? Would CalFire come back a year from now and say, oops, sorry, gotta close that station because we already have one on Cordilleras (in the Edgewood Canyon area)? And what would that do to our fire insurance premiums, with help being 8 minutes instead of 2 or 3 minutes away? What would the Legislative Analyst say about CalFire soliciting high-density suburban communities – like San Carlos — for contracts?
And when the San Carlos city manager talks about a 19.5 percent increase in city fire service costs over a four-year period from 2006 to the present – costs that are largely the result of retirement and medical benefits approved by past city councils – how does this stack up to CalFire?
Guess what? CalFire’s costs to the state general fund have more than tripled in 10 years, rising from $307 million in the 1998-99 year to $967 million – just shy of a billion bucks – in the current year. “Over the same time period,” said the report, “the General Fund base budget alone has increased from $267 million to more than $530 million – an increase of almost 100 percent in the same decade.”
Is this the kind of agency we want to get in bed with?
And there are many questions our council members should be asking: Why hasn’t the city explored cooperative arrangements with other neighboring cities, where fire departments have comparable high standards and operations? Is it because our feud with Belmont makes us untouchable? And if so, who is responsible for burning those bridges?
If a deal with CalFire was so economical and efficient, why aren’t other cities in the county pursuing one? The answer: They are not. They are looking to make nice with their neighboring cities, create expanded fire districts of two or more communities, and keep fire fighting local, as it should be.
In short, would a deal with CalFire be like jumping from the frying pan into the fire?
– Ken Castle
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Thanks, Ken, for all this work. The Grand Jury report is pretty scathing.
I’ll second that. Thanks to Ken for getting additional details not being talked about elsewhere.