At times it was an informative, often contentious, roundtable that saw members of the fire department and representatives from UC Davis at the table with the Davis City Council and city staff. While the city council was able to act on several recommendations, they put off discussion of staffing changes until next month, due to the lateness of the hour.
In a somewhat unorthodox move, the city asked Rich Rifkin and myself to be participants in this roundtable.
The current city policy has the response time at five minutes. However, as the Citygate report in 2009 and Interim Chief Scott Kenley have both noted, those response times are met less than half of the time. They also are a full minute and twenty seconds faster than NFPA (National Fire Protection Association) 1710 standard from 2010, which puts the response time recommendation at 6:20.
Citygate recommended the city move to a seven-minute response time as the city’s standard.
“Changing the goal doesn’t change anything to the community other than it changes your report card so to speak,” Chief Kenley told the roundtable. “Instead of your report card reading failure at fifty percent of the time you’re not reaching your goal because your goal is not realistic in my mind, you’re going to attain and you’re going to improve your report card. It’s not going to have any effect on the delivery of services to the community.”
The firefighters’ union, led by Bobby Weist, were hesitant about this change, as embodied within is their notion of using the failure to achieve this travel time as a rationale for a fourth fire station.
However, in response to a question, Chief Kenley argued, “Even with a fourth fire station I doubt you could achieve this travel time throughout the city.”
“Wouldn’t our response times be greatly reduced and our goals be closer to meeting the 90 percent than what they are now?” Mr. Weist asked.
Chief Kenley responded, “That would be true. But the reality is that I know of no agency that has a less than four-minute (travel time) goal.”
One of the fire captains, Joe Tenney, asked the chief what was driving this response time goal. “As far as your understanding, what is it that drives these standards? Obviously if we wanted to we could set the standard at ten minutes and try to meet it 100 percent of the time. “
“The travel time has been a long established process,” Chief Kenley said. “When they set four minutes that pretty much became the industry norm in the 70s or 80s. The four-minute travel time was the one that we tried to look at the most.”
Bobby Weist argued that this was a safety issue. “There’s a lot of talk that we don’t have big fires here, well that’s because we’re able to get there quickly.”
“If the city feels that our response times aren’t attainable and they’re too ambitious, we have no problem with the NFPA standard,” he said. “The reason why we had a question about this is that we want to continue to provide the best service for the community that we can.”
However, the chief maintained the change would not change the service provided, it would merely put the goal within the range of what the city actually achieves.
He said that the seven-minute response time was based on the recommendation from Citygate and premised on being able to get out of the station in two minutes. But he did say that he believed they could get that part of the response time down to 1 minute or 1:20 and that was something within the realm of their control, whereas the travel time of four minutes really was not something they could control.
The issue of the boundary drop, to many, was a no brainer. The interim chief recommended the creation of “a joint committee made up of decision makers from both the UC and City Departments to develop Standard Operating Procedures maximizing the resources of both departments…”
UC Davis Vice Chancellor John Meyer said that he has been working on closer joint relations between UC Davis and the city for 20 years, noting that he worked with Mayor Pro Tem Dan Wolk’s mother on this when she was on the council.
“It really puzzles me frankly,” he said. “We talk about enhanced cooperation, we talk about merging management for savings. The one that I cannot get my head around… I do not understand the policy framework for which the boundary drop cannot occur.”
“If our constituents are joint communities, which they certainly are, that we can’t sort of embrace and find a way to act as one unified department where the closest unit responds regardless, I have yet to hear the compelling policy reason that’s the blocker for that. Clearly there’s something.”
The vice chancellor would balk at the notion that this was blocked – as the Vanguard and others have been informed – by the actions of Bobby Weist.
The vice chancellor would argue that pushing this off to another committee is not his ideal preference.
“I think there are frameworks out there, we just have to have the will to do this,” he said. “You have to look at the interests of everyone in this community. You have to look at the 85-year-olds walking out of the wastewater hearing, do they care what brand the engine has that’s showing up to their door when someone’s having a stroke or heart attack? I really don’t think so.”
“What we have to do is find the quickest way to respond in our joint community and find a way to get this resolved,” he concluded.
“We’re not necessarily opposed,” Bobby Weist told the council. “Nor have we ever been opposed to dropping boundaries, providing the best service to our community and the campus.”
He wants to see a standards of cover for the entire community, because he argued, “You can’t just say as Chief Kenley has said that the university can get there quicker. Not necessarily. We don’t know that. We haven’t done those test.”
“One of the things that came out of this was legal ramifications of a boundary drop,” Mr. Weist said.
“We have never, I don’t know where this came from,” he said. “We have never so-called opposed boundary drops. We just had questions and we never got them answered.”
Captain Joe Tenney said, “There’s currently a system in place. We’re not opposed to the boundary drop, we just want the right system in place.”
“My concern here is that the last couple of items that this roundtable is addressing is nothing has changed in the city of Davis since 1999,” he said. “At some point the city has to consider investing more into their services… I think we all want the best services for our community and the firefighters are no different.”
He said that it irritates him to be questioned about his commitment to providing the city the best services possible.
“Putting that aside, at what point does the city and university, instead of putting on more bandaids, take a look at the resources that they need,” he continued. “My point has been the fire department has done the best that they can up to a certain point to provide excellent service, and the university has done the same, why do we want to lower any of those standards?”
“I know the budget thing has been trouble, but that appears to be making a change in a different direction, at what point will the city and university decide it’s time to start investing?”
He argued that the reality is that both the city and university need another station and it is time for them to do it.
Mayor Joe Krovoza said that the four recommendations are “trust building between the two communities that we have to get through before we talk about more. I can’t go to the community and say that we need a fourth fire station and we need more resources when we haven’t done the boundary drop to show that we have the most efficient system between two organizations.”
“I can’t go to the community, I won’t go to the community and say we need more resources when we haven’t done everything we can to think about whether we have a smart management structure that integrates the two systems,” he added.
He argued that we cannot address those kinds of questions until we show the community that we’re running the most coordinate and efficient system that we can.
The council passed the staff recommendation which will bring back to council within a meeting or two specific outlines of how to go forward.
As it turned out, the final item of discussion was the merger of the management teams.
Unlike the previous two items, which the firefighters’ union said they did not oppose, in this case they argued against it.
“Rather than merging only management, we believe the city and university should re-open discussion concerning the merger or contract for fire protection services,” Mr. Weist said. “If you have a full merger of the departments, there’s no boundary issue. We’re one department.”
John Meyer was not ultimately opposed to that type of merger. But he said, “The last several years have shown a number of issues have arisen – cultural issues where I was frankly concerned with how our firefighters were being treated.”
“Once we get to a point of mutual respect and common goals, I would not see that out of the realm of responsibility, but I have to protect my folks,” he said.
Joe Tenney said, “The first two items we didn’t necessarily disagree with. This is different. I don’t see it, I don’t get it. I don’t get the direction this is going. It almost seems like the city’s giving away the fire department to an administration that’s going to be employed by the administration.”
“This to me doesn’t seem to be the way to go,” he said.
I asked John Meyer whether the concerns that led to his January 2012 letter stopping the merger are different with this proposal and whether he believes things have changed enough to go forward with something more along the lines of the full merger idea.
The vice chancellor responded, “Basically the reasons I recommended to Steve that we pause those current efforts is we weren’t meeting the objective we set.”
He said we did not implement standard operating guidelines, and we did not complete a shared policy manual. “We were not able to drop boundaries, which was a fundamental discussion of these joint committees that we had between the two departments.”
“In addition the Citygate report showed quite a disparity between the total comp within the two departments,” he said. Citygate, he said, suggested that the university come up to that level of compensation. “My response to the letter was that will not be sustainable for us. If that’s the assumption that we’ll come up to the total comp level, I can’t make that work financially.”
Rather than delve into the likely contentious issue of fire staffing that would have taken the discussion to 1:00 am, the council decided reluctantly to come back in a month or so with the same roundtable.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
“In a somewhat unorthodox move, the city asked Rich Rifkin and myself to be participants in this roundtable.”
That had to be very uncomfortable for Bobby Weist to have both you and Rifkin sitting there, I’ll bet he loved that.
I’m sorry to hear that our city fire fighters have a reputation of disrespectful treatment of the UCD fire fighters. For John Meyer to have to take action to “protect his folks” is, frankly, embarrassing. Did our guys respond to this in any way?
Ryan wrote:
> I’m sorry to hear that our city fire fighters have a
> reputation of disrespectful treatment of the UCD fire
> fighters.
Any idea if the UCD fire fighters are part of a union (as a guy that hires both union and non union tradesman I’ve noticed that the union guys almost always look down on the non union guys)?
UCD Fire are members of a represented by a union – International Fire Fighters Association (IFFA). The contract is posted on the UC Davis HR website.
Much of the jockeying around “response time” and how to compute it resulted from the Covell Village project. The FF wanted a 4th fire station up there (great, if you have the budget), and by adjusting the way the response time was calculated, with a scratch of the legislative pen, large swaths of North Davis were suddenly “out of compliance” with the desired response time, thereby creating the need for the 4th fire station.
However, again, the FF union’s job is to ask, and it’s the CC’s job to say no, or not so much, or later. The CC hasn’t been good at that until recently, and there are still too many CC members who want to climb in politics, and they need the unions for that in this area, hence all of the hesitation and flopping back and forth as to how to take care of the interests of the taxpayers while protecting those upward political trajectories. But I’m not saying anything most of you don’t already know or believe.
A development the size of Covell Village would have likely required a need for another fire station, so I don’t get your point, Mike. I would say that if you were having a heart attack, that the difference between 4 minutes and 7 minutes would be something you would be concerned about. This is about maximizing our resources and what we can afford. If homeowners understand that the nice house on the far edge of town with the great view of the Sierras has a 7 minute response time for fire, then they can prepare – smoke detectors, fire extinguishers, CPR training, etc.
I don’t remember you saying no to anything the FF union asked for and it didn’t really help your “upward political trajectory,” so your theory fails. Quit the sniping comments about the motivations of our elected representatives.
“For John Meyer to have to take action to “protect his folks” is, frankly, embarrassing. Did our guys respond to this in any way? “
Not really. This is something I had heard from a number of people, it was very interesting that John Meyer offered it up as one of the reasons for pulling it and really unprompted.
[i]”Much of the jockeying around “response time” and how to compute it resulted from the Covell Village project.”[/i]
This is exactly right. I made this point at the forum. Dan Wolk had asked why it mattered that we were only meeting our stated response time goal 40% of the time. Someone at the table said the problem was that by not meeting the stated goal, which is much faster than the national standard, the goal itself misleads the public, and thus the goal needs to be changed for that reason.
But, in reality, the reason we set the goal where we did was because missing it advances the logic that says “we need a fourth fire station in Davis.” That’s long been the position of the Davis firefighters. And it has been echoed by corrupt members of our city council who accepted campaign contributions from the firefighters.
This is related to why the firefighters’ union has long opposed getting rid of the UCD-Davis first response border. If we do that, the response times will go down, because dispatch will be able to send the closest unit to a medical or fire emergency. That could cut down 5 or more minutes from response time, when we have simultaneous calls. But doing that takes away the union’s argument for the need for a 4th station (or more firefighters at the 3 stations), because we cannot meet our stated response time goals.
Because the meeting went long, Chief Kenley’s suggested reorganization plan never was discussed. But it, too, would reduce response times, and that is another reason the union will oppose the reorganization. Kenley suggests that we have 3 firefighters on each fire engine, but we also have 2 ff’s on our rescue truck, which would serve primarily as a 3rd ambulance in Davis. That change should greatly reduce response times, because we will have another crew, which can be positioned where needed, to respond rapidly to medical calls. And when there is a fire, the rescue truck can be sent to that event, which means that we would have 5 people on scene quite fast.
A side note: That council meeting last night really was missing an important voice–Sue Greenwald’s. Sue may not have had the most tactful approach, but she is very honest with her views. I wish one member of the council would have said the obvious: That Chief Kenley’s suggested reforms won’t just save money; they will provide better service to the people of Davis. And that the union’s positions, which the city has in place, are not only bad for the city’s finances, but they are bad for public safety.
It was hilarious to hear Bobby Weist say he was not necessarily opposed to the boundary change, or the response time change, after he has for years been the stumbling block to make these changes. No one on the council ever stood up to that nonsense.
Weist said explicitly that he is against merging the UCD fire and Davis fire management, unless the firefighters are also merged*. No one on our council mentioned that what the union really fears is not having a chief like Conroy or Weisgerber who will bend to the union’s wishes on every issue, including promotions for union leaders. I suspect, if they merge the management in 6 months, the new joint chief will be Nathan Trauernicht, who is the UCD fire chief, now. I don’t know anything about Chief Trauernicht, but it seemed last night like he is someone that Weist cannot control.
———————–
*Aside from the “cultural” issues, no one noted that the principle reason the rankd and file ff’s cannot be merged is because Davis ff’s make double the compensation that UCD ff’s make, and UCD is not willing or able to double their comp, and the Davis ff’s don’t want to cut their comp in half.
[quote]hence all of the hesitation and flopping back and forth as to how to take care of the interests of the taxpayers while protecting those upward political trajectories.[/quote]
I do not necessarily see taking care of the best interests of the taxpayers while protecting those upward political trajectories as mutually exclusive goals. Unless one is so cynical as to propose that all politically ambitious individuals are “corrupt” then I think this is a needlessly broad portrayal of the motivations of elected officials. It would seem to me that perhaps the very best way to improve one’s chances of advancing in political office would be to take care of the best interests of one’s constituents including but not necessarily exclusive to taxpayers.
RR: [i]”… the principle reason the rankd and file …”[/i]
Oops. That should be: “… the principal reason the rank and and file …”
One side point about peripheral developments. I think someone said last night that UCD will not be adding a new fire station at West Village. If that is the case, dropping the boundary (from the university’s perspective) is even more crucial. Station 32 (on Arlington Blvd.) is only 3 minutes (at 25 mph) from the north end of West Village (using the emergency vehicle access at Russell and Arthur). I would imagine that Engine 32 would be the closest company some times every day.
Rich: Good points. the interesting thing to me, and a point I will make in my commentary tomorrow is that while we could surmise that the reason for the response time and boundary drops were to justify a fourth firestation, the real amazing thing to me is that they have not abandoned the idea. When Joe Tenney made the comments last night about not knowing what had changed since 1999, it was really amazing to me how tone-deaf these guys actually are. They really do not get reality right now.
When Rifkin explains things it seems so much more reasonable and easy to understand.
I think it is clear that there is an interest to put in place true administration and oversight of the Fire Department.
What happens with emergency dispatch when, or if, UCD merges with the City? Will they operate like mutual aid calls between jurisdictions?
“What happens with emergency dispatch when, or if, UCD merges with the City? Will they operate like mutual aid calls between jurisdictions?”
I believe they already are.
Yes, I think dispatch has merged for the city and university. It’s run out of the Davis Police Dept. on 5th Street.
[i]”Will they operate like mutual aid calls between jurisdictions?”[/i]
They already have mutual aid with each other, and with more neighboring communities. In Davis, now, when there is a serious fire, the UCD FD can be called in to help fight the fire, if needed. Davis FF’s can also help fight fires on campus. However, the boundary prohibits dispatch from sending the UCD FD as the first responder (for fire or medical) in the city limits, no matter who is closest to the scene.
The various mutual aid agreements in Yolo County often involve repositioning equipment/manpower. For example, if there is a serious fire in West Sac, but not so bad a Davis engine is needed to douse the flames, a fire engine from Davis or UC Davis will be moved over to near the Causeway, and it will stay there until the regular West Sac crews are back in their normal positions. … John Meyer said last night that the UCD FD gets repositioned in this manner a lot. I don’t know if UCD is moved more than the DFD.
Also, our two Davis-based AMR ambulances work in similar fashion*. If Woodland has a rush of medical calls, one AMR ambulance will stay in Central Davis, but the other one will drive out half way to Woodland and park there, waiting for a possible Woodland or Davis call. It is for this reason, I believe, that Davis firefighters will arrive quicker at most medical calls; and if one of the two is really late to a call, the really late party will be the AMR ambulance, not the fire crew. When one ambulance is in town, it is responsible for three times the physical land mass as any one of the 3 fire companies.
*This may change once Yolo County gets its own, new ambulance contract. [b]The county recently voted to leave a larger, multi-county JPA ([url]http://www.davisenterprise.com/local-news/county-government/supervisors-approve-locally-run-ems-agency/[/url])[/b].
Rich wrote:
> no one noted that the principle reason the rank
> and file ff’s cannot be merged is because Davis
> ff’s make double the compensation that UCD ff’s
> make, and UCD is not willing or able to double
> their comp, and the Davis ff’s don’t want to cut
> their comp in half.
I bet we would have 500+ people apply for EACH Davis firefighter job if we cut the pay in half (and told the current firefighters that they are welcome to re-apply for their jobs at the new pay). I know the firefighters have helped people get elected, but it just seems wrong to pay so much for 10 days of work every month then let them retire as members of the top 1% with multi-million dollar pensions at 50 (when most of the people paying taxes so they can live the life of luxury will most likely be working until the day we die)…
[quote]it just seems wrong to pay so much for 10 days of work every month [/quote]
First a disclaimer. I have no personal stake in firefighter salary except as a taxpayer and resident of Davis.
When one considers that the 10 “days” worked are 24 hour days, this is the equivalent of a 60 hour work week.
As someone whose career entailed working 90 hour weeks for four years while in training, and then approximately 60 hour work weeks during my early years, I feel that some degree of allowance is reasonable for the number of hours worked. Also, I am a little confused about how you calculated to get the “multimillion” dollar pensions. Can you clarify ?
[i]”When one considers that the 10 ‘days’ worked are 24 hour days, this is the equivalent of a 60 hour work week.”[/i]
Not really. A typical hourly worker actually works between 50% and 75% more each month than a Davis firefighter. And that does not count the incredibly generous amount of paid time off all city employees get.
You can break down an average 24-hour duty period into various components. The first 10 qualify as ‘work.’ The last 5 do not.
1. Time responding to medical emergencies.
2. Time responding to false fire alarms.
3. Time responding to actual fires.
4. Time fixing or maintaining firefighting or other equipment.
5. Time responding to hazardous material calls.
6. Time responding to other community needs outside the fire house.
7. Time engaged in fire prevention activities.
8. Time engaged in community outreach, such as educating the public on fire prevention, weed control, smoke alarms, etc.
9. Other community support work done when residents visit the fire stations.
10. Firefighter education or physical training in preparation for firefighting and/or medical aid.
11. Time preparing and cooking meals, eating meals, and washing dishes.
12. Time shopping for food.
13. Time sleeping.
14. Time resting, relaxing, chatting, watching TV, listening to music, daydreaming, lifting weights, etc.
15. Union time.
If you are very generous with “work” time, it’s likely they are working at most 10 hours and not working 14 over an average 24-hour duty period. In a 27-day cycle*, that translates to 90 hours of work (probably less).
By contrast, a typical civilian who works 40-hours a week and clocks out for meals puts in 160 hours in 28 days, which is equal to 154.3 hours in 27 days. That is 71.43% more hours of actual work.
To be fair to the firefighters, most 40-hour per week workers don’t really ‘work’ all 40 hours. Some of their time is wasted in non-work activities. So maybe the reality is they work only 50% more than the firefighters, not 71% more. On the other hand, many self-employed people and some salaried executives work 60, 70 or 80 hours every week.
*In Davis, the firefighters are actually scheduled on 27-day cycles, where they are each on duty 9 days and off 18. They are guaranteed overtime for their last 12 hours of the 9th regular day, and any days over 9 (filling in for someone sick, on vacation, etc.) they also get overtime, and they get overtime for holidays, and they get overtime when Cal Fire sends them out of Davis.
[i]”I am a little confused about how to calculate a multimillion dollar pension?”[/i]
It’s a question of net present value. How much would it cost in today’s dollars to buy a bond which paid you back $100,000 a year, inflating 2% per year, for the next 40 years of retirement?
The answer is $2,287,858.33. If it pays for 35 years, not 40, then the NPV is $2,124,798.17.
Keep in mind that the rich pension is only part of the equation. There is also a lifetime family medical benefit. It’s hard to know how much that is worth in present value, because it’s hard to know if Kaiser will keep fleecing CalPERS forever, the way Kaiser has been ripping off the taxpayers for the last 20 years ([url]http://www.davisenterprise.com/forum/opinion-columns/theyre-careless-spending-our-money/[/url]), in order to overpay its “non-profit” personnel. But if CalPERS remains as corrupt as it has been, then the PV of these medical plans are worth another half million or so on average (though this will fall a bit due to new contractual terms for Davis employees).
Added together, the medical and pension package has a PV of around $2.5 to $2.7 million for the FF who retires with a $111,000 final salary and does not die prematurely.
Fundamentally, how do we know how much firefighting/medical response ability Davis [i]needs[/i]?
I think the needs and the cost are two separate issues.
If we can identify the needs, we will be able to afford it.
If we ignore the need and reduce funding, someone will get hurt or die.
How many strokes are there per year in Davis?
How many fires?
I don’t hear very often that another city gives us mutual aid. Just because of that, could we conclude that Davis has an excess of firefighting/medical response service?
How do we know if there is an excess, or that Davis has been “lucky”?
Could the city just start cutting until our neighbor cities complain that Davis is asking for too much mutual aid?
Instead of tracking how many incidents the department responded, does it make more sense to track how many incidents the department missed?
medwoman wrote:
> First a disclaimer. I have no personal stake in firefighter
> salary except as a taxpayer and resident of Davis.
I don’t have any stake either, other than I get to borrow the many toys that my (not in Davis) firefighter friend buys with his almost $200K salary.
> When one considers that the 10 “days” worked are 24 hour days,
> this is the equivalent of a 60 hour work week.
When I worked for Arthur Anderson (a Big 8 CPA firm at the time) I was often on the road for 10 days at a time, but I didn’t get paid for a full months work. My wife’s brother in law is in the Army medical corps and when in Afghanistan he was on call 24 hours a day, but didn’t get to take 20 days off after working 10 days (just like almost all the medical professionals here in the US). I don’t get why we let our elected officials who take campaign cash from the unions pay firefighters to sleep (and wash and wax their personal trucks in the heated garages and play video games, and surf the internet) when almost no other profession (knowingly) pays people to do these things. It is not like we (as taxpayers) have to pay this much since in recent years we have had more than 1,000 applications for a single firefighter position.
Then medwoman wrote:
> “I am a little confused about how to calculate a
> multimillion dollar pension?”
Then Rich wrote:
> It’s a question of net present value.
> How much would it cost in today’s dollars
> to buy a bond which paid you back $100,000
> a year, inflating 2% per year, for the next
> 40 years of retirement?
> The answer is $2,287,858.33
Do you have a link to a site where anyone is actually selling a safe bond with a 4.37% current yield that INCREASES the payment by 2% a year?
> There is also a lifetime family medical benefit.
> It’s hard to know how much that is worth in present value
I don’t think you can buy anything safe to cover medical care for a family for life since the cost of health care has been going up at 8%+ for 30+ years (when I was self-employed for the first time my health insurance was just under $100/month and over the past couple years with a family health care cost has been just over $2,000/month).
I’m betting that if someone wanted to actually buy a safe annuity that paid (including medical for the entire family) what a high paid cop and/or firefighter gets after retiring after 30 years that it would cost (have a PV of) well over $4 million…
[i]”… the cost of healthcare has been going up at 8%+ for 30+ years …”[/i]
I thought that was the case. However, the BLS numbers on the all-urban medical CPI ([url]http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet[/url]) don’t back that up.
[img]http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-W39vOBbEMeM/UQrXT7MNC4I/AAAAAAAAA1w/6SuQNqpDC-0/s1600/bls+medical+cpi.jpg[/img]
The BLS numbers say healthcare costs have inflated by 5.13% per year over the last 30 years. Over the last 20 years the medical inflation rate has been 3.98%. Over the last 10: 3.81%. Over the last 5 (2007-2012): 3.40%.
By contrast, since 1999, the rates charged by Kaiser to CalPERS–what we, the taxpayers are ponying up, have inflated 2.3 times faster than the all-urban healthcare inflation rate:
[img]http://4.bp.blogspot.com/–rCJjtdFcXY/UQrT0J7xrwI/AAAAAAAAA1U/aWB-Pv5ZsKQ/s1600/pers+inflation.JPG[/img]