Firefighters Say Contract With County Fire Is A Better Plan
City is now served by two separate fire departments
Costs and responses differ
By Kara Chalmers
On Three Oaks Way in Saratoga, an imaginary line runs down the middle of the street, separating the Saratoga Fire District from the Santa Clara County Fire Department. On Verde Vista Court, two or three houses are within the county's jurisdiction, while the rest, some six homes, are in the SFD.
This is just one of the ways that Saratoga is unique. Many neighboring cities and towns have fire departments that serve the whole community or have contracts with the county department for exclusive services. In Saratoga, there are houses right across the street from each other that are served by two different fire departments.
For the past year, union firefighters for the SFD, however, have vocally pushed for a merger with the county, which already serves half of Saratoga, as well as many other cities in the county. They say that if the SFD contracts with the county department, the citizens of Saratoga would get better fire and medical services, overall.
The three elected SFD commissioners, who govern the district, as well as SFD Chief Ernie Kraule, oppose a merger. They say they see no problem with the SFD's level of service and want to keep local control of a fire department that is more than 75 years old.
The two views came into open conflict last year when the union threatened to withhold its support of the commissioners' $6 million bond measure for a new fire station.
The SFD commissioners compromised and agreed to fund a study of the district, and to take to heart the recommendations that would ensue at the end of the study. So the union backed the bond measure, which passed in April 2000.
Questions have been raised, however, about the way the commission has handled the study. A consulting company, DMG Maximus, was hired in the beginning of the year to evaluate the fire and medical service needs of Saratoga, to identify the best and most cost effective level of service possible and to determine the extent to which the district meets the present and future needs of the community, according to the request for proposals form prepared by Kraule.
The firm began its study with interviews of commissioners, Kraule, firefighters and the county department chief, Douglas Sporleder. Based on the data it collected, the firm submitted a draft report--a profile of the district that also compared it with the county department in terms of responses and costs.
Upon receiving this draft, Commissioner Bob Egan, who is handling the study for the district, said the report needed to be revised. Egan refused to distribute the draft to firefighters saying that it was full of factual errors that would create confusion if it were distributed. Chief Kraule, however, gave a copy to the Saratoga News, but shortly thereafter, Lane Long, a consultant with the SFD, asked the newspaper to return the draft, which the newspaper refused to do.
DMG Maximus revised the report and released a second draft to the district. In this draft, the firm deleted information about the county department. Otherwise, the second draft contains the same information on the SFD as the first.
The commission initially refused to release the second draft to the union or the press, but relented and permitted the union to see copies. Kraule has since given a copy of the second draft to the Saratoga News.
Although the commission maintains that it's too early to draw conclusions from the two drafts, firefighters say they have seen nothing to date to change their minds about the merger. Union president, SFD Capt. Bill Morrison, asked if having read the reports, he still believes the SFD should merge with the county, said, "We feel they'd provide a better level of service than Saratoga does, and we feel it would be better for the firefighters and the community to contract with them."
According to both reports from DMG, SFD's budget totals $2,490,370, of which salaries, wages and benefits make up $2,221,449 or 89.2 percent. A current budget shows the SFD expenses to be $2,718,415.
According to the first report, the county department's budget totals $35,096,300, with salaries, wages and benefits comprising $28,432,520, or 81 percent of it. A current budget shows the county department's expenses to be $39,342,096.
The first report from DMG compares the costs of the two agencies on both a per station and per company basis. The report concludes that the cost per station is higher for the SFD than the county and that the cost per company is higher for the county than the SFD. It also concludes that the overhead attributed to the county department is 8.5 percent lower than the overhead attributed to the SFD, since the county department is so much larger. The report notes that the county supports functions that the SFD does not, such as a training facility and training staff, full-time fire prevention functions and communications and dispatch contracting.
The county department consists of 265 personnel, 40 volunteers, 16 fire stations, six support facilities and more than 100 vehicles, according to the department's business plan.
The SFD has three engines, one of which is a reserve engine. According to Kraule, in the SFD, there are eight paid firefighters per shift and there are three shifts. Each shift is made up of a captain, three engineers, two firefighters and two apprentices. There are 24 responding personnel, plus a chief, a business manager, a dispatcher and an administrative assistant that make up SFD paid staff. There are some 25 active and inactive volunteers.
From the hours of 5 p.m. to 9 a.m. on weekdays, and during the weekend and holidays, one firefighter is taken off duty to handle dispatch for the SFD.
The way the county department and the SFD respond to structure fires differs. The SFD sends two engines and between six to eight firefighters to a structure, or house fire. The county also sends two engines, as well as a truck with a ladder, a battalion chief, a hazardous materials or rescue truck and 14 firefighters to any structure fire. If the fire is in the hills, the ladder truck is replaced with an engine.
The response to wildland--tree or brush fires--differs as well. The SFD sends one engine to a nonhazardous brush fire and two engines to hazardous brush fires in the hillsides, and six to eight personnel. The county sends two engines, a four-wheel drive engine and one battalion chief on a regular temperature day.
On medical calls, the two departments each send one engine with a paramedic. However, in the SFD, there is only one paramedic per shift, not per engine, so if there is more than one medical call in the district at once, a paramedic from American Medical Response, AMR, must respond. In the county department, there is one paramedic per engine.
According to DMG's report, in 1999, there were only 17 structure fires and two wildland fires in the SFD. The large number of emergencies were medical calls.
The vision of the county fire department is to promote a regional approach to fire protection, which means contracting or consolidating services, according to the department's business plan. Over the past half a century, the department has grown through consolidations and mergers. Today, it serves the cities of Campbell, Cupertino, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Los Gatos, Monte Sereno, Morgan Hill and adjacent county areas, as well as parts of Saratoga. The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, sitting as the board of fire commissioners for the county department, governs the department.
If the county department incorporates the SFD, firefighters say it would mean more career opportunities for firefighters and more chances for their advancement.
The merger would likely bring about a change in the SFD hierarchy as well, since there is only room for one fire chief in the county department. When Morgan Hill contracted with the county department in 1995, the chief of the Morgan Hill fire department became a battalion chief.
The SFD has made some changes in the past year. The district has increased its staff, adding more apprentice firefighters, who are in paramedic school right now, according to Morrison. Apprentice firefighters are student firefighters hired on two-year contracts and paid half what regular firefighters make, Morrison said.
Still, the union has not wavered in its contention that Saratoga citizens are getting two different levels of service, depending on which part of the city they live in, and sometimes, depending on which side of the street their houses are on.
Saratoga, California Since 1955
