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Agenda Packet 2005-11-16 SP NOTICE OF SPECIAL MEETING PUBLIC WORKSHOP This is a Public Workshop which may include quorums from the following City Councils and Boards of: Pismo Beach, Arroyo Grande, Grover Beach and Oceano Community District. No formal action will be taken at this Workshop. South County Regional Center 800 West Branch, Arroyo Grande Wednesday, November 16, 2005 7:00 p.m. . 1. PUBLIC WORKSHOP - CITY GATE FIRE FEASIBILITY STUDY - . Government Code Section 54952.2 ~ The purpose of this workshop will be to review the feasibility study by CityGate and seek public input regarding the study. Members of the public wishing to provide input, comment, and suggestions may do so during the course of the workshop. Folsom (Sacramento), CAManagement Consultants Fire Department Consolidation Feasibility Analysis for the for the City of Pismo City of Pismo City of Pismo Beach, CA Beach, CA Beach, CA Volume1 November 2005 705 Gold Lake Drive, Suite 100 Folsom, CA 95630 (916) 355-1385 or (800) 275-2764Fax: (916) 355-1390 TC ABLE OF ONTENTS SectionPage Volume 1 (this volume) Executive Summary.......................................................................................................................1 Project Approach and Research Methods............................................................................4 Agency Background Information.................................................................................................5 Arroyo Grande...............................................................................................................5 Grover Beach.................................................................................................................5 Oceano...........................................................................................................................6 Pismo Beach...................................................................................................................7 Description of Risk and Fire Services........................................................................................10 General Fire Deployment Background Information..........................................................10 Community Risk................................................................................................................11 Current Workload Statistics...............................................................................................12 General Fire Service Response Time Discussion........................................................12 Response Statistics.......................................................................................................13 Staffing...............................................................................................................................14 What Must be Done Over What Timeframe to Achieve the Stated Outcome Expectation?...................................................................................14 Offensive vs. Defensive Strategies in Structure Fires Based on Risk Presented......................................................................................................14 Staffing in the Study Area............................................................................................15 Volunteer History and Modern Issues.........................................................................16 Staffing Discussion......................................................................................................16 Study Area Staffing Finding........................................................................................18 Station Configurations.......................................................................................................19 Maps 1-11..............................................................................................................19-21 Study Area Map Findings............................................................................................21 Recommended Consolidated Fire Services Plan.......................................................................21 Overview Findings.............................................................................................................22 Overall Recommendations.................................................................................................23 Management Team.............................................................................................................23 Fire Deployment................................................................................................................23 Staffing.........................................................................................................................24 Stations.........................................................................................................................24 Equipment....................................................................................................................24 Overall Governance and Structure of Shared Services......................................................24 Table of Contents-i Phasing of Plan ? In Priority Order....................................................................................25 Finance Description of Current Level of Staffing and Service................................................27 Pismo Beach.................................................................................................................27 Regional Costs of Consolidation.................................................................................................32 Consolidation of Administrative and Supervisory Staff....................................................32 Full Consolidation..............................................................................................................34 Allocation of Costs of Consolidation Among the Partner Agencies.................................37 Volume 2 Map Atlas Table of Contents-ii ES XECUTIVE UMMARY The City of Pismo Beach engaged Citygate Associates, LLC to conduct a strategic level analysis on the feasibility of sharing parts of, or consolidating fire services in the communities of Arroyo Grande, Grover Beach, Oceano, and Pismo Beach (The Communities). While Pismo Beach is contracting its fire services, it also understood that all The Communities had to work effectively together in the provision of fire services in the ?Five Cities? area and that no one community could afford to stand on its own. This study was charged with identifying the policy issues, opportunities, and constraints to shared fire services in these areas: Organizational/management Structure Funding and Finance Options Personnel Associated Property, Fleet, and Equipment Assets Fire Station Staffing and Coverage Levels Emergency Dispatch System for Fire Fire Department Management Staff Operational Issues. If opportunities to share the provision of fire services were found to exist, the study was to identify possible solutions, such as a governance and cost sharing model, for the elected officials to consider. Partial or full fire consolidation is a complex, lengthy process. Given all the issues involved, it is very appropriate to start with a high level policy study such as this; and then, if the elected officials choose to move into consolidation, the final implementation detail work will need these initial policy decisions regarding what form the consolidation is to take. Citygate finds that The Communities are significantly challenged by their geographic location and the fiscal capacity of small jurisdictions to provide safety services at typical suburban levels of effort. Simply stated, these factors are: 1. The Communities small fiscal size and the related ability to each field a full fire department; 2. They all share isolation from multiple fire mutual aid partners outside the area with very long response times; and, 3. The quantity and cost of housing limit the potential market for volunteer firefighters at the same time that requirements on volunteer firefighters evolve to higher commitment levels. This consolidation study has looked at these and other underlying issues to construct the framework for The Communities elected officials to make informed decisions regarding the level of fire and EMS services desired and how best to deliver and fund them. Citygate finds that due to their sizes and current fiscal capacity, The Communities will, for the foreseeable future, need to operate ?combination? fire department(s) that rely on a volunteer or a ?reserve? firefighter force that in total count is more than the amount of full-time career 1 November 8, 2005 firefighters The Communities can afford, possibly even with an extraordinary supplemental tax levy. While the challenges facing The Communities are somewhat unique, Citygate does find that The Communities have options to provide basic fire and EMS services. Given the moderate fire and medical risks in the area, The Communities do not need an agency staffed entirely with full-time career fire fighters providing all the advanced services of a metropolitan or major suburban fire department. What The Communities need is: do 1. An initial firefighting force that can keep small fires small; 2. A total firefighting force (on-duty plus recalled volunteers) that can slow the escalation of the emergency, while more distant mutual aid resources can arrive; 3. The ability to deliver basic emergency medical services, and optionally, advanced life support (paramedic) if the current regional paramedic ambulance can no longer provide adequate support to The Communities; 4. A fire service that can enforce the fire codes in new construction to state-of-the-art so as to mitigate the frequency of large fires that will rapidly outstrip the ability of a small fire department; 5. A fire service that can provide on-going fire inspections to commercial and industrial properties and public education programs to residents to be fire safe, thus also lowering the frequency and severity of fires; 6. Fire services that can help The Communities prepare and partially respond effectively during times of large disasters in the region. Citygate finds that providing all six service themes above as stand alone fire departments is not cost effective, nor will stand alone services have the technical depth needed in a world that grows more technical, complex, and regulated every year. While all the partners in this study are providing some level of fire services today, if The Communities were to pool their efforts, they could cost effectively operate a full service agency, meeting everyone?s needs more effectively. Given the size and geographic isolation of The Communities, their separate fire departments will be at best, at community build out, an incipient or ?small? fire agency. The Communities will not individually have the weight and depth of fire services to stop large, serious fires that are already spiraling out-of-control when 911 is called. As will be discussed further, even with the help of mutual aid, a full, fast, response force to major fires is unlikely. This creates the need for good fire prevention and community understanding that fires can?t be tolerated because a department with the capabilities of a larger department does not exist to control the problem. What regional mutual aid can and will do is arrive in time to prevent the spread of fire beyond the building of origin to catastrophic proportions. While each of the partners in this study are providing firefighters on engines today, what is really lacking in the agencies outside of Pismo Beach is a command and overhead staff that can do planning; provide safe, effective incident command 24/7/365 in a timely manner; plus, provide technical fire prevention and disaster preparedness services. In Pismo Beach, they are getting more ?overhead? services via their contract with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF) via a large regional shared model. Even at its best, a large shared model does 2 November 8, 2005 not always have the local sensitivity that many small towns would like to have in their safety services. The best compromise then between a series of very small, partially effective individual agencies if and a large shared model such as CDF, is a sub-regional consolidation; the local communities can each agree to shared governance and cost apportionment structures. Local communities can often agree to share sub-regionally, because they have a commonality of interests, which is do more difficult to achieve with consolidation or sharing that stretches across an entire county for example. The reason why Citygate finds that a sub-regional consolidation exist is that the study should area?s multiple agency fire system deployed today is by simple measure, the same size as one fire department: FireMin Daily 2004 AgencyPopulationSq. Miles StationsCareer F/F Incidents Arroyo 16,5375.5121,547 Grande Grover Beach 13,2282.32121,131 Oceano CSD 7,6001.712746 Pismo Beach 8,6443.024834* Totals46,00912.525104,258** Comparable : San Luis 45,00010.74134,330 Obispo *Note ? not all incidents file a report in the records system, so this count is lower than the actual total amount of dispatches. **Note ? not the true number of total calls for service, this number is a little high, since each fire department records system counts an incident for them, when they respond under mutual aid into another partner city. The partners above already have a common response system to building fires and complicated emergencies. They can coordinate on one radio frequency. As will be discussed in more detail later in this report, sending only two firefighters to a fire in a community is inadequate, and even sending 10 firefighters is barely adequate for simple building fires. Thus the agencies know they need to respond together. If they have to respond together, a team of firefighters on an incident would work better together with common training, equipment, procedures and leadership. If it is agreed that emergency operations are more effectively conducted in common, it makes sense to build some economies of scale, where very small agencies exist. For example, purchasing tools and equipment can avoid duplication of equipment and effort. One agency may not need or cannot afford a full-time Fire Marshal, but each can buy into a shared one. 3 November 8, 2005 For the macro reasons stated above, Citygate finds that it is not the best choice to have four small separate fire departments who need each other operationally in order to provide even a modicum of effective fire service. The challenge is how to set up a shared agency in a way that satisfactorily handles the issue of local control and cost sharing. PARM ROJECT PPROACH AND ESEARCH ETHODS Citygate used several tools to gather, understand and model information about The Communities for this study. We started by making a large document request to the partner agencies and Fire Departments to gain background information on costs, current and prior service levels, the history of service level decisions and what other prior studies had to say. Citygate?s Fire Practice and City Management Principals, on three separate occasions, followed up on this information by conducting focused interviews of key City leaders, fire managers, plus paid and volunteer fire department members. As information about the agencies was collected and understood, Citygate obtained map and response data electronic information from which to model current and projected fire services deployment. The goal was to identify the location(s) of stations and crew quantities that would be needed to serve the study area at build out. This macro deployment understanding then allows a fiscal model to be built that takes into account the scope of fire services needed. The fiscal modeling was built on budget and cost data received from each of the partner agencies in the study. Where assumptions had to be made to estimate what shared costs might be, they will be explained in the finance section of this report. Once Citygate identified a shared fire services deployment model and its costs, Citygate then compared those estimated costs against what the agencies pay currently for fire services. The Citygate team then identified opportunities and barriers to a consolidation among the partners and identified governance options and cost sharing models for the combined elected officials to consider. 4 November 8, 2005 ABI GENCY ACKGROUNDNFORMATION Arroyo Grande The City of Arroyo Grande has long provided fire services. Until relatively recently, this was accomplished with all volunteer staffing. Over the last few years, the City was able to afford to move to limited career staffing to supplement the volunteer staffing. Currently, the City covers approximately 5.5 square miles and has a population of 16,537. The estimated build out population is 20,000 residents. Fire Services are provided from one, new, modern 13,000 square foot fire station that houses administration, crew, apparatus, and support areas. The station is in a good response location. The City?s apparatus is in good shape, with a front line pumper, reserve pumper, Office of Emergency Services Pumper, breathing support unit and the study areas only ladder truck, with a 75 foot aerial ladder. This is a 1987 unit and the department is beginning to plan its replacement. The department also has a wildland fire unit and support vehicles. The department uses reserve or ?paid-call? firefighters to supplement career staffing, especially during the daylight hours when volunteer firefighter response can be low.Typical daily staffing is one Fire Captain, one Fire Engineer and one paid-call firefighter when possible, or volunteers can respond from home. The administrative staffing consists of one Fire Chief and an administrative secretary. There are no chief officer mid-managers, Fire Marshals or Fire Inspectors. The Fire Chief is also the Department Head in charge of the City?s Building Inspection Division and Neighborhood Services/Code Enforcement Unit. Dispatching is handled by the Arroyo Grande Police Department. Starting last year, in an experiment of ?functional? consolidation, the City decided to share the Fire Chief position with Grover Beach. Arroyo Grande pays the Fire Chief and under written agreement, the chief is also responsible for fire services in Grover Beach, reports to that City Manager and is a Grover Beach Department Head. In return, Grover Beach is funding a Fire Captain, Training Officer Position to manage training programs for both fire departments. This was to be originally a full-time position, but due to the individual circumstances of the individual hired, the position was made part-time for one to two years. In 2004, the department handled 1,547 emergencies, most of which were medical in nature. Grover Beach As with the other partners in this study, Grover Beach has long provided fire services. Over the last five plus years, how to operate a fire department has been a topic of considerable discussion and concern. The City, from time to time, has struggled to maintain a Fire Chief and an adequate volunteer firefighter pool. Of the three cities in this study, Grover Beach has the smallest fiscal strength and could not afford to move into career staffing when either Arroyo Grande or Pismo Beach did. Currently, Grover Beach is 2.32 square miles, with a population of 13,228 residents. As with the other beach area communities in this study, the City can see its population significantly rise during the high tourist summer months. 5 November 8, 2005 Fire Services are provided from one, new, modern fire station built in 1999 that houses administration, crew, apparatus, and support areas. The station is in a good response location. The City?s apparatus is in good shape, with a front line pumper, and two older reserve pumpers, that will be reduced to one newer reserve pumper in late 2005. Grover Beach also has support vehicles. The City has started to operate with career firefighters. Starting just last year, the City was able to afford to hire three Fire Captains and three Fire Engineers to provide one Captain and one Engineer on-duty each day for 24 hours. The department uses reserve or ?paid-call? firefighters to supplement career staffing, especially during the daylight hours when volunteer firefighter response can be low. Typical daily staffing is one Fire Captain, one Fire Engineer and one paid- call firefighter until the evening when a ?sleeper? volunteer can be scheduled, or volunteers can respond from home. The Administrative staffing consists of a shared Fire Chief with Arroyo Grande and a half time shared training officer position also shared with Arroyo Grande. There are no other chief officer or fire prevention positions. Dispatching is handled by the Grover Beach Police Department after 911 calls are transferred from the County Sheriff?s office. To its credit, to control serious fires, the City has passed a tough fire sprinkler ordinance where every building over 1,000 square feet must be protected with automatic fire sprinklers. Currently, the department has six paid-call firefighter vacancies and is recruiting for more. In 2004, the department handled 1,131 emergencies, most of which were medical in nature. Oceano The Oceano Community Services District provides water, sewer, fire, and street lighting services to an unincorporated area of 1.7 square miles with a resident population of approximately 7,600. The District also supervises a garbage franchise and does occasional storm drain maintenance. The County General Plan states the areas build out population is 12,000 residents, but it will take significant redevelopment of the area over a long period of time for this to be reached. The Oceano area has the most affordable housing in the study area and 72 percent of its population is below the poverty level. This affects the property tax revenue and rate that the CSD uses to fund fire services. Fire Services are providing from a station co-located with the CSD offices. Space is inadequate and a modular building on the rear of the lot houses on-duty firefighters. The CSD would like to replace this 20-year-old situation with a full fire station in 4-5 years, using Public Facility Funds collected from new construction. However, there will have to be significant development before the CSD can fund a station this way, as from 1991 to 2005, the CSD is only estimating to collect $180,000 in Public Facility Fees through the end of the 2005-06 fiscal year. The CSD has been able to provide quality fire apparatus and currently has a pumper, and reserve pumper, a command unit plus a wildland unit, and a small wildland/beach unit purchased partially with state funding. 6 November 8, 2005 As with the other partners in this study, the CSD has long relied on volunteer firefighters. As with the other agencies, the CSD saw changes in the availability of its volunteers, especially during daytime hours. In 2003/04 for a period of time, the CSD and Grover Beach participated in a joint cover plan, where each would pay two, paid-call (volunteer) firefighters to be on-duty for 12 hours each. Thus, each half of the 24-hour daily period, each agency covered calls in both jurisdictions with the one, staffed two-person unit.This program was stopped when Grover Beach was able to afford their first career staffing last year. Given on-going challenges to providing fire services, especially during working hours, the CSD formed a citizen?s task force. The result of this study and discussion was that on August 8, 2005, the CSD started their first career firefighters. The CSD hired two Fire Captains, two Fire Engineers and placed them on a 72-hour work week, which when combined with paid-call firefighter fill-in, the CSD is able to offer two firefighters on-duty 24/7/365. This is a huge step for the CSD and has taken all the currently available property tax revenue to accomplish. To assist the CSD General Manager, the CSD also employs a part-time Fire Chief. He is a long time CSD volunteer and works full-time for the regional paramedic ambulance company. There are no other chief officer or fire prevention staff positions. Dispatch services are provided for the CSD under a contract for service with the City of Grover Beach. In 2004, the department handled 746 calls for service. Pismo Beach Pismo Beach also has a long history of providing fire services. Currently the City is approximately 8,644 residents in 3 square miles along the coast. The City?s build out population for the current City limits is estimated at 10,363 residents. While all the partners in the study depend to varying degrees on tourism, Pismo Beach is the most dependent, having the most hotel rooms, commercial and new housing development at this point in time. The City?s hotel tax is its single largest General Fund revenue source. Pismo Beach has two fire stations, one in the central area of the City and one in the northern Shell Beach area. Given its length, Pismo Beach can?t be well served from one fire station only. The two stations are older, and in need of major work, which is planned. The Shell Beach station #63 is undergoing a remodel to accommodate 24-hour based crews better and the downtown Station #64 (called the Bello Street station) needs to be totally replaced. This replacement is being funded by the City of Pismo Beach and the station will be re-located to Ventana Drive and James Way where it will better serve southeast Pismo Beach. Currently, the Station #64 crews there are living across the street in rented quarters pending the re-construction. The City?s fire apparatus are in good shape, with two front line pumpers, a reserve pumper, rescue unit and support vehicles. Dispatch is started with Pismo Beach Police Department and then fire and medical calls are transferred to CDF for continued dispatching and incident handling. As with the other partners in this study, the City had long operated fire services. Pismo Beach was the first agency over the years to have the fiscal resources to migrate from all volunteer staffing to the combination of a few career staff supported by volunteers. By the start of the year 2001 however, the City was struggling after the recessions and taking of local funds by the state 7 November 8, 2005 budget to adequately support and fire services. After some study and debate, the City expand chose to discontinue providing its own fire services, and instead, chose to contract for full fire services and overhead from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF), which operates the San Luis Obispo County Fire Department which provides various types of service contracts to local governments. This is common for CDF to do this in many parts of California from rural to suburban and urban areas. For example, much of Riverside County and its cities are protected by CDF. Being the state?s largest fire department has given most citizens the image it is largely or only a wildland agency, when in fact it provides all types of fire protection around the state. Therefore it was entirely appropriate for Pismo Beach to consider a contract for suburban fire services with CDF. The contract partnership allowed Pismo Beach to begin to staff the Shell Beach Fire Station with two career personnel per day in a shared method with CDF. Commonly called around the state an ?Amador Agreement,? after the county where it was first used, a local agency pays to keep staffing on duty in the winter when CDF would otherwise close the fire station after its fire season. CDF pays for all of the full-time and fire season staffing of the fire station during the fire season and the local agency pays CDF?s extra seasonal staff cost to keep the fire station staffed 24/7 in the winter when the station would normally have been closed and seasonal employees laid off. The local agency pays a negotiated share of the maintenance and operational costs for the fire station facility year round.The ?Amador Agreement? model equates to a local agency cost of approximately 30 percent of the total staffing and operational cost of a fire station. However, this shared cost station is a County Fire Department station eligible for dispatch anywhere in the County Fire Department or State that it is needed. The frequency of this is low, and for Pismo Beach, an Amador Agreement station means two more career firefighters on-duty in the City, more often than not. Therefore, when the contract was started, Pismo Beach went from two career firefighter?s on-duty a day to four or five depending on the time of year. Although the City was not guaranteed the Shell Beach staffing as ?its own,? the staffing was in fact available to the City more than a majority of the time since the start of the contract. Currently within the CDF contract, the City pays to staff the Bello Street (#64) station 24/7/365 with a two-person career crew (Captain & Engineer) supplemented when possible with a Pismo Beach Reserve Firefighter. At the Shell Beach station (#63), the staffing is three-people in the summer fire season, Captain and two firefighters. In the winter, the City pays for a staffing level of two-persons, a Captain and firefighter, but somewhat less than half the time a third CDF person may be assigned to the Station at no cost to Pismo Beach. Pismo Beach Reserve Firefighters also are used to enhance this staffing up to a three-person engine company. For overhead and command, the Chief of the CDF/County Fire Department serves as the Fire Chief of Pismo Beach and a Division Chief and two Battalion Chiefs serve as additional command officers for emergency response. The Battalion Chiefs work an 84-hour work schedule and respond to emergency incidents from home after hours. One of the Battalion Chiefs has an office at Pismo beach City Hall and is assigned as the principal operational commander for the two Pismo Beach fire stations as well as the CDF/County Fire Department station in Avila Beach. On his off-duty days, the other Battalion Chief, who lives in Grover Beach, or the Division Chief, who lives in Arroyo Grande, covers emergency responses. 8 November 8, 2005 For additional support, the City funds one Fire Inspector and an Administrative Assistant position. All three personnel (the Battalion Chief, Fire Inspector and Administrant Assistant) are based in Pismo Beach City Hall. Additionally, CDF provides on an as needed basis: a Fire Marshal and staff in San Luis Obispo; fire investigators; a Division Chief or higher on greater alarm fires; a Chief Officer to the City?s Emergency Operations Center (EOC); a scene safety officer when needed; training and other support services. Much of these ad hoc services, such as training for the City Hall EOC personnel are funded via the overhead structure of the CDF contract. Most major new construction plan review is handled by the Fire Marshal in San Luis Obispo. There is a considerable fire inspection and weed abatement presence in the City due to the fire inspection position. The City disaster plan has been updated and City Hall staff feel they are the best trained they have been in years on disaster management due to the experience and depth of the CDF provided trainers. These ?as needed? services (administrative support such as training, workers compensation management, recruitment, etc, major construction plan review, and the shared cost of the County Fire Department) are all part of the 9.1 percent administrative overhead charge contained in the City contract with CDF. Pismo Beach always had a strong Reserve Firefighter program and it retained this as a local program, managed by CDF. CDF also manages the Lifeguard program for the City and continues the water rescue services by firefighters and lifeguards that existed prior to the contract. Pismo Beach career firefighters prior to the contract were absorbed into CDF and became State Employees with full protections and rights under the statewide CDF bargaining unit agreement. In 2004, the fire department handled 834 calls for service. 9 November 8, 2005 DRFS ESCRIPTION OF ISK AND IREERVICES GFDBI ENERAL IRE EPLOYMENT ACKGROUND NFORMATION The Commission on Fire Accreditation International recommends a systems approach known as ?Standards of Response Coverage? to evaluate deployment as part of the self-assessment process of a fire agency. This approach uses risk and community expectations on outcomes to assist elected officials in making informed decisions on fire and EMS deployment levels. Citygate has adopted this methodology as a comprehensive tool to evaluate fire station location. Depending on the needs of the study, the depth of the components can vary. Such a systems approach to deployment, rather than a one-size-fits-all prescriptive formula, allows for local determination. In this comprehensive approach, each agency can match local need (risks and expectations) with the costs of various levels of service. In an informed public policy debate, a city council ?purchases? the fire and EMS service levels (insurance) the community needs and can afford. While working with multiple components to conduct a deployment analysis is admittedly more work, it yields a much better result than any singular component can. If we only look to travel time, for instance, and not look at the frequency of multiple calls, the analysis could miss over- worked companies. If we do not use risk assessment for deployment, and just base deployment on travel time, a community could under-deploy to incidents. The Standard of Response Cover process consists of eight parts: 1. Existing Deployment ? each agency has something in place today. 2. Community Outcome Expectations ? what is expected of the response agency? 3. Community Risk Assessment ? what assets are at risk in the community? 4. Critical Task Time Study ? what must be done over what timeframe to achieve the stated outcome expectation? 5. Distribution Study ? the locating of first-due resources (typically engines). 6. Concentration Study ? first alarm assignment or the effective response force. 7. Reliability and Historical Response Effectiveness Studies ? using prior response statistics to determine what percent of compliance the existing system delivers. 8. Overall Evaluation ? proposed standard of cover statements by risk type. Fire department deployment, simply stated, is about the and of the attack. Speed speedweight calls for first-due, all risk intervention units (engines, trucks and or ambulance/rescue companies) strategically located across a department. These units are tasked with controlling everyday moderate emergencies without the incident escalating to second alarm or greater size, which then unnecessarily depletes the City resources as multiple requests for service occur. Weight is about multiple unit response for serious emergencies like a room and contents structure fire, a multiple patient incident, a vehicle accident with extrication required, or a heavy rescue incident. In these situations, enough firefighters must be assembled in a reasonable time frame in order to control the emergency safely without it escalating to greater alarms. 10 November 8, 2005 Thus, small fires and medical emergencies require a single or two-unit response (engine and specialty unit) with a quick response time. Larger incidents require more crews. In either case, if the crews arrive too late or the total personnel sent to the emergency are too few for the emergency type, they are drawn into a losing and more dangerous battle. The art of fire crew deployment is to spread crews out across a community for quick response to keep emergencies small with positive outcomes, without spreading the stations so far apart that they cannot mass together quickly enough to be effective in major emergencies. Given the need for crews to be stationed throughout a community for prompt response instead of all crews responding from a central fire station, cities such as Pismo Beach are faced with neighborhood equity of response issues. When one or more areas of a city or fire district grow beyond the reasonable travel distance of the nearest fire station, the choices available to the elected officials are few: add more neighborhood fire stations as Pismo Beach did with the Shell Beach fire station, or tell certain segments of their community that they have longer response times, even if the type of building fire risk is the same as the other more protected areas. CR OMMUNITYISK In reviewing The Communities, Citygate finds that most of the building fire risk is typical or average risk as compared to other suburban communities that Citygate has experience with in doing full deployment studies. While high-rise buildings or major airports do not exist in the area, there are special risks and circumstances that drive specialty fire department responses in the study area. Examples of these are beach and water emergencies, tourism, limited road access given the geography along the coast line, periods of heavy traffic congestion due to tourism and some wildland fire threats on the slopes behind the coastal plain. As with most small cities in the United States, the vast majority of buildings in the study area are one and two family homes. There are some multi-family developments and apartments. A normal amount of retail and commercial exists, with a low amount of industrial manufacturing. The Communities need to be prepared and be able to respond to more than typical fire and medical emergencies. Historically they have adapted and while it differs by agency, all four departments in the study area can to varying degrees handle specialty rescues and wildland fires within their jurisdictions. The leadership and citizens of The Communities probably expect that their fire departments should operate fire and EMS services to handle daily emergencies and that catastrophic emergencies would naturally be beyond the ability of a small town fire department. However, some of the new residents may not understand that a small town fire department can?t handle everything as perhaps a larger suburban or metropolitan department would. New development is occurring again in the area, with new and remodeled housing in Pismo Beach now passing the one million dollar sale price mark in some cases. The state economy is rebounding and the development interests won?t leave alone the Pismo Beach to Oceano nd coastline area forever. Pismo Beach is already gaining an increasing number of ?2 home? residents that, as stated before, may not understand the fire truck they see is not fully staffed or supported by a ?career, handle anything? emergency fire department. Both Pismo Beach and Arroyo Grande are seeing more ?name brand? retail store development. 11 November 8, 2005 Additionally, all the agencies, but especially Pismo Beach with the most beaches in its jurisdiction, have a hotel and water rescue risk. If Pismo Beach, whose budget depends on tourism, were to lose a major hotel property to fire, or have serious injuries, the damage to its tourism business could well extend past the short-term hotel room tax loss. When an emergency happens on the beach or in the water, tourists will see fire trucks and lifeguards and expect help, especially in the summer months. CWS URRENT ORKLOAD TATISTICS General Fire Service Response Time Discussion Today, the best recommendations for fire service delivery measures come from the Commission on Fire Accreditation International and the National Fire Protection Association. Instead of measuring average response time, they recommend that a ?percent of completion? performance goal for first-due units and the total number of units needed for serious building fires be designed to meet risk in each community. These goals are measured from the time of 911 call receipt to units on the scene. A typical way to state them is, ?For structure fires in a moderate risk area, the first unit shall be on-scene within 6 minutes of the time of call, 90 percent of the time. For first alarm assignments in moderate risk areas, the entire effective firefighting force shall arrive within 10 minutes, 90 percent of the time.? The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) Deployment Guideline #1710 for a full career fire department recommends that an all-risk initial intervention unit (pumper or ladder) will arrive at the scene of a critical emergency in 6 minutes or less from the time of call receipt in fire dispatch 90 percent of the time. This includes: 60 seconds or less dispatcher processing time 60 seconds or less fire crew turnout time 4 minutes road travel time NFPA #1710 also recommends the balance of a first alarm assignment for building fires arrive within 8 travel minutes, or 10 minutes from the time of fire dispatch receipt. The NFPA recommends a 4-minute time goal for the first-due units. This is very travel appropriate for the built-up, traffic-congested suburban areas. It is not as appropriate for the rural home areas. Nationally, there are not rural fire response expectations. Even NFPA #1720 for volunteer and or combination fire services ( does which applies to the study area departments) not recommend response times, but focuses on safe practices when enough staffing does finally reach the scene. The Insurance Services Office (ISO) Fire Department Grading Schedule would like to see fire stations spaced 1.5 miles apart in suburban areas, which, given travel speeds on surface streets, is a 3 to 4-minute road travel time. More importantly within the Standards of Response Coverage Process, and for the study communities, positive outcomes are the goal, and from that, crew size and response time can be calculated to allow efficient fire station spacing. Emergency medical incidents have situations with the most severe time constraint. In a heart attack that stops the heart, a trauma that causes severe blood loss, or in a respiratory emergency, the brain can only live 8 to 10 minutes maximum without oxygen. Events other than heart attacks can cause oxygen deprivation to the brain. Heart attacks make up a small percentage; drowning, choking, trauma constrictions or 12 November 8, 2005 other similar events have the same effect. In a building fire, a small incipient fire can grow to involve the entire room in an 8 to 10-minute time frame. If fire service response is to achieve positive outcomes in severe EMS situations and incipient fire situations, the crews must all arrive, size-up the situation and deploy effective measures before brain death occurs or the fire leaves the room of origin. Given that the emergency started before it was noticed and escalates through the steps of calling 911 to units arriving on-scene, there are three ?clocks? that fire and emergency medical crews must work against to achieve successful outcomes: The time it takes an incipient room fire to fully engulf a room (5 to 10 minutes), thus substantially damaging the building and most probably injuring or killing occupants. When the heart stops in a heart attack, the brain starts to die from lack of oxygen in 4 to 6 minutes and brain damage becomes irreversible at about the 10-minute point. In a trauma patient, severe blood loss and organ damage becomes so great after the first hour that survival is difficult if not impossible. The goal of trauma medicine is to stabilize the patient in the field and get them to the trauma surgeon inside of one hour. Somewhat coincidently, in all three situations above, the first responder emergency crew must arrive on-scene within 5 to 7 minutes of the 911 call to have a chance at a successful resolution. Further, the follow-on (additional) crews for serious emergencies must arrive within 10 minutes. The three event timelines above start with the emergency occurring. It is important to note the fire or medical emergency continues to deteriorate from the time of inception, not the time the fire engine actually starts to drive the response route. It is hoped that the emergency is noticed immediately and the 911 system is activated. This step of awareness ? calling 911 and giving the dispatcher accurate information ? takes, in the best of circumstances, one minute. Then crew notification and travel take additional minutes. Once arrived, the crew must walk to the patient or emergency, size-up the problem and deploy their skills and tools. Even in easy to access situations, this step can take two or more minutes. It is considerably longer in multi-storied complexes such as garden apartment buildings with limited street access, shopping center buildings or large agriculture or industrial occupancies. Thus from the time of 911 receiving the call, an effective deployment system is to beginning manage the problem within 7 to 8 minutes total reflex time. This is right at the point that brain death is becoming irreversible and the fire has grown to the point to leave the room of origin and become very serious. Thus, The Communities in the study area need to adopt a response time policy that is within the range to give the situation hope for a positive outcome. Sometimes the emergency is too severe before the Fire Department is called in. However, given an appropriate response time policy and a well-designed system, only issues like bad weather, poor traffic conditions or multiple emergencies will slow down the response system. Thus, a properly designed system will give the citizen the hope of a positive outcome for their tax dollar expenditure. Response Statistics In this consolidation study, actual response times per agency do not need to be modeled, given that three of the agencies only have and need one central fire station each. From a cursory review, the response times have to be adequate given the station location and geography. 13 November 8, 2005 However, Pismo Beach has two stations and asked for a specific review of response times as delivered by their CDF contract. Citygate received two years worth of incident response data and modeled it with our fire response statistical tool and found response times within Pismo Beach close to national expectations. The actual data results were provided to Pismo Beach in a separate report. S TAFFING What Must Be Done Over What Timeframe to Achieve the Stated Outcome Expectation? Fires and complex medical emergencies require a timely, coordinated effort in order to stop the escalation of the emergency. In this phase of the Standards of Response Cover process, time studies determine how many personnel are required over what timeframe to achieve the stated outcome expectation. Once the tasks and time to accomplish them to deliver a desired outcome are set, travel time and thus station spacing can be calculated to deliver the requisite number of firefighters over an appropriate timeframe. Offensive vs. Defensive Strategies in Structure Fires Based on Risk Presented Most fire departments use a strategy that places emphasis upon the distinction between offensive or defensive methods. These strategies can be summarized: It is important to have an understanding of the duties required at a structural fire to meet the strategic goals and tactical objectives of the Fire Department response. offensive or defensive. Fireground operations fall in one of two strategies ? We may risk our lives a lot to protect savable lives. We may risk our lives a little to protect savable property. We will not risk our lives at all to save what is already lost. Considering the level of risk, the Incident Commander will choose the proper strategy to be used at the fire scene. The Incident Commander must take into consideration the available resources (including firefighters) when determining the appropriate strategy to address any incident. The strategy can also change with conditions or because certain benchmarks (i.e., ?all clear?) are achieved or not achieved. offensive Once it has been determined that the structure is safe to enter, an fire attack is centered on life safety. When it is safe to do so, departments will initiate offensive operations at the scene of a structure fire. Initial attack efforts will be directed at supporting a primary search ? the first attack line will go between the victims and the fire to protect avenues of rescue and escape. defensive The decision to operate in a strategy indicates that the offensive attack strategy, or the potential for one, has been abandoned for reasons of personnel safety, and the involved structure has been conceded as lost (the Incident Commander makes a conscious decision to write the structure off). The announcement of a change to a defensive strategy means all personnel will 14 November 8, 2005 withdraw from the structure and maintain a safe distance from the building. Captains will account for their crews. Interior lines will be withdrawn and repositioned. Exposed properties will be identified and protected. Additionally, for safety, Federal and State Occupational Health and Safety Regulations (OSHA) mandate that firefighters can?t enter a burning structure past the incipient or small fire stage, without doing so in teams of 2, one team inside and one team outside, ready to rescue them. This totals a minimum of 4 firefighters on the fireground to initiate an interior attack. The only exception is when there is a known life inside to be rescued. Many fire department deployment studies using the Standards of Response Coverage process, as well as NFPA guidelines arrive at the same fact ? that a moderate risk structure fire (a reasonably sized single family home) needs a minimum of 14-15 firefighters, plus one commander. The usual recommendation is that the first unit should arrive on-scene within 6 minutes of call receipt (1-minute dispatch, 1-minute crew turnout and 4-minute travel), 90 percent of the time. The balance of the units should arrive within 10 minutes of call receipt (8-minute travel), 90 percent of the time, if they hope to keep the fire from substantially destroying the building. For an extreme example, to confine a fire to one room in a multi-story building requires many more firefighters than in a single-story family home in a suburban zone. How much staffing is needed can be derived from the desired outcome and risk class. If an agency desires to confine a one-room fire in a residence to the room or area of origin, that effort will require a minimum of 14 personnel, which means that every serious fire in each of the study area communities requires mutual aid and that means . This number the response of all the fire units in the four departments of firefighters is the minimum needed to safely conduct the simultaneous operations of rescue, fire attack, and ventilation plus providing for firefighter accountability in a modest, one attack , and no rescue needed fire. A serious fire in a two-story residential building or a one- line fire story commercial or multi-story building would require at a minimum, an additional 2-3 Engines, an additional Truck and Battalion Chief, for upwards of 12 plus additional personnel. A typical auto accident requiring multiple patient extrication or other specialty rescue incidents will require a minimum of 10 firefighters plus the battalion chief for accountability and control. Staffing in the Study Area As stated in the overview chart on page 3 of this report and in the individual agency background sections, there are only two career firefighters on duty each day on each engine. Thus 2 personnel times 5 engines means that the area?s minimum daily staffing is 10 firefighters. Many of the agencies spend paid-call part-time dollars to use volunteers on a scheduled basis. this is true 100 percent of the 24/7/365 day clock, then five more firefighters are Assuming delivered from the area?s first five units. However, this is not always the case. For the purpose of the following discussion, it must be understood that the minimum number of firefighters delivered is 10, it is occasionally 12 or so, and sometimes as high as 15. When the volunteer (reserve) firefighter programs are fully staffed, additional personnel can be dispatched from home to come to the station and bring any necessary equipment and themselves to the scene of the emergency. 15 November 8, 2005 Volunteer History and Modern Issues There are significant socio-economic changes in society coupled with increasing safety training regulations for all types of firefighters that are lowering the numbers of volunteers across the country. The reasons for this are not unique to the study area and are placing pressure on small town volunteer systems across the state and nation: Economic pressures result in more two-income families and less time to volunteer. In a commuter economy, more jobs are clustered in metropolitan and dense suburban areas. Areas like the Pismo Beach coastline increasingly have residents that work elsewhere. Due to the growth in society of complex systems and technology, the fire service was given more missions, like emergency medical services, hazardous materials and specialty rescue. This dramatically increased the training hours for volunteers, causing many to drop out as the time commitments became unbearable. Early in this decade, due to rising firefighter injuries and deaths, especially in the volunteer ranks, more safety regulations and training minimums were placed on all firefighters. There is a significant time commitment for ?true? volunteers that are serving for love of community, and to give something back. Across the fire service, volunteer programs have been changing and adapting to a different model. The current model understands the commitment needed, and usually includes two types of volunteers: the first is the usual community based person; the second is a younger person whom desires to be a career firefighter. While the younger person is going through community college fire science classes, after obtaining basic firefighter certification, they work ?part-time? for s shift stipend or for an hourly wage, without benefits. These personnel are used successfully to increase daily station staffing and instead of being called even ?reserve? firefighters, they are more typically called ?paid-call? firefighters. They do not need to live in the community they serve, as they are not needed as often to respond from home with quick travel times. Community based volunteers can be used from home for major emergencies, within their limited training as they gain certifications and experience. Once they meet state minimums, they also can be used for per diem shifts. The departments in this study area all understand the above dynamics and already are recruiting and using young, fire service career oriented paid-call firefighters. All the departments in the study have varying head counts and degrees of success in recruiting. Sometimes the recruiting success depends on the reputation of how well the department trains, equips and uses its reserves. Staffing Discussion As stated earlier in this section, national norms are that 14-15 or so firefighters including an incident commander are needed at serious building fires if the expected outcome is to contain the fire to the room of origin and to be able to simultaneously and safely perform critical tasks. The reason for this is that the clock is still running on the problem after arrival, and too few firefighters on-scene will mean the fire can still grow faster than the efforts to contain it. 16 November 8, 2005 Here, for example, is a critical task time study from a full career department that can get this many firefighters on the fireground within 10 minutes of the 911 call being received. Notice the time to complete critical events shown in yellow, after arrival, on this event even with this many firefighters dispatched. The scenario was a two-story, single-family dwelling fire, with approximately 500 square feet of fire involvement. No condition existed to override the OSHA 2-in-2-out safety requirement: Time Since Time From Structure Fire Incident Tasks Task Time Arrival911 Call st 1 Engine/ Medic on scene (hydrant) 6:09 Report on Conditions :15:156:24 st Hydrant Line laid by 1 in Engine :46:466:55 nd 2 Engine/BC on scene - assigned F/F 7:16 Rescue/Command Smoke Blower at front door 1:521:528:01 Size-Up, walk around completed 2:062:068:15 BC Assumes Command 2:071:008:16 Pre-connected hose line to door 3:273:279:36 (charged) RIC established and Accountability at 3:542:4710:03 CMD Post Truck on scene - assigned ventilation 10:36 Utilities secured 4:453:3810:54 Attack Line Advanced - ?Interior? 4:494:4910:58 Search Group established - enters 4:494:4910:58 (medic team) RIC - Back up line pulled - charged 5:585:5812:07 rd 3 Engine on scene - assigned RIC 12:08 support st 1 ladder to roof 6:171:5012:16 rd 3 Engine at back up line - Officer 6:501:0912:59 checks building Truck crew to roof 7:373:1013:46 Ventilation complete 8:294:0214:38 Primary Search - ?All Clear? 8:458:4514:54 17 November 8, 2005 Time Since Time From Structure Fire Incident Tasks Task Time Arrival911 Call Fire found and contained - loss 10:0810:0816:17 stopped Truck crew assigned - Salvage 5:4310:1016:19 Secondary Search completed 10:5410:5417:03 Incident Control - clock stopped 10:2410:5917:08 15 Total Personnel Needed: The time to complete the above tasks with even ten (10) firefighters on-scene from all four area departments will be so much longer, that the fire will destroy the dwelling. With substantially only 2 or 3 responders initially from each agency and maybe some volunteers from home by about minute 12-15, the fire will destroy the dwelling if the first 2-3 firefighters are forced to conduct a rescue. Limited staffing can only do one thing safely at a time: rescue comes first, followed by limiting the fire spread to adjoining buildings first if they are immediately threatened, followed by firefighting in the involved building. Study Area Staffing Finding Based on the agencies small size, some newer buildings and risk control measures such as fire sprinklers, the individual agencies in this study do not need, nor will ever be large enough to likely support a fire department that can deliver 12-15 firefighters in 10 minutes or less from the time the 911 call is received, unless the communities substantially redirect existing revenue or develop new revenue sources. What they do need is an ?incipient? or small fire, fire department. An agency this size can control small fires on arrival and handle basic, one or two patient medical emergencies without mutual aid help. The study area departments can and do receive mutual aid responses from the CDF/County Fire Department stations to the north and south, such as the Avila Beach station that responds down into Pismo Beach. While this staffing helps on serious fires, it in many cases is too far for effective primary response. What a small department can?t do is to control a fire that is serious at the time it is discovered, handle multiple medical patients on one emergency, perform challenging technical rescues, or handle two or more calls for service at once. A small town, incipient fire, fire department, is not an all-risk, handle everything itself agency. Unfortunately, when the public sees a fire station, they frequently do not understand that the one fire engine is minimally staffed and not backed-up by others in the community. A two-person duty crew does not make a fully capable suburban level fire department. Thus the study area agencies will for the foreseeable future need to have a ?combination? system of a small career staff on-duty, so that even if no volunteers or mutual aid resources are available, the single crew can handle a simple emergency, or keep the public from further injury while mutual aid or the volunteers can respond. 18 November 8, 2005 What makes a sub-regional consolidation so important to this study area is that given the above discussion, no one agency can field enough firefighters, quickly enough to handle moderately serious fires. But together they can deliver 12-15 firefighters in about 12 minutes or less, which If is comparable to a single, suburban fire department. these firefighters were trained, equipped would be as effective as a small suburban fire and commanded as one entity, they department. The old saying is true in this region, there is strength in numbers. SC TATIONONFIGURATIONS As has been noted, the study area is served by five fire stations. For this consolidation study, an abbreviated method to see the coverage areas of the fire stations is to plot their locations and the size of the first-due coverage area, as desired by the Insurance Service Office (ISO). In a full Standards of Coverage analysis, the actual travel time of the fire unit over the street network would be plotted, as well as the time over distance coverage of multiple units. Thus for the location of fire stations, there are two measures: Distribution ? the spreading out or spacing of first-due fire units to stop routine emergencies. Concentration ? the clustering of fire stations close enough together so that building fires can receive enough resources from multiple fire stations quickly Effective Response Force enough. This is known as the or commonly the ?First ? Alarm Assignment? the collection of a sufficient number of firefighter?s on- scene delivered within the concentration time goal to stop the escalation of the problem. Map #1 ? Station Location This is a reference map for the others. It shows the agency limits, existing streets, and fire station locations. This map also serves to show how the study area deployment system is isolated somewhat from the rest of the county by the few roads into the coastal plain and the ocean itself. Maps #2-7 ? Insurance Service Office Coverage Areas ? First-due Units The Insurance Service Office (ISO) would like to see fire engines cover a 1.5 mile driving distance primary coverage area, and that secondary units, and or truck companies cover a ?multiple engines? area of 2.5 miles travel distance. Map #2 shows all the 1.5-mile coverage zones for all the fire stations in the study. Maps #3-7 show the individual station area coverage?s. It is apparent that most all of each jurisdiction is receiving primary fire station coverage. This result also indicates that almost all the existing fire stations are well located. The exception is the area that will be improved when Pismo Beach relocates Station #64 to Ventana and James Way. Map #2a and 4a display the improved coverage from the re-located Pismo Beach Station #64. All of southeast Pismo Beach is now covered, which is appropriate given the higher building densities and commercial growth in this area. The re-location does slightly undercover an area in central Pismo Beach, but this is a small area and will be covered within the next 30-60 seconds 19 November 8, 2005 of travel time. The sphere of influence of Pismo Beach extends to the east from the proposed new fire station 64 location. As the area annexes and develops it should be well served from the new station location reducing the necessity of funding and staffing three fire stations in Pismo Beach. Northeast North Arroyo Grande will never have perfect coverage within 1.5 miles driving distance, but the development is not intense in this area and the area is covered within 2.5 miles of one or more fire stations (especially with the relocated Pismo Beach Station 64) which is acceptable second-due unit coverage under the ISO guidelines. Map #8 ? Insurance Service Office Coverage Multiple Unit Coverage This map displays the 2.5-mile area coverage that indicates where an effective first alarm is received. At a minimum in the study area, a working building fire needs 3-engines and the Ladder Truck from Arroyo Grande. As one would expect with Grover Beach being the ?middle city? in the stretch of coastline, it receives the most multiple unit coverage ranging from 2 to 4 units. The rest of the communities receive 1 to 2-unit coverage in 2.5 miles from a fire station. Map #8a shows the impact of re-locating Pismo Beach Station #64 southerly. The concentration density improves as would be expected in Grover Beach and now extends into Arroyo Grande. This station re-location does shrink the area in Pismo Beach covered by a second-due unit, but the impact of the County Fire Avila Beach Station into northern Pismo Beachis not shown in this exhibit. Given the long rectangular nature of Pismo Beach and the geographic isolation of Oceano and Arroyo Grande, there will not be effective multiple unit coverage in these areas. Nor is adding more stations cost effective for such a small area and number of calls for service, other than the planned, positive relocation of the Bello Street Fire Station in Pismo Beach. This is why emphasis must be placed on fire prevention and the use of automatic fire sprinklers. Map #9 ? Insurance Service Office Coverage Areas ? Ladder Truck Coverage Displayed here is just the 2.5-mile coverage area of the Ladder Truck from Arroyo Grande. While the Insurance Service Office (ISO) wants ladder truck coverage on 2.5 mile spacing in metropolitan and high suburban areas, the reality is that in the study area, structure fires are low in quantity and the truck can most likely get into northern Pismo Beach in a reasonable amount of time. Map #9a models the truck coverage from the re-located Pismo Beach Station #64. It is very good across the commercial areas of the three cities. While not modeled, the truck coverage from the Grover Beach station would also be very good. The point here is that IF the agencies were to share in the cost of replacing the Arroyo Grande Ladder Truck, a best fit location for most of the commercial areas would be either Grover Beach or Pismo Beach Station #64. Map #10 ? 11 Incident Locations in Pismo Beach This map series shows the geographic locations of all incidents that occurred in the City in 2004 and the first half of 2005. It is apparent that most all neighborhoods request some type of 20 November 8, 2005 emergency service. More calls are ?clustered? downtown near the pier as well near hotels, the freeway area and homes in Shell Beach. While data is not available for Citygate to judge the need for the Shell Beach station to be operational back in 2001 when the CDF contract study was underway, these maps combined with the limited reach of the Bello Street station as shown on its 1.5 mile coverage map, definitely indicates that today, the City needs to staff and operate the Shell Beach Station to have equity of first-due fire unit coverage Citywide. Study Area Map Findings Citygate finds that the stations in the study area are all needed and appropriately located. None can be closed due to a consolidation without equity of coverage issue. While the single truck company can?t serve the entire study area with an ideal response time, it does serve a vast portion of the four agencies? commercial and retail areas in an effective response time with the remainder of the region still adequately served for most emergency events. 21 November 8, 2005 RCFSP ECOMMENDEDONSOLIDATED IRE ERVICES LAN OF VERVIEW INDINGS Given the analysis described above, Citygate?s experience with fire services and consolidations, we find: 1. The partner agencies in this study have a strong interdependence on each other and none will be able to afford, in the foreseeable future, an effective, separate fire department that can independently handle a building fire or major accident/medical emergency. 2. A reason for a consolidation between the four partners is not to close stations; most are well located and necessary, the exception being the Pismo Beach Bello Street Station. 3. None of the agencies has enough career firefighters on duty per day to independently combat a serious fire and keep it from substantially destroying the building of origin. 4. All of the agencies do and will continue for the foreseeable future to depend on volunteer (reserve or paid-call) firefighters to make up the additional staffing necessary. 5. All of the agencies from time to time have difficulty in recruiting, maintaining and scheduling reserve firefighters. 6. None of the agencies has an effective incident command chief system, with depth for serious emergencies, vacation or sick leave relief. The CDF system in Pismo Beach comes the closest, but still depends on chiefs covering after hour?s emergencies from home, and the back-up chiefs are not residents in Pismo Beach. 7. All the agencies, except Pismo Beach, have weak fire prevention and disaster plan services. 8. All of the agencies recruit, train and equip volunteer firefighters, but do so in some competition with each other for a limited pool of talent. They also duplicate efforts in training. As the cost of local housing rises, the quantity of resident based volunteers will shrink, causing more dependence on paid-call firefighters that live elsewhere. 9. There are too many dispatch centers, which slows initial response times, and more importantly, slows coordination during major, multiple agency emergencies. 10. Since the agencies already respond jointly to serious fires and other emergencies, they would be more effective and cost-efficient if they did it as one agency. Fire Combat operations are very much like the military or large team sports such as football, where the most effective team is the one that has common leadership, standard procedures, and trains together and is equipped the same. Although small agencies can come together and assist each other and the differences will not be noticed on a small fire, when a major fire threatens an entire building, when lives are threatened, and seconds count, the inefficiencies of being separate matter. will 22 November 8, 2005 OR VERALL ECOMMENDATIONS Given the above ten findings, Citygate feels the most cost-effective fire services, giving the highest level of local operations knowledge, is to have one consolidated fire agency. Given that a consolidation effort won?t reduce or add fire stations in the study area, we make the following recommendations in the areas of overhead and support services: MT ANAGEMENT EAM 1. There needs to be one Fire Chief that is accountable to the agency elected officials via the Executive Managers. 2. The Department needs competent, certified incident commanders on a guaranteed 24/7/365 basis. This is most economically done by deploying three 24-hour shift based Battalion Chiefs. 3. The department needs a technically competent Fire Marshal to handle pre- construction subdivision planning reviews, building construction plan review, some inspections and manage fire company inspection programs. 4. This is a minimum team of five chief officers that can back each other up to maintain their always being at least one in the department, 24/7/365. 5. The Chiefs will need at least two Administrative Assistant positions to handle office support and small fiscal functions. The staffing above can lead, train and supervise a five-engine department across the 12 square mile, 4-agency area. Ideally, as growth in finances permits, the department should have a dedicated training officer and an additional fire inspector position. However, the partner agencies need to understand that a small shared management team or one Fire Chief, can?t attend every routine meeting in four organizations. There will have to be sharing, prioritization and delegation to other management team members to accommodate the volume of meeting requests. FD IREEPLOYMENT Staffing A joint department would merge the volunteer program and establish two components: 1. An entry tier for community based volunteers and high school and community college students exploring careers. As their training grows, they can accept more responsibilities. However, not all of these entry-level volunteers will have the certifications to perform interior firefighting, serious technical rescues or advanced emergency medical techniques. nd 2. A journey level 2 tier for California Certified Firefighter I and II?s, with Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) certification. Many have advanced certifications and can handle interior firefighting and technical rescues as part of a team. These personnel do not need to live in the immediate area. They are the paid-call firefighters whom are scheduled to supplement career station staffing. They are almost all people whom 23 November 8, 2005 are actively trying to get into the career fire service. As such, they will not become long term, without-benefits part-time employees. Stations Other than Pismo Beach continuing its planned station re-construction and one re-location, plus Oceano doing advance planning to ensure an adequate benefit fee is collected, there are no immediate station issues. Equipment Again as with stations, there are no immediate fire apparatus issues. The separate agencies can continue to save and plan for apparatus replacements. The one joint issue to plan for and cost share would be the replacement of Arroyo Grande?s Ladder truck with a modern unit meeting all the partners? needs. OGSSS VERALL OVERNANCE AND TRUCTURE OF HARED ERVICES There are several ways to operate shared fire services, all have their pros and cons and cost efficiencies. In brief, the more common are: Independent Fire Districts, which would require LAFCO agreement and be voted with 2/3rds local voter approval for a new tax rate. These are very difficult to set up new, and can have a cost heavy overhead and support structure and not be accountable to the local elected officials. Basically an all new independent agency on top of the existing four. Dependent Fire Districts usually operated under County Boards of Supervisors. Many of the drawbacks noted above to the independent fire districts apply. Joint Powers Authorities. California law allows an almost infinite variety of shared services between governmental agencies. The four partners could create anything they want from broad to limited powers. Contract for services, which is what Arroyo Grande and Grover Beach are doing currently by contracting for Fire Chief and Training Officer functions. There are two main types of fire consolidations: Full Functional In a full consolidation there is one budget, workforce, labor agreement and payroll. In a functional or contract relationship, the employee groups remain separate. While The Communities could construct a functional consolidation to only share fire management and support services, it would not be as time or cost effective. With a small number of fire managers, it would be very time consuming and possibly expensive to manage four different workforces, labor agreements, plus four agencies finance and personnel practices and respond on a daily basis to 4 City/General Managers and 4 elected councils/boards. This might work for two small agencies or for a very large one, but with only five fire stations involved, Citygate feels it is so complicated that it will create on on-going series of distracting problems and require so 24 November 8, 2005 much of the fire management?s time that it will sharply curtail the time they have to manage and train the line personnel. Citygate believes the best fit of the options above, for the four partner agencies would be a Full . Consolidation using a Limited Joint Powers Authority (JPA) This recommendation is due to the small size of the partners, the need for local oversight, while maintaining cost sensitivity. A JPA would allow a common department and command team, while using one the cities? support services functions (such as finance and personnel departments) to reduce overhead costs. The Board could have limited powers, requiring the co- ratification of each annual budget by all the full partner agency elected officials. Thus the JPA Board of Directors would be the fire ?sub-committee? of the full set of elected officials. The four agency Executive Managers would jointly appoint the Fire Chief and on an annual or every two-year rotation, exercise direct oversight on major fiscal and personnel issues for the JPA Board. The JPA would have two choices for the employment of the firefighters ? they could become JPA personnel, or one existing agency could employ them, providing payroll and personnel services, reimbursed by the other partners. This decision is both one of best fit given the existing City abilities to support the Fire JPA, as well as the State Retirement System requirements. The only way to know the exact costs would be to perform a retirement system actuarial analysis to see which is less expensive, starting a new retirement contract with the JPA, or having one existing City retirement contract absorb the firefighters. The Fire Chief and Joint Executive Directors (City Managers and CSD Manager) would set the annual budget and objectives. The JPA Board would consider it and recommend co-ratification by each of the partner agencies. The JPA Board could work on the consensus model, where there would be four JPA Board members, one per agency. It would take a 3/4ths vote to advance the budget and goals for full ratification. If that was not possible, staff and the Board would have to work the issue to consensus. In this model there is equal representation, and one agency does not get more votes based on its population size or some other weighted metric. Budget expenses could be shared based on one of the formulas discussed in the fiscal section of this report. Each agency could continue to separately own, fund, repair and replace its capital assets like fire stations and fire apparatus, under the Fire Department?s common specifications. Phasing of Plan ? In Priority Order The following are the necessary next steps in order of cost and complexity. If agreement is not reached at any one level, the consolidation effort stops. 1. Establish an implementation committee of elected officials, agency executive management and Fire Chiefs to flesh out the JPA model and cost sharing formulas. 2. Obtain an independent CalPERS retirement system actuarial analysis of the most and cost effective employment relationship. a. Based on the retirement answer, determine who will contract for health benefits, at what cost. 25 November 8, 2005 3. Using closely estimated retirement and health care costs, test the cost share formulas for fairness and adjust as needed. 4. Bargain with the affected employees to obtain one labor agreement. draft 5. Draft the JPA agreement, powers and voting rules document. 6. Draft a detailed implementation plan. 7. Obtain the approval from all agencies for the JPA Agreement, cost share formulas, labor agreement and implementation schedule. 8. Begin phased implementation: a. Hire/select the Fire Chief. b. Hire/select the other management positions. c. Transfer the employees to the new single payroll provider and implement the single labor agreement. i. As of the employee transfer date, implement a joint budget under the approved cost share formulas. 26 November 8, 2005 FDC INANCEESCRIPTION OF URRENT LSS EVEL OF TAFFING AND ERVICE Pismo Beach Presently, Pismo Beach contracts with the California Department of Forestry (CDF) ? San Luis Obispo County Fire Department for urban fire protection services, including basic emergency medical response and rescue by the responding engine companies. Statewide, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF) permits local government to contract with it for services. One option is to purchase year round staffing and CDF calls this option a Cooperative Fire Protection Agreement, often times referred to as a ?Schedule A agreement.? The second option is an ?Agreement so named after the county of origin. Under an Amador? Amador Agreement, Local Government shares the cost of staffing a fire station in the winter that CDF would otherwise close after the summer fire season. In this method, Local Government is able to maintain year round staffing at a much lower cost. The Bello Street Station is staffed around the clock (24/7) by a full-time Fire Captain and full- time Fire Engineer (a total of 6 CDF staff are required to provide this level of coverage) and a Reserve (paid-call) Fire Fighter, when a reserve is available. As a result, the engine company from the Bello Street Station usually responds to emergencies with a complement of 3 fire personnel on board. The staffing for this station is provided under a CDF Schedule ?A? contract. The Shell Beach Station is staffed during the Fire Season (May 15 - November 15) around the clock, or 24/7 by a full-time Fire Captain and 2 full-time Fire Fighters. Paid-call Fire Fighters are used infrequently for short periods of time when necessary to keep the staffing at this level during the fire season and on-call for larger emergencies. The cost to the City during this fire season period is for the difference in pay between a Fire Apparatus Engineer (FAE) and a Fire Captain. The Shell Beach Station is staffed during the Non-Fire Season (November 16 - May 14) 24/7 by a full-time Fire Captain and 1 full-time Firefighter (while this requires 6 CDF staff to provide this level of coverage, the City only pays for 2 of the 6 positions). Paid-call Fire Fighters are used infrequently for short periods of time when necessary to keep the staffing at this level and on-call for larger emergencies. The City only pays for 2 of the 6 required CDF positions because CDF has chosen to reassign surplus staff available during the Non-Fire Season to the Shell Beach Station at no cost to the City. In addition to the station staffing, CDF: Provides Battalion Chief coverage 24/7/365; Responds to greater alarm or complex incidents with a Division Chief or higher officer; Provides Dispatch Services, Fire Prevention inspections, fire investigations, plus manages the lifeguard, training, fleet management and weed abatement programs; Provides other Administrative Services such as medical, workers compensation, labor relations, recruitment-testing-selection and training, supervision and mutual aid coordination. 27 November 8, 2005 Pismo Beach Cost of Current Level of Service The CDF Year round costs for the Bello Street Station (Schedule A) and the Amador Agreement (Shell Beach) cost for FY 05-06 is estimated at a not to exceed level of $1,307,641. Based on CDF salary and benefit schedules, this contract cost will increase to $1,358,181 for the coming FY 06-07 fiscal year. Historically, the actual cost has been less than the contract amount because CDF only charges the actual cost incurred to provide contract services. Citygate has reviewed in detail all of the cost information and formulas provided by CDF and concurs that the calculation and cost fairly represents the CDF schedule A and Amador costs. Pismo Beach Additional Levels of Service Under the CDF Contract The City has expressed interest in higher levels of service that would provide progressively higher levels of service regarding the nature of staffing at the Bello Street and Shell Beach Stations. Each of these alternatives and the associated FY 2006-07 costs are described below: rd Alternative 1: Add a 3 full-time career firefighter at the Bello Station: $222,222. While the City?s present intent is to operate the Bello Station with a three-person engine company, this is staffed with two full-time career employees and one Reserve paid-call firefighter. Because the City attempts to manage reserve employee hours so that they individually remain below the threshold that would require the City to include them in the PERS retirement system, and because of the number of reserve firefighters available, it is not always possible to staff this station 24/7 with a three-person engine company. If the City wants to guarantee that there is a three-person engine company operating out of the Bello Street Station, then it would amend the CDF contract to provide for 2 additional full-time positions budgeted at that station. With this position and the reserve firefighters, when available, a three to four-person engine company would operate from this station. When combined with a minimum 2 per person engine company response from the Shell Beach Station, Pismo Beach could have a combined force of 5-6 people at a large emergency, which is sufficient to begin to get control of a fire and prevent its spread until more companies respond from neighboring agencies, or 5-6 personnel are sufficient to handle modest auto accidents requiring extrication. This total FY 2006-07 cost of $1,580,403 would be an increase of $222,222 per year over the present contracted level of service. Alternative 2: Add Engine Company Paramedics to service at the Bello Street Station: $277,791. Adding additional levels of service to the above alternative increases the annual cost to $1,635,972. This is $277,791 over the cost of the current level of service. The added cost provides paramedic pay for three full-time staff at the Bello Street Station and guarantees one paramedic on duty at all times. Alternative 3: Add Full-time Schedule ?A? staffing at both Bello Street and Shell Beach $461,666 Stations: $ The Shell Beach Station costs during the Fire Season are largely paid by CDF because this station is staffed with its primary function being to support County Fire Department wide Wildland Fire response. This would normally require, under strict contract terms, for the station to be empty during such responses or staffed with on-call reserves from CDF or City of Pismo Beach. As noted earlier, CDF has chosen as a matter of policy and at no added cost to Pismo 28 November 8, 2005 Beach, to backfill this station more frequently and sooner when the primary engine is on response to an emergency. This policy has gradually increased since the 2002 fire season up to the present policy of a more aggressive move and cover policy. During the remaining six months (the Non-Fire Season), the station is staffed by a combination of CDF firefighters for which the City pays and additional CDF staff for which the City does not pay. Nevertheless, if the City wants to guarantee that the station will be covered by full-time paid fire staff during the Fire Season with no concern that the staff might be assigned elsewhere on a temporary basis, then the City could contract for a full Schedule ?A? level of service at both the Bello Street and the Shell Beach Stations. This will cost the City in FY 2006-07 - $1,819,847, or an increase of $461,666 per year over the cost of the current level of service. Summary of Additional Levels of Service Full Schedule Added FT at ALS at Bello + A at Bello and Bellothe Added FT Current Level Shell Beach Alternative 1 Alternative 2 Alternative 3 FY 06-07 Cost $1,358,181$1,580,403$1,635,972$1,819,847 Incremental Added Cost Compared to $222,222$277,791$461,666 Current Level of Service There are obviously other alternatives that are permutations of the above three choices. For instance, if the City were only interesting in upgrading the current level of service to include ALS capability, but with no additional staffing, the cost would be and additional $55,569 per year over the current level of service cost of $1,358,181. The first question the City might answer is ?what can it afford? and then explore what alternative choices fit within those cost parameters. Revert to a Pismo City Operated Fire Department During the research regarding consolidation of fire services in the region, the alternative of Pismo Beach reverting to its own City operated fire department was investigated. It was observed by some individuals interviewed in our research that this might save the City money as a possible alternative to potential cost savings through consolidation. Citygate has reviewed the history of the Pismo Beach fire services and note that in the FY 2001 budget the City had anticipated only operating the Bello Street Station with full-time staff. The total full-time Sworn Staff would have been 7: 1 Fire Chief, 3 Captains and 3 Engineers. This is only enough to staff a two-person engine company 24/7 on a 56 hour work schedule, which is the schedule used by the City at the time. The expected annual cost of that level of fire service was $1,096,144. This staffing provided no chief officer back up to the Fire Chief, no fire prevention service other than what could be provided by the two-person engine company on duty, and meant that the City fire personnel could not enter a burning building until another agency or Pismo Reserves arrived and 29 November 8, 2005 2-3 personnel could not reliably provide major accident EMS service or extrication without the arrival of an ambulance or other agency. Adjusting this staffing by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) from 2001 through the projected beginning of FY 2006-07, the City would be paying an estimated $1,240,000 per year for this level of serviced compared to the $1,731,396 that it would cost for the CDF contract and other City Fire O & M expenses to operate the Bello Street Station and the Shell Beach Station, both the latter under an Amador contract. It should be noted that since the 2001 inception of the CDF contract, the statewide CDF firefighters union brokered a favorable contract, which by its end in June 2006 will have raised CDF pay and benefits to near Bay Area and urban Southern California levels. While many small cities and rural counties in 2005 are struggling with these increases, what keeps the CDF cost structure still effective is the continued use of the 72-hour work week and the large economies of scale that its headquarters and support expenses are spread across. As a side note, most, if not all suburban and metropolitan agencies use the 56-hour work schedule, and this is one of the major, if not first reasons cited by suburban firefighters as to why they do not want their agencies to contract for service with CDF. Citygate also estimated the cost the City would incur if it reverted to its own fire department and operated both the Bello Street and Shell Beach Stations at the same level of service as being provided under the present CDF contract.This would require the following staffing assumptions: Bello Station 3Captains 3Engineers Shell Beach 3Captains 3Engineers Fire Chief 1 Asst Fire Chief 1 Fire Prevention .5 Clerical1 DispatchPoliceDepartment It is also assumed that the City would operate on a 56-hour work week schedule, as it had done prior to the CDF contract, and utilize Reserve paid-call firefighters to create three-person engine companies at the Bello station when possible and to use paid-call firefighters to fill in for vacation and sick leave. This latter will be necessary because it requires the equivalent of approximately one additional staff position for each 6 to guarantee staffing on a two-person engine company 24/7. Salaries and benefits were calculated two ways using the above base assumptions. The first is that salaries will be the same as Arroyo Grande has risen to today. Then we applied two different assumptions for calculating the cost of benefits, the first is to use the rate calculated by the Pismo Beach City Finance Department assuming that benefit costs would be roughly the 30 November 8, 2005 same as the Pismo Beach Police Department. The second is to recognize that CalPERS retirement costs can be substantially different for a new Fire Department and so we used instead the benefit rates reported in our study by the City of Arroyo Grande. The result was that the estimated cost of a Pismo Beach City Fire Department for FY 2006-07 would be: Alternative Assumption A: Arroyo Grande Salaries and Pismo Beach City supplied Benefit Rates: $1,944,639. Alternative Assumption B: Arroyo Grande Salaries and Arroyo Grande Benefit Rates: $2,005,560. Summary Comparison of CDF Contract Alternatives with a Pismo Fire Department Alternative Combining the cost information from the above sections, including Alternatives 1-3 to upgrade the current CDF level of service, provides the following comparison of anticipated FY 2006-07 costs for various alternative fire service configurations: CDF: CDF: ALS CDF: Full City Dept:City Dept: Added FT at Bello + Schedule A CDF: the Added at Bello and at Bello AlternativeAlternative CurrentFTShell Beach Assumption Assumption LevelAlternativeAlternative Alternative AB 23 1 FY 06-07 $1,358,181$1,580,403$1,635,972$1,819,847$1,944,639$2,069,964 Cost 31 November 8, 2005 RCC EGIONAL OSTS OF ONSOLIDATION There are two approaches to consolidation, and each represents a progressively greater degree of consolidation: The first approach is consolidation of administrative and supervisory staff through a Joint Powers Authority (JPA), with each agency retaining its own line employees, salary and benefit level determination and ownership of its own equipment. The second is a full consolidation that merges all of the fire services of Pismo Beach, Arroyo Grande, Grover Beach and the Oceano CSD into a single fire department either through the formation of a fire district with a separate governing board or through a JPA that may use one of the four agencies as the nominal employer and operator of the fire services, but under contract to the JPA to provide fire service to the region. The fiscal implications of each of these alternatives are discussed and illustrated below. CASS ONSOLIDATION OF DMINISTRATIVE AND UPERVISORY TAFF While ultimately a consolidated fire department will provide a more effectively coordinated fire service for the region, an interim step is possible if the agencies determine they have inadequate revenue to support their share of a consolidated fire service. This interim step, described elsewhere in this report, is the creation of a single ?Headquarters Function? to manage and coordinate the line fire service retained by each agency. Presently, the Headquarters function is provided by each of the agencies as follows: ArroyoGroverOceano Pismo Beach Total GrandeBeachCSD Fire Chief 1Part-Time CDF Shared 1+ Div/Battalion Chief CDF Shared 1 Training .5CDF Region .5 Officer/Admin Capt Fire Prevention 1 Officer Clerical1113 As discussed elsewhere in this report, this number of chief officers is inadequate to insure that a chief officer as incident commander is available at major emergencies. The norm currently is for either the first-in captain or the captain from the agency in which the emergency is occurring to assume the role of incident commander. This both reduces the number of personnel available to ?work an incident,? and also does not provide an incident commander with the broad experience and training necessary to reliably direct a large multi-agency response team on an emergency. As a result Citygate has recommended a ?Headquarters Function? for a consolidated headquarters team consisting of: 32 November 8, 2005 Sworn Staff 1 Fire Chief 1 Assistant Fire Chief/Training Officer 3 Battalion Chiefs Non-Sworn Staff 2 Clerical 1 Fire Prevention Officer It is difficult to project the cost of benefits for a ?Headquarters Function? because we cannot know the actuarial impact of creating this work force on PERS Retirement rates either as a ?stand-alone? unit or nominally on the payroll of one of the agencies. There also is a disparity in medical benefit contributions between the agencies. As a result, in order to provide a sense of scale, we have below compared the ?salary only? cost of the current level of service at FY 05-06 rates and the consolidated ?Headquarter Function,? using the same rates. CDF AdminTotal AsstFire BattalionTrainingcharge Annual Fire Chief ClericalPrevention Fire ChiefOfficer toSalary ChiefOfficer PismoCost Beach Current (1)100,536 (3) Level of 25,87247,220109,070422,350 119,988 (1) 19,664 Service Consolidated(3)(2) 100,53680,42851,62447,220580,639 Headquarters217,15583,676 Note: The Fire Chief positions are the Arroyo Grande full-time rate and the Oceano part-time (at recommended FY 05-06 rates) Note: The Clerical Current Level of Service is 3 positions (Arroyo Grande, Grover Beach and Pismo Beach) while the Consolidated Headquarters uses the salaries of Arroyo Grande and Grover Beach for the 2 positions included here. If we add an estimated 5 percent estimated overtime earnings by the Non Sworn staff and 10 percent for the Battalion Chief and Training Officer, include benefits at the rates reported by plus Arroyo Grande and add 20 percent for estimated administrative supplies and materials, then the comparison becomes: Current Level of Service: $686,078 Consolidated Headquarters: $1,185,699 The reason the consolidated cost is so much higher than the current level of service, is that consolidation includes 3 Battalion Chief positions, which is a service level improvement that Citygate considers to be extremely important in order to provide a Chief Officer as Incident Commander on larger scale emergency responses. 33 November 8, 2005 FC ULLONSOLIDATION Full consolidation will entail establishing the Consolidated Headquarters Function described above and then incorporating and funding the current fire stations at their current staffing levels and using volunteers in approximately the same manner as at present. As background to this discussion and as a base line against which to measure the cost of consolidation, the table below illustrates the amount expended by each of the four agencies for fire services in Fiscal Year 2004-05, the last year for which finalized expenditure data was available. To make costs comparable, the Pismo Beach costs include not only the CDF contract but also separately expended fire service costs in the Pismo Beach budget. Fire Service Expenditures ArroyoGroverOceano Pismo Beach Total GrandeBeachCSD FY 2004-05 $1,199,839$783,690497,310$1,609,770$4,090,609 Per Capita $72.55$59.24$65.44$186.23$88.91 Another important piece of background information is the salary and benefit levels of sworn personnel in each agency summarized below: Monthly Salaries Pismo ArroyoGroverOceanoPismo Salary GrandeBeachCSDBeach/CDF Schedule Fire Chief 8,378Part-Time 8,460 Battalion Chief Captain5,6114,3023,5394,4325,988 Training4,302 Officer Engineer4,7203,4082,8043,8494,914 Firefighter2,837 34 November 8, 2005 Major Fire Dept. Benefits Arroyo Grande Grover Beach Oceano CSD Pismo Beach ½ Salary @ age Retirement 3% @ age 55 PERSN/A CDF 55 $267.25- City pays 694.86/employee employee plus a formula Medical and premium plus increase each $575/mo N/A CDF $275-425 mo Life Insurance year since 2003 for dependents + Dental, Vision + Life Ins. and Life Ins. Formula increase in City Retiree Medical NoneNoneN/A CDF contribution each year With the Headquarters Function costing an estimated annual $1,185,699 in current FY 05-06 dollars, we will need to add the annual cost of operating the fire stations and equipment. The present budgeted staffing for each agency is as follows: Number of Sworn Fire Personnel ArroyoGroverOceanoPismo Total GrandeBeachCSDBeach Captain332614 Engineer332614 Volunteer & PT$132,219$85,900$212,481$108,090$538,690 Budget(est.) Note:Pismo Beach staffing is the number required if the City establishes its own Fire Department and operates each of its two stations full-time. In developing an estimated cost for operating the 5 fire stations under a single budget and operating authority such as a Fire District or Joint Powers Authority, we are using the following assumptions: Arroyo Grande Salary and Benefit rates, which are near market rates based on recent Pismo Beach salary surveys. Staffing at Oceano will need to be increased to 3 Captains and 3 Engineers in order to provide the same level of coverage at a 56-hour work week, which is the work schedule followed by Grover Beach and Arroyo Grande and the schedule assumed for Pismo Beach. Oceano currently assigns its 4 personnel on a 56-hour work week, but can?t maintain two personnel per day without a total of six. 35 November 8, 2005 Applying a 25 percent addition to cover materials, supplies and contracted services for the fire suppression function. This percentage is near the average of the three agencies with their own fire departments and approximately that seen in other Fire Departments by Citygate. The percentage will rise and fall somewhat each year based on the extent of ?capital items? purchased, but 25 percent is a good average to use on a long term perspective. We are not including the cost of depreciating stations, large equipment and vehicles; because currently the three agencies do not have fully amortized amounts set aside for replacement, but rather purchase and finance such equipment when the need arises with what funds they have set aside. By not including this cost in the estimated annual expense of a Fully Consolidated Fire Department, it provides an easier comparison for the Agencies between the current cost and anticipated cost of the fire service. The total dollars budgeted for volunteers and paid-call staff hours and training by the four agencies is included as a lump sum under the assumption that Reserve/Volunteer staffing will continue under the present policy. Dispatch costs have not been included, since the agencies have a range of choices, including using one of the existing Police Departments to dispatch fire services or contracting with CDF. The order of magnitude is not large compared to the total cost of a Fully Consolidated Fire Department. Pismo Beach currently pays approximately $30 per incident per year for these services from CDF and constitutes about 19.6 percent of the total calls for service in the four-agency area. Using these assumptions, the cost of a Fully Consolidated Fire Department covering the three cities and Oceano Community Services District would be as follows: Base Cost for a Fully Consolidated Fire Department Headquarters Function (including administration, $1,185,699 prevention and training) Suppression$4,812,500 TOTAL$5,998,199 Current cost as of June $4,090,609 30, 2005 The cost above is about $1,900,000 higher than the cities are currently paying for services. As noted in the list of assumptions above, costs such as vehicle amortization and dispatch are not included due to the wide range of choices the agencies have for providing for these needs and the resultant wide range of annual costs. The principal point made with these cost figures is that a fully consolidated Department will provide a higher level of service both in terms of coordination, training and incident command at the site of an emergency. But the higher cost is largely due to two elements: 36 November 8, 2005 Salaries and benefits in Grover Beach and Oceano are significantly lower than those in Arroyo Grande and Pismo Beach. A consolidated agency would need to use the salaries and benefits approximately the same as Arroyo Grande both because those costs are closer to market rate and necessary to attract and retain employees particularly in a market where housing costs are so high. Also it would be difficult to consolidate successfully and adopt lower rates that reduce the salary of Arroyo Grande personnel or freeze them at their current level for several years in order to operate with lower/below market salaries and benefits. The addition of three Battalion Chiefs provides much more highly trained and experienced incident command at emergency situations and permits the captains to perform their function directly supervising their own engine company rather than having to serve a dual role as incident commander. This happens frequently now because the Arroyo Grande Fire Chief and the part-time Oceano CSD Fire Chief are not always available due to competing job and task responsibilities. ACCAPA LLOCATION OF OSTS OF ONSOLIDATIONMONG THE ARTNER GENCIES If the agencies were to decide to pursue consolidation of either the Headquarters Function or a full consolidation, the costs would need to be allocated among the agencies by a formula that is perceived as fairly representing the degree of benefit received by the residents and property owners in each agency. There are three basic approaches and one formula using several factors that we include here for illustration purposes. And while any number of additional permutations could be negotiated among the parties, these approaches illustrate generally how the costs will impact each agency in comparison to the costs they are now incurring for fire services. Costs can be allocated by Population Calls for Service Assessed Valuation Amount of local ?consumption? i.e. # of firefighters in a city. The data relative to the first three approaches are included in the table below: Arroyo Grover Beach Oceano CSDPismo Beach Total Grande 7,600 Population16,537 (35.9%) 13,228 (28.8%)8,644 (18.8%) 46,009 (16.5%) Calls for 1,5471,131746834 4,258 Service(36.3%)(26.6%)(17.5%)(19.6%) Assessed$1,899,364,509$1,103,266,171$425,313,246$1,841,401,447 $5,269,345,373 Valuation(36.1%)(20. 9%) (8.1%)(34.9%) 37 November 8, 2005 The fourth approach would allocate costs of the Headquarters Function equally to each agency and then allocate the fire suppression costs based on the number of line personnel at stations in each City: Arroyo Grover Beach Oceano CSD Pismo Beach Grande Headquarters 25%25%25%25% Function LinePersonnel20%20%20%40% Based on each of these approaches costs discussed above in this report, the cost of the two alternative consolidation approaches would be as follows for each agency: Allocation of Headquarters Function Costs Below is the cost of the headquarters function. We are not able to compare this to the cost of headquarters activities in each agency because they do not budget in a way that permits accurately extracting these costs. Arroyo Grover Beach Oceano CSD Pismo Beach Grande Population$425,666$341,481$195,640$222,912 Calls for $430,784$314,942$207,734$232,239 Service Assessed Value $427,392$248,255$95,703$414,349 Allocation of Costs of Full Consolidation The cost of full consolidation for each agency is compared here to the cost that each in incurring as of June 30, 2005: Arroyo Grover Beach Oceano CSD Pismo Beach Grande Population$2,155,931$1,724,536$990,813$1,126,919 Calls for $2,179,242$1,593,228$1,050,882$1,174,847 Service Assessed Value $2,162,084$1,255,870$484,142$2,096,103 Consumption $1,258,925$1,258,925$1,258,925$2,221,424 Current Cost of $1,199,839$783,690$497,310$1,609,770 Fire Services 38 November 8, 2005 Clearly the cost allocation formula chosen results in a widely different cost allocation to each agency. There is no one right answer, but rather the agencies need to determine if the total cost of consolidation provides an equivalent added value of service to each agency and to the region and decide whether each agency can afford their share based on an agreed upon formula. Other alternatives exist to lower costs. Examples would be, for one or more agencies to change their staffing configuration. If Oceano or Grover Beach were to reduce the number of full-time staff and replace them with paid-call fire fighters, this would lower the overall cost and reduce their individual shares based on a formula allocating costs tied to the number of full-time sworn line fire personnel. Or, the agencies could not implement the shift Battalion Chiefs, but instead use three chiefs (Fire Chief, Asst, Chief and Fire Marshal) on a 40-hour week, covering after hours emergencies from home. This would result in a reduction of two Battalion Chiefs expensed out on page #36 above. Clearly the choices facing the four agencies is both one of choosing whether to consolidate, and if so what staffing configuration and cost allocation formula is fairly represents the benefit to each and is within their ability to pay. There is no one right answer. 39 November 8, 2005 . CITYCiftTf ftSS9ClftTfS. LLC ----- . II FOLSOM (SACRAMENTO), CA ~:(~Y ~'" ";,- (} <S'4iO 6-'<;'" ..c-. MANAGEMENT CONSULTANTS II . . FIRE DEPARTMENT CONSOLIDATION FEASIBILITY ANALYSIS FOR THE CU1nt OF P-t~1t)) -IBBAQII" C:A VOLUME 2 Rial NOVEMBER 2005 EI II . . . . 11""" II II II 705 Gold Lake Drive, Suite 100 III Folsom, CA 95630 -. IIIIlI C) - ( (916) 355-1385 or (800) 275-2764 Ilfl Fax: (916) 355-1390 S'I)(jn![.ft,~S~,~!fimJh """~ -~ ,-~ -- / . ~~\\ \) i~~ml} ~~ ::\;)'',. =--~)j ! lP.. ~~ cf7'~;/ r~-\--i ~\..!a11i ="" \.I I --;*d--r= fitiJ~2I ~~ ;';/ /7/ : -~ g;' I />'/ :. i _ / I I ~V~ ) . ''--., \\ \ :..-.---/'. t ---~~~ i..- \--. . "- ... -.... 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