City commission releases study on fire district: System adequate
Firefighters and citizens unhappy with findings
Study before city council
By Kara Chalmers
The Saratoga Public Safety Commission recently released a study that finds that the current fire protection system in the city--a system in which two fire departments share the responsibility of protecting the city--is adequate.
The Saratoga Fire District and the Santa Clara County Fire Department each cover approximately one half of the city of Saratoga.
The findings by the study disappointed union firefighters from the district and some Saratoga citizens, who have been engaged in a battle with the SFD's administration over contracting with the county fire department for fire and medical services.
The report finds response times for emergency calls are generally less than five minutes, a recognized public safety target and that annual property losses are low, relative to property values.
Some 20 SFD firefighters, county firefighters and citizens, who together formed a group called the Firefighters and Citizens Task Force, or FACT, crammed into a city hall conference room for the public safety commission's March 8 meeting, where the study was released.
Some of the group displayed anger and frustration at the report's summary that states that "Saratogans are adequately protected against credible fire and medical emergencies and the task force did not identify any major defects in the present approach."
"Can it go on the record that we're all against it?" asked resident Karen Walter at the meeting. Walter expressed the group's intention to recall SFD Commissioner Bob Egan and nominate FACT members to run in November's election against the other two commissioners.
"It's gonna get ugly, fast," she said.
On March 8, the public safety commission voted to pass their report on to the Saratoga City Council, with the caveat that the FACT group has an opposing view and that the council should listen to FACT, as well.
But, as Commissioner Paige McClellan, who, with commissioners Mitch Kane and Hugh Hexamer, made up the study's task force, pointed out, "adequate" does not mean there is no room for improvement.
"When you say there are 'no major defects,' that does not necessarily exclude the possibility that deficiencies exist," McClellan said.
When some citizens turned up at a council meeting in October, asking the council to look into the issue of fire protection in the city, the council turned the matter over the public safety commission.
The fire district, which is run by three elected fire commissioners, is a governmental body in and of itself, and does not answer to the council in the way city commissions do. The county fire department--run by the county's board of supervisors--is also an agency that is independent of the council.
In response to the council, the public safety commission formed a three-member task force. The task force members developed the mission of the study, based on what they found appropriate and on what they understood the council to want, Hexamer said. According to Hexamer, the three spent more than 70 hours on the project.
"We did not go beyond the mission statement," he said.
The mission of the study--to evaluate the adequacy of the current system the city employs--was limited in scope, McClellan said, but she maintains it is still useful.
"If you look at the report and beyond the mission and summary, at the body of the report and draw conclusions from the factual information, I think in that regard it's useful," she said.
McClellan said the task force's job was to be a fact-finder for the council, not to make recommendations and not to draw conclusions beyond the mission statement, such as, if the fire district should contract with the county department.
But McClellan points out that the study is filled with useful information and facts that the council could use to make a recommendation of its own. She also said the council could mandate that the public safety commissioners study the issue further. She called the report a starting point.
According to union president and district Capt. Bill Morrison, if the mission was not so limited, and included a clause asking if there is a better level of service available, the study would have had a different outcome.
According to Morrison, SFD firefighters are scared for their safety. He said that while nothing bad has happened yet, he is afraid of what could happen, since the SFD does not send as many firefighters or personnel to fires.
"We're trying to avoid a situation that might occur," Morrison said to the commissioners at the meeting March 8. He said his and the other SFD firefighters' concerns are falling on deaf ears.
Morrison said that on fire calls, he calls for mutual aid--backup help from the county department--immediately, no matter what. Some members of FACT view the SFD's use of mutual aid as an abuse of the mutual aid system, since they say the SFD relies on it so heavily.
The chairman of FACT, David Dolloff, said he wasn't surprised that the task force found the current system adequate.
"We all knew it was adequate because statistics show that," he said. But he said he thinks the system would be very much improved by the fire district contracting with the county department for more services. The public safety commission's study ignores the issue of a contract, and the desire for a contract was why the citizens went over the heads of the SFD administration to the council in the first place, he said.
"Basically, it was studying the wrong thing," Dolloff said of the commission's report. "It was studying adequacy, which isn't the point."
Dolloff said he thinks the task force should have studied what is available for the same cost through the county department. He said that residents need "more than adequate" service. One good thing, though, is that the study got FACT's case before the city council, Dolloff said.
The study item is on the council's agenda for March 21, under a section of the agenda--called communications from boards and commissions--that allows members of the public to speak on the item, according to City Clerk Cathleen Boyer, but does not allow council members to take action on the item. Boyer said the council could, however, give direction to staff or place the item on the agendafor a future meeting.
FACT members plan to write a letter to the council about the commission's study, according to Dolloff and Morrison. The letter will contain the shortcomings FACT found in the study and suggestions on what more the commission could do, such as make a recommendation on whether the differing responses to fires from both departments is acceptable.
Morrison said the letter would ask the council to send the report back to the commission, asking that it redo the report and add more to it. He said he plans to ask this in person at the council meeting on March 21. He said that it is his hope that the council will see FACT's point of view and make a recommendation, since even though the council does not control the SFD, it still can have a voice.
Saratoga, California Since 1955
