The Davis Enterprise, in their Sunday column, praised the actions of the Davis City Council, writing, “Despite protestations that Davis’ public safety will be compromised, a majority of the Davis City Council took a courageous stand Tuesday and voted to adopt a new fire staffing model.” They argue, “Money-saving change will not jeopardize public safety.”
“Currently, each of the city’s three fire stations is staffed with four firefighters per shift. Under the new, more flexible configuration, three firefighters will man each station – in Central, West and South Davis – and a second, two-person crew will staff a rescue truck stationed downtown that will serve as an emergency rover,” the paper writes, adding, “While all concerned acknowledge that four firefighters are better than three, this configuration actually will provide more stable emergency service throughout Davis.”
The current model is flawed because it moves personnel from the west or the east back to the central fire station.
The Enterprise argues, “The flaw with this model – why it provides inferior service – is that it leaves one-third of the city with no prompt coverage any time there are simultaneous calls. According to Chief Kenley, we create service vacuums like that every day.”
“Again, 130 times a year, at a minimum, Station 33 is left uncovered having to cover the central area (for example). What we’re trying to do is minimize that,” City Manager Steve Pinkerton told the council Tuesday. “… what we’re attempting to do is keep apparatus available out in East (and West) Davis as frequently as possible.”
“The three-person fire staffing model works quite well in Woodland, Vacaville, Roseville, Chico, Fairfield and Napa, and it can work for Davis, too – especially because we have another fire department in our back yard, on the UC Davis campus,” the Enterprise continues.
“Taking on the powerful firefighters union is no easy task for a local politician. We give a pat on the back to Mayor Joe Krovoza and Councilmembers Rochelle Swanson and Brett Lee for their votes Tuesday in favor of necessary frugalism,” the editorial continues.
At the same time, the paper admonishes the ‘no’ votes: “We’re extremely disappointed that Mayor Pro Tem Dan Wolk and Councilman Lucas Frerichs didn’t see the wisdom in making this change.”
“I’m disturbed by the tenor by some … that doing anything but status quo is anti-fire and anti-fire personnel and that couldn’t be further from the truth,” Councilmember Rochelle Swanson said. “Sure, four is better than three; if we can do best-case for everything we would have that across the board. … I just think we have to realize efficiencies.”
The Enterprise adds, “Efficiencies, indeed. Our city faces a huge bill for street maintenance, higher water costs and, of course, the elephant in the room – massive ongoing costs for retirees’ pensions and medical bills. If Davis expect to stay out of bankruptcy court, our council members need to be smart with the budget. Trimming the fire staffing is just the first step.”
Stubborn Firefighters Refuse to Budget
We often do not agree with the poster, Mr. Toad. But his point rings true here with regard to an op-ed column in which the authors charge, “It makes little sense why three City Council members recently sided with a small, but vocal, number of people in our city who have chosen to second-guess our firefighters and devise their own plan for how Davis ought to be protected.”
As Mr. Toad writes, “It is a vocal minority on both sides. Outside of people like David and the firefighter nobody seems to care much about this issue. Everyone I have spoken with has been like ‘they did what? So what!’ “
He adds, “What is astonishing to me is the vehemence of the Firefighters, their hardball tactics and their unwillingness to give an inch. The story was set with the tree crews. Pinkerton showed what he would do if there were no concessions, he would lay people off, and the firefighters still have refused to give an inch. So what did they expect to happen?”
We slightly diverge here. The issue of salary concessions, is still an open question, as the firefighters have still refused to take the concessions everyone else but DCEA has already taken. The fire staffing cuts are not related to them, but more related to the city manager’s ongoing charge to find about $4 million in savings through restructuring the provision of city services.
The firefighters have noted in the course of this debate that they are down six firefighters. This is an accurate statement. The firefighters were fully staffed at 42 and are now at 36. However, the city has achieved limited savings from that attrition because the staffing levels are unchanged and the additional slack is being paid for with overtime.
The staffing change would leave the 36 positions in place and there would be no additional layoffs, but it would align staffing with personnel, and thus save most of that $440,000 through the reduction of overtime.
That said, Mr. Toad makes a good point when he argues that the firefighters have refused to give an inch. I’m not going to say the two issues are related. But I pointed out back in January that the firefighters had not taken the labor concessions and suggested to them that would be a good starting point.
I’m not going to say whether that issue alone would have tipped Rochelle Swanson, who was clearly the third vote on this in the other direction, but it might have changed the conversation some. By refusing to take the salary concessions that everyone else has taken AND refusing to suggest any alternative changes to Scott Kenley’s proposal, they largely made their bed.
The firefighters should have no illusions here, as all five councilmembers are very committed to savings through the MOU process.
Both publicly and privately, Dan Wolk and Lucas Frerichs have indicated the contract issue is a completely different story.
Mayor Pro Tem Dan Wolk argued that this is fundamentally a budget issue and he is “not convinced that service levels improve.”
“This is mainly about budgetary savings. I respect that,” he said. “To me that’s how I’m viewing this issue. We are in a new financial era and the old way of doing things is no longer tenable.”
Mayor Pro Tem Wolk would argue that, while he believes we need to do things a new way, we still have difficult choices to make and in the area of public safety, he would much rather see the costs cut in the MOU than service reductions.
“I’m not going to support this motion. I don’t see this move as the way we get there,” he said.
So in the end, would it have made a difference had the firefighters taken the same concessions that the police officer association took? I’m not going to argue that either way. But it would have changed the game for them to have credibly stated: we stepped up and took these concessions, but we feel this plan puts the city at risk.
As it stands now, the firefighters seem to believe they are above it all, and that was not going to fly. Not with this council.
—David M. Greenwald reporting
David, interesting point about whether progress with the MOU to date would have changed the outcome of the vote on the fire dept changes. I think it would have…I think the vote would have been different and in my opinion, this is better outcome, because of what I see as better and more efficient use of the resources we have (boundary drop and rescue deployment)….so maybe the MOU stalling will benefit the community in the end.
I’ve been patiently waiting for the phrase, “four is better than three,” to go away due because of no substantiation given. Unfortunately, the phrase has instead become a mantra and accepted as unassailable. Time to put the pin into the balloon.
Public management and administration practices call for addressing public need with the authentic mantra of, “Don’t throw money at a problem as a first or only solution. It should be the last option.” Let’s follow that precept and see if 4 firefighters at a scene in every instance is better than three. I honestly, don’t know, nor probably do you. Let’s explore together.
We’ve identified the indisputable fact that firefighters are improperly titled according to their primary workload. They are EMT’s/Paramedics wearing another uniform. When you cull out all of of the real “active fire with the public in peril” calls, they amount to a handful a year. This is an extremely important point to note, because proponents of 4-person crews cite the hazard to both the public and responders when only 3 crew responds to that occasional real fire.
No data is ever presented in support of this notion. In the many examples of existent 3-person crews of other municipalities, how many people perished or were injured due to the inferior response of a 3-person fire crew? What is the injury and fatality rate of fire departments with 3-person crews compared to Davis? Surely, the fire fighter union collective has explored this, it would be a compelling part of their advocacy.
Moving away from fires, we look at the Davis Fire Department workload again. A good public administrator, again, does NOT throw money at a workload problem as a first or only option. Can the workload be reduced to increase overall efficiency, thereby increasing the safety and protection of the public and first responders?
The emergency response calls for the Davis FD published earlier contained many categories that were not emergency responses; rather, they were calls that not of an emergency at all. Collectively, they numbered thousands more than the “real fire” calls, a vast majority in fact. Returning to the “four is better than three” argument, how do four responders perform more effectively than three in the non-fire responses that comprise over 90 percent of the total workload?
When we can get responses to these questions, then we can really determine if four is really better than three.
[i]Moving away from fires, we look at the Davis Fire Department workload again. A good public administrator, again, does NOT throw money at a workload problem as a first or only option. Can the workload be reduced to increase overall efficiency, thereby increasing the safety and protection of the public and first responders? [/i]
Completely agree with this, but then what about education?
I bring this up because the quality, scope and cost of all public service is all intricately connected. Money spent for one thing, is not available for another thing. Where and how we are spending money should be under constant review and finding ways to provide adequate service levels at lower cost should be the primary function of all government administrators and the politicians they work for.
In the end, firefighters are just employees. In the working world, employees get shuffled, changed, outsourced, insourced, let go, hired, expanded, contracted… the economy is a dynamic, living and breathing entity. But somehow, government employees get that extra special job protection and get their demands of statism supported by certain members of the public link in arms for their ideological war. Thus linked, they have succeeded for decades being an immovable force. They are now well into crumbling stage as is the logical conclusion for operations like theirs that eventually just run out of other people’s money. The Davis City Council might have very well saved the firefighters from the greater damage of their folly.