Santa Clara County Grand Jury • 2010-2011

Grand Jury Report: Final Grand Jury Report: Fighting Fire or Fighting Change?*

Published: September 01, 2011 19 pages Consolidated Report

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Findings 4 findings

It is extremely costly to equip a fire department for only the occasional fire response; the County and fifteen towns/cities have not been proactive in challenging fire departments to adopt changes that are more cost effective and that better serve their communities. Further, unions are more interested in job preservation than in providing the right mixture of capabilities at a reasonable cost, using scare tactics to influence the public and fostering firefighter unwillingness to collaborate with EMS. The Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District wholly disagrees with the finding. Since the early 1960's, the County and the fifteen towns/cities have been represented by their fire chiefs through membership in the Santa Clara County Fire Chiefs Association and its various subgroups. Since inception, the Association has worked to address a wide range of fire service issues to identify and implement changes that are more cost effective and better serve the needs of the communities throughout Santa Clara County. Together, the fire chiefs develop and oversee programs dedicated to the continued improvement and welfare of Santa Clara County fire services to meet their stated goals and objectives. They provide a review of legislative developments and, as appropriate, provide input through their elected representatives and professional affiliations. They serve as the executive advisory body to the Mission College Fire Science program, work with the Santa Clara County Emergency Medical Care Committee, and support and encourage uniformity in training, delivery of service, fire and hazardous materials codes and ordinances, and operational policies and practices. They function as a chapter of California Fire Chiefs Association and elect a Fire and Rescue Mutual Aid Coordinator to manage the provision of local and statewide mutual aid on behalf of all of the fire agencies in Santa Clara County. The Association has been instrumental in the creation and continued support of specialized regional teams for response to hazardous materials incidents, technical rescues and potential terrorist attacks. The Association created and continues support of a regional incident management/support team comprised of chief officers from nearly every agency and discipline in Santa Clara County. Through its various subgroups, the Association has overseen the development of regional training opportunities for recruit firefighters, company officers and a variety of specialized positions. Most recently, the Association played a critical role in the implementation of the County's emergency medical services contract. , Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District Response to the Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury's Final Report "Fighting Fire or Fighting Change? Rethinking Fire Department Response Protocol and Consolidation Opportunities." While each agency and fire chief enjoy a different relationship with their labor organizations, the Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District continues to have a cooperative and collaborative relationship with Local 1165. The District's senior staff meets regularly with the union's executive board to address issues, clarify language, and propose changes to the District's Rules, Regulations and Policies. This process has been key to ensuring that issues are addressed at the earliest possible time, minimizing impacts to the District and our personnel.

Based on SCC's fluctuating demand for emergency services, contractually based minimum staffing requirements are not warranted and hinder fire chiefs in effectively managing firefighter staffing to meet time of day, day of week, season of year demand. This wastes money and may drive station closure as budgets continue to erode. Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District Response to the Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury's Final Report "Fighting Fire or Fighting Change? RethInking Fire Department Response Protocol and Consolidation OpportunIties." The Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District agrees with the finding. The Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District deploys apparatus and personnel based upon the need for service and upon the Standards of Response Coverage. This document provides a comprehensive analysis of response resources, deployment strategies, operational elements and overall community. It establishes response time baselines for measuring the effectiveness of resources within the department and the deployment of those resources. Analysis of Community Risk A comprehensive analysis of risk factors specific to the communities served by the Santa Clara County Fire Department, including the physical attributes of the structures and facilities, the topography, transportation systems, water supply and geographical area served, was conducted to determine overall community risk levels. Performance Standards Response times for emergency incidents remain the key performance measurement for fire agencies. Total response times (known as response intervals) include two critical components: turnout times and travel times. Based upon the measurement and analysis of total response times and community risk levels, the Department has established response time baselines that indicate levels of service that can be expected by members of the community. Compliance Methodology The baselines established by the Department are evaluated on a regular basis by the Department on an overall basis and by each community served, typically in the form of a "report card" that is sent to the elected officials of the communities served on a monthly or quarterly basis, depending on their preference. These report cards provide information on a number of items, including the number of responses, types of responses, and how well the Department is meeting its pre-established baselines. An annual report card is also produced and distributed. Lastly, to ensure the Department baselines are being met and to determine what, if any, changes or modifications need to be made to this Standards of Cover Document, a

Whether the emergency responder is a firefighter-paramedic or an EMS paramedic matters little to the person with the medical emergency; using firefighter-paramedics in firefighting equipment as first responders to all non-police emergencies is unnecessarily costly when less expensive paramedics on ambulances possess the skills needed to address the 96% of calls that are not fire related. The Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District partially disagrees with the finding. This finding lacks sufficient detail to fully address the issue to which it refers. Table 2 in the Grand Jury report indicates that approximately 4\% of calls are for fires, 70\% of calls are for emergency medical service, and 26% of calls are for "Other" – a classification that includes rescues, hazardous materials responses, alarm activations, and a number of other types of calls for service. The assertion that "less expensive paramedics on ambulances possess the skills needed to address the 96% of calls that are not fire tradiu related" does not stand up to scrutiny. Paramedics on ambulances would not possess the skills, nor the equipment, to deal with the 26% of calls involving technical rescues, hazardous materials releases, or even fire alarm activations. Further, an undetermined percentage of medical emergencies would not have their emergency medical needs met by paramedics on ambulances due to the need for additional personnel for patient treatment while on scene, patient treatment while en-route to a hospital, victim extrication, patient packaging and loading. Approximately 70% of calls answered by fire agencies involve medical emergencies. Single- role paramedics on ambulances may possess the skills needed to address some undetermined percentage of those calls. To properly address the issue, one must weigh several factors and consider costs of any given service against the operational benefits. Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District Response to the Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury's Final Report "Fighting Fire or Fighting Change? Rethinking Fire Department Response Protocol and Consolidation Opportunities." The cost effectiveness and operational efficiency of an emergency medical system which relies solely upon paramedics assigned to ambulances serving all of Santa Clara County would require a substantial amount of study.

Emergency callers care less about seeing their city/town name on the equipment door than receiving timely assistance when needed, and a wide variety of consolidation opportunities offer cities ways to deliver emergency response services at a reduced cost and without compromising service response times. The Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District agrees with the finding. The Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District exists today because of a consolidation in 1947 of the Cottage Grove Fire District and the Oakmead Farms Fire District. In 1970, the Department consolidated with the Burbank Fire District and the Alma Fire District and contracted with the Town of Los Gatos for fire protection services. The contract for service model was expanded in 1993, 1995, again in 1996 and, most recently, in 2008. Communities currently served by County Fire include Campbell, Cupertino, Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District Response to the Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury's Final Report "Fighting Fire or Fighting Change? Rethinking Fire Department Response Protocol and Consolidation Opportunities." Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Los Gatos, Monte Sereno, Morgan Hill, Saratoga, and contiguous unincorporated areas. The Department also administers fire prevention contracts with the County for the County Fire Marshal's Office and Stanford University. The growth of the organization has been born out of a belief that there is an inherent value in regional service delivery. The District embraces a non-traditional enterprise philosophy. New markets, consolidations, contracts, customer services, regional approaches and public/private partnerships are all strategies employed to enhance fire protection services.

Recommendations 11

R1

All cities that manage their own fire department - Gilroy, Milpitas, Mountain View, Palo Alto, San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale - and the County (for Cooncrains Fire Prosection Provided by CAL FIRE CCFD and SCFD) and that also have contractual minimum staffing requirements should reopen negotiations with the unions to eliminate this term and any other term that limits a fire chief's ability to "right-size" staffing given the time of day or time of year. Response: The District (CALFIRE employees) does not have mandated contractual staffing levels.
R1A

All cities that manage their own fire department—Gilroy, Milpitas, Mountain View, Palo Alto, San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale—and the County (for CCFD and SCFD) should benchmark and observe best practices from communities that have demonstrated successful changes in response protocol and consolidation efforts, such as in San Mateo County, CA; West Jordan, UT; or Scottsdale, Arizona. The Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District has implemented the recommended action. In 2005, the Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District became an accredited agency through the Commission on Fire Accreditation International. In July 2010, the agency was reaccredited after demonstrating continuous improvement in the quality of the fire service delivery system and the community's emergency services. Accreditation is attained through a comprehensive self-assessment and evaluation model that enables fire and emergency service organizations to examine past, current, and future service levels and performance and compare them to industry best practices. This process leads to improved service delivery by helping fire departments: Determine community risk and safety needs. Evaluate the performance of the department. Establish a method for achieving continuous organizational improvement.
R1B

All fifteen towns/cities—Campbell, Cupertino, Gilroy, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Los Gatos, Monte Sereno, Morgan Hill, Milpitas, Mountain View, Palo Alto, San Jose, Santa Clara, Saratoga, Sunnyvale—and the County (for CCFD and SCFD) should determine the emergency response service they want to achieve, particularly as to the result, then determine how best to achieve that. The Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District has implemented the recommended action. As a fundamental component of the accreditation process, the Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District completed a Standards of Response Coverage. • • Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District Response to the Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury's Final Report "Fighting Fire or Fighting Change? Rethinking Fire Department Response Protocol and Consolidation Opportunities." The Standards of Response Coverage serves as an Integrated Risk Management Plan providing a comprehensive deployment analysis, which determines the distribution and concentration of fixed and mobile resources of an organization. The document assists the agency in ensuring a safe and effective response force for fire suppression, emergency medical services and specialty response situations in addition to homeland security issues. Creating Standards of Response Coverage requires a number of areas be researched, studied and evaluated. The report provides an overview of both the community and the agency. Following this overview, the document addresses areas such as risk assessment, critical task analysis, agency service level objectives and distribution and concentration measures. Both qualitative and quantitative assessment is displayed through reliability studies and historical performance through charts and graphs. The report concludes with policy recommendations.
R1C

All cities that manage their own fire department—Gilroy, Milpitas, Mountain View, Palo Alto, San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale—and the County (for CCFD and SCFD) should collaborate with their fire department, union and political leadership to drive fire department change and develop consistent, joint communications messages for the public. The Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District has implemented the recommended action. In January 2010, the Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District, in preparation for reaccreditation through the Commission on Fire Accreditation International, facilitated a Community-Driven Strategic Planning Process resulting in a strategic plan that outlines the Department's Mission, Values, Critical Issues and Service Gaps of SCCFD. In addition, the identification of internal strengths and weaknesses, as well as external opportunities and threats, was accomplished. Goals and objectives to meet the needs as identified by the various stakeholder groups were developed and adopted as part of the 2010-2014 Strategic Plan. Goal: Improve external and internal communications. Objective A: Improve communications within the Department. Objective B: Improve communications with our cognate government partners. Objective C: Improve non-emergency communications with the public.
R2

All cities that manage their own fire department—Gilroy, Milpitas, Mountain View, Palo Alto, San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale—and the County (for CCFD and SCFD) and that also have contractual minimum staffing requirements should reopen negotiations with the unions to eliminate this term and any other term that limits a fire chief's ability to "right-size" staffing given the time of day or time of year. This recommendation is not relevant to the Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District. Minimum staffing requirements are not a component of the Memorandum of Agreement between The Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District and The International Association of Firefighters Local 1165.
R3A

All fifteen towns/cities—Campbell, Cupertino, Gilroy, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Los Gatos, Monte Sereno, Morgan Hill, Milpitas, Mountain View, Palo Alto, San Jose, Santa Clara, Saratoga, Sunnyvale—and the County (for CCFD and SCFD) should adopt an emergency services department mentality and staff or contract accordingly to meet demand. The Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District has implemented the recommended action. Though utilizing the historical nomenclature of the traditional fire department, the Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District has never been a single service, fire only provider. Since formation in 1947, a range of services, including emergency medical services has been provided. Today, the Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District is an all- risk emergency services organization providing fire suppression, basic and advanced rescue, advanced life support first response medical services, hazardous materials and technical rescue response, fire inspection, fire investigation, disaster preparedness and public education to the communities served. This mentality is evident in the organization's stated Mission, Vision, Values and Goals. Moreover, the Fire District is staffed in a manner consistent with these guiding principles in mind.
R3B

The County should modify its approach to mandating (through direct contract or through the EMS provider contract) that fire departments serve as first-responder, reserve the use of firefighting vehicles for fire events, and enable the EMS contractor to be first-responder. The recommended action requires further analysis. The cost effectiveness and operational efficiency of an emergency medical system which relies solely upon paramedics assigned to ambulances serving all of Santa Clara County would require a substantial amount of study.
R3C

In consideration of non-fire emergencies, all cities that manage their own fire department—Gilroy, Milpitas, Mountain View, Palo Alto, San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale—and the County (for CCFD and SCFD) should modify fire department protocols to authorize, incorporate and use less expensive non-firefighter paramedics and non-firefighting equipment. ì Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District Response to the Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury's Final Report "Fighting Fire or Fighting Change? Rethinking Fire Department Response Protocol and Consolidation Opportunities." The recommended action requires further analysis. The Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District deploys apparatus and personnel based upon the need for service and upon the Standards of Response Coverage. This document provides a comprehensive analysis of response resources, deployment strategies, operational elements and overall community. It establishes response time baselines for measuring the effectiveness of resources within the department and the deployment of those resources. This recommendation appears to assume that fewer firefighters and less firefighting equipment would be needed if firefighters didn't respond to non-fire emergencies. This conclusion is not supported by the analysis in the Standard of Coverage.
R3D

All cities that manage their own fire department—Gilroy, Milpitas, Mountain View, Palo Alto, San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale—and the County (for CCFD and SCFD) should consider ways to extend the service life of expensive firefighting vehicles by augmenting with ambulance vehicles—either newly purchased as fire apparatus is replaced or in collaboration with the County EMS provider. The recommended action requires further analysis. Further study is necessary to determine if the deployment of an additional vehicle to selected fire companies would be cost beneficial. Ambulance vehicles would be appropriate only if it were anticipated that patients would be transported, a decision that is within the control of the County Emergency Medical Services Agency. If patients are not to be transported, the use of other types of non-firefighting utility vehicles might be appropriate for response to some types of calls to reduce wear and tear on fire apparatus, thus extending service life. The cost of purchase, maintenance and replacement of such utility vehicles must be weighed against the costs avoided by extending the service life of a particular piece of fire apparatus by specific number of years.
R4A

All cities that manage their own fire department—Gilroy, Milpitas, Mountain View, Palo Alto, San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale—and the County (for CCFD and SCFD) should evaluate and implement cost-saving consolidations, including administration consolidation, boundary drop, department or regional consolidation, purchasing, personnel training and equipment maintenance. The recommended action requires further analysis. At the direction of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, the Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District is currently working with the Santa Clara County Executive's Office, the Santa Clara County Fire Chiefs Association, the Santa Clara County City Managers Association and the labor organizations representing firefighters from throughout Santa Clara County to complete a cost/benefit analysis for consolidation of all fire service delivery in Santa Clara County. The study will explore a range of opportunities to improve operational efficiency and cost effectiveness of fire service delivery throughout Santa Clara County. The study will look at consolidation of services, contracts for service with other agencies, impacts of employee costs (health, pension, etc), placement of stations and apparatus, automatic aid, boundary drops, regional communications, fire-based advance life support, fire prevention, apparatus purchasing and maintenance, equipment purchasing and maintenance, public education and emergency preparedness. The study will take place in several phases: 1. Identify opportunities to improve operational efficiency and cost effectiveness of fire service delivery throughout Santa Clara County. 2. Evaluate and prioritize identified opportunities. Perform a cost/benefit analysis on those opportunities identified as having the greatest potential impact and possibility for success. A report is due to the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors in November 2011. Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District Response to the Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury's Final Report "Fighting Fire or Fighting Change? Rethinking Fire Department Response Protocol and Consolidation Opportunities."
R4B

All cities that manage their own fire department—Gilroy, Milpitas, Mountain View, Palo Alto, San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale—and the County (for CCFD and SCFD) should consider adopting a vehicle fleet management approach by establishing a county-wide standard for vehicles and equipment, consolidating purchases to take advantage of lowered costs, and consolidating maintenance or revisiting guaranteed maintenance contracts on new vehicle purchases. The recommended action requires further analysis. At the direction of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors the Santa Clara County Central Fire Protection District is currently working with the County Executive's Office, the Santa Clara County Fire Chief's Association, the Santa Clara County City Managers Association and the labor organizations representing firefighters from throughout Santa Clara County to complete a cost benefit analysis for consolidation of all fire service delivery in Santa Clara County. The study will explore a range of opportunities to improve operational efficiency and cost effectiveness of fire service delivery throughout Santa Clara County. The study will look at consolidation of services, contracts for service with other agencies, impacts of employee costs (health, pension, etc), placement of stations and apparatus, automatic aid, boundary drops, regional communications, fire based advance life support, fire prevention, apparatus purchasing and maintenance, equipment purchasing and maintenance, public education and emergency preparedness. The study will take place in several phases:

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