A Consolidation of Fire Services, but How to Proceed?

San Carlos looks to a regionalized fire department to save them from ruin after a bitter split from Belmont has left them with few options and a looming deadline that has city officials worried.

"They’re the ones that wanted the divorce, and they have done nothing to appease the situation," said Belmont Mayor Carolin Feierbach. "I think we need to be strong and say we’re doing our own fire department, and if they want to contract for our services they can."

"I can’t trust them, simple as that," she added.

The consolidation of services comes as an option to the city after nearly a year of negotiations with Cal Fire, beginning back on March 5, 2010 when the County Chief John Ferreira sent a letter to the city stating his “interest in an initial proposal regarding the anticipated costs of Cal Fire providing personnel for and management of the emergency fire services.”

The unofficial bid sent back in March led San Carlos to believe the County would be interested in joining together to provide fire services for the city.

But on Nov. 19, 2010, Cal Fire director sent a letter to Assistant City Manager Brian Moura regarding the County partnering with the city, stating, “to be successful, it is imperative that there is support for these agreements amongst all the stakeholders, including public officials, local citizens and labor organization.

"In the case of the City of San Carlos, there is concern from regional Legislative members and significant opposition from local labor organizations. Lacking support from these stakeholders, a proposed partnership could face legal challenges and be cast in a negative light by the media and the community.”

 The letter came as a surprise to San Carlos officials who had expected a bid from the County after Cal Fire had asked San Carlos to extend its RFP deadline before the original Dec. 7th deadline, which the city voted to do, extending it 30 days to accommodate the County and the city if San Mateo, who also asked for the extension.

 Talks about a partnership with Cal Fire re-emerged on Jan 14 when San Carlos announced it had received a one-page memo from the County Manager and Deputy County Manager.

The memo stated the County had completed and developed a response to the San Carlos RFP and it could be submitted if the Board of Supervisors votes to authorize it.

 City documents state that the RFP response would save the County $650,000 per year through sharing Command, Fire Marshall, Training, ALS and Administrative staff and sharing Fire Station 18 (Cordilleras) with San Carlos.

“Like San Carlos, the County also has a savings target of $1 Million per year in the Fire Department.  The proposal would cover most (65%) of the County’s budget deficit goal in this area,” records said. “County Fire shows several contract options for San Carlos that range from $3.8 million per year to $5.7 million per year

 At the meeting at the end of January, however, where San Carlos officials said the County’s proposal was completed and enclosed in a blue binder, the Board of Supervisors stalled San Carlos’ plans to move forward with their fire services process, calling for a 30-day postponement to give them time to gather more information concerning the potential for a multi-city department, in addition to their own uncertainty regarding their new budget.

“We have nothing,” Vice Mayor Andy Klein told San Carlos Patch at the time. “The way I see it is we have no proposals.”

The postponement led only to more question marks for San Carlos as Cal Fire ultimately decided against a partnership altogether. 

As budgets continue to tighten for Peninsula cities, most local officials agree that, in the interest of cost savings, municipal fire departments can and should be consolidated in the near future.

Even so, differences remain on exactly how to proceed. And lingering grudges over relationships gone sour – as happened recently between San Carlos and Belmont – make common ground harder to find.

The San Carlos-Belmont feud as council members from the neighboring cities bickered before supervisors during a county Board Finance and Operations Committee meeting in Redwood City.

As for San Mateo city officials, they apparently decided to keep out of it on Tuesday, opting not to attend the meeting at all. According to Supervisor Carole Groom – one of the committee’s two members along with Supervisor Adrienne Tissier – San Mateo city manager Susan Loftus did not attend Tuesday’s meeting because the fight between Belmont and San Carlos is too “explosive.” Loftus’ outgoing phone message said she is away on business this week.

But some San Mateo officials have been working behind the scenes in favor of consolidation. San Mateo Chief Dan Belville, who is also chief of Foster City’s fire department, has long been a vocal proponent of the idea.

Belville said he takes an opportunistic approach to consolidation, depending on the circumstances, because “I think it only makes sense for the taxpayer.”

When the Belmont-San Carlos Fire Department, in existence since 1979, started to fall apart about two years ago, Belville and Jim Skinner, the Redwood City fire chief, got together and “started to look at what was possible.”

“We thought we would take advantage of sharing some of those positions,” Belville said.

Similarly, he said, Burlingame and Hillsborough currently share a stable fire department, the Central County Fire Department. But “if they had a situation right now, we’d be looking into that,” he said. “So wherever the opportunity is we look, we extend out a hand. … For me it is all about efficiency.”

“Where it goes now I don’t know,” Belville said. “I don’t personally want to get too far out in front of it because I want to partner with all the cities that are within” the region he hopes will consolidate – San Mateo, Foster City, Belmont, San Carlos and Redwood City. “I’m willing to help lead that or work with my peers with it.”

Cal Fire Joins Fray

Further complicating matters is a recent proposal from Cal Fire, put forth by San Mateo/Santa Cruz Unit fire Chief John Ferreira, to take over fire services in San Mateo, Foster City, Belmont, San Carlos and Redwood City. A memo from Deputy County Manager Peggy Jensen estimates that shifting to Cal Fire in the five cities would decrease total fire service costs from $42.2 million to $25.4 million.

The San Carlos council supports the idea, which was discussed during Tuesday’s committee meeting.

“People say consolidation means we’ll lose local control,” said San Carlos Mayor Omar Ahmad. “Well, we’ve never had local control and not regionalizing could put us in fiscal ruin.”

But rank-and-file firefighters, represented by San Mateo Fire Fighters Local 2400, consider Ferreira’s proposal to be “out of the blue,” as one firefighter put it, and Belville says they have reason to be concerned.

“Local 2400 is really sort of anti-Cal Fire,” he said, in part because firefighters wonder what a consolidation would mean for them.

As for Cal Fire, Belville said, the agency’s role is “very conflicted” when it comes to urban firefighting.

“Cal Fire was originally intended to provide SRA” – state resource area – “fire protection,” he explained. Over the years, however, development has encroached on rural and unincorporated land, altering Cal Fire’s coverage area and creating overlap.

“What’s happened is that Cal Fire has become very involved in LRA,” or local resource area firefighting, he said, meaning fewer grass and forest fires and more structural fires, which require a different kind of training.

“It’s two totally different animals,” Belville said. “They don’t do the urban situations in most cases like we do.”

But now the state, due to budget limitations, is pushing to return Cal Fire to its original mission of rural-only firefighting, creating a conflict between the local Cal Fire proposal and intentions in Sacramento.

Furthermore, Belville said, the estimated cost savings are not as great as some county officials think.

“A lot of their costs start to roll up,” he said of Cal Fire.

“They’re a big agency and they run themselves well,” he said, praising the professionalism of his colleagues at Cal Fire. But he said their size leads to “one-stop shopping” for services such as training – which after all was designed for “primarily rural firefighting.”

He said that Half Moon Bay’s fire department, which was absorbed by Cal Fire in 2007 to become the Coastside Fire Protection District, has seen “much higher costs than anticipated.” (A civil grand jury recently concluded that it was a good deal, and said other municipalities should follow in Half Moon Bay’s footsteps.)

In the end, Belville said, “They come out in the newspapers at a much lower cost, but I think (the real difference is) probably somewhere in between.”

‘We need to save this marriage’

Ideas for cooperation continue to percolate amid the controversy. On Tuesday, San Carlos council member Andy Klein was critical of the cities of San Mateo and Menlo Park for not making a bid for fire services themselves.

“There’s a lot of talk about consolidation, but no action,” Klein said. “People can say San Carlos leaving Belmont is the opposite of collaboration, but joining Cal Fire would be another form of regionalization.”

Ultimately, supervisors Groom and Tissier said they were committed to making some form of fire regionalization a reality. The two-member committee decided to continue dialogue rather than move any decision to the full Board of Supervisors for approval.

And both admonished San Mateo’s bickering neighbors to the south to get along.

“We need to save this marriage between San Carlos and Belmont,” Groom said to the two cities’ representatives. “You need to roll your sleeves up and go back to work.”

As with the supervisors, there seem to be several local officials who are leaning towards consolidation. Peter Carpenter, director of the Menlo Park Fire Protection District, agreed that county-wide discussion needed to take place.

“There will be resistance from local fire officials who feel that their empire is threatened,” he said. “But our responsibility is to the residents we serve.”

Even on the Belmont City Council, member Warren Lieberman said that in the long run, he thinks it will be financially beneficial for cities to share as many services as possible.

"The closer that the cities in San Mateo County can work together, the greater the ability for the cities to provide the best possible services at the least possible cost," Lieberman said.