The Valley Chronicle 227 E. Florida Ave. Hemet, CA 92545 Letter to Editor There is no justifiable reason for the City of Hemet to abandon its Fire Department in favor of contracting for fire and emergency medical services with the County of Riverside. Indeed, there are legal, service level, and economic reasons not to do so. First, and foremost, The Public Safety Coalition’s attorney has advised the City Council that they do not have the legal authority to rid unilaterally the city of its Fire Department, i.e., the issue of whether or not to keep the Fire Department has to be taken to the public for their vote and determination. It is the Coalition’s position that even if the law did not require a vote of the people, a decent respect for the will of the people of this town, would require their voice be heard through the ballot box. Secondly, given Cal Fire’s deployment procedures used throughout the State of California, the City of Hemet could be left at first without any fire coverage, and then, with minimal fire and emergency medical services when there are large conflagrations anywhere within Southern California. This has happened to San Jacinto, a CalFire contract city, multiple times within the last year and a half. This because it is CalFire’s operational policy to send the closest equipment available to a conflagration, and then backfill the vacated fire stations as soon as practicable. This is entirely appropriate when your main charge is fighting wildland fires alone. However, it is not acceptable when you have wildland fire responsibilities — and you have contracted with a local jurisdiction to provide suburban fire suppression and emergency medical response services at the same time. This is particularly true for Hemet with a large senior population, and where it takes on the order of forty minutes for backup equipment and personnel to travel from distant cities, as has been shown to be the case for San Jacinto. Thirdly, a detailed review of the two RFP response proposals by the City and The Public Safety Coalition has shown that the costs of both proposals are financially a wash. Further, it is the Coalition’s assertion that because, as a matter of law, the County can increase its administrative overhead costs to the city, the cost of Cal Fire’s contract will soon be higher than if Hemet had kept its Fire Department. As a matter of policy, it is never a good idea to put a city’s major cost center under the control of another jurisdiction. There is another item of concern in need of discussion. That is the city’s Cal-PERS “unfunded liability.” Until Cal-PERS took recent action designed to correct the funding of the state’s employee retirement system, this was a matter of legitimate concern to the city. However, now that Cal-PERS has made significant changes to its calculation methodologies, the State’s unfunded liability and therefore the City’s unfunded liability, should be fully funded within thirty years, and kept under control thereafter. The new system will be activated in fiscal year 2014/15, and be fully implemented over a five-year period. In the city’s last budget cycle, the City Council budgeted funds for the new paramedic program and the Emergency Medical Dispatch system. Thus when implemented, the Hemet Fire Department will deliver the same number of services as those provided by Cal Fire to its contract cities. Nonetheless, the Public Safety Coalition fervently urges the Hemet City Council to provide the eastern portion of Hemet with the same level of fire suppression and emergency medical services provided the balance of the city. That is, the City Council should open Station 5…which they can and should do without further delay. K. Paul Raver, Chairman The Public Safety Coalition
Posted on: Wed, 11 Sep 2013 11:23:03 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015