Fire district consolidation plans won't affect task force

When the San Diego Local Agency Formation Commission voted to initiate consolidation proceedings for the 28 fire protection agencies in San Diego County’s unincorporated area, a significant part of the Task Force on Fire Protection and Emergency Medical Services work was accomplished. The task force will likely continue, however, despite the completion of the task which spawned its creation.

“This has been, I think, a very valuable task force,” said County Supervisor Dianne Jacob, who chairs the task force.

In 1999 the LAFCO Task Force on Fire Protection Funding was created following a LAFCO meeting which addressed the inability of a fire district to serve additional territory and receive the appropriate funding. While the initial goal of the task force centered on funding needs for the fire service, other needs of the fire protection agencies and their fire protection and emergency response functions have also been addressed.

Task force subcommittees for various issues have been created and abolished over six years, and the work of the regionalization subcommittee will have been completed if the consolidation effort succeeds in its subsequent steps. Those subsequent phases, however, do not preclude task force input on the specifics of the consolidation plan.

“I would see still a value in the task force weighing in on the regionalization issue,” Jacob said.

Two other subcommittees existed at the start of the task force’s February 18 meeting: the Finance and Capital Needs Subcommittee and the Legislative Subcommittee. Although the County of San Diego is not currently responsible for funding the needs of the fire service (other than by disbursing property tax revenue and mitigation fees collected by the county), the Board of Supervisors has adopted a program to fund various needs of the fire service. The county has committed $200,000 in Community Development Block Grants each year for needs of the fire service and an additional $200,000, derived from the savings of refinancing the county’s Otay prison, into a trust fund for fire agencies. The county also used a portion of its tobacco settlement revenue to fund emergency medical response needs.

The task force has been successful in obtaining approximately $7 million over the past six years. “It has added up, and it has helped,” Jacob remarked.

The Legislative Subcommittee’s work is ongoing, and the task force could be a complement to the San Diego County Fire Chiefs Association and the San Diego Fire Districts Association. “At the right time it’s going to be extremely important for us to muster all of the forces we possibly can,” Jacob said.

“Maybe it’s time to let the Legislative Committee step forward and take a more active and higher-priority role,” suggested task force executive director John Traylor.

There was some concern that the task force may be duplicating the work of the fire chiefs association and the fire districts association, which consists of board members and fire chiefs throughout San Diego County. The task force not only consists of fire chiefs and fire board members, but upon its creation it specifically sought the input of labor and invited representatives from the California State Firefighters Association and California Professional Firefighters to join the task force.

The task force is the advisory board which recommends to the Board of Supervisors which requests for annual county funding receive money from the limited revenue pools, and its work over the past six years also included establishing a level of service document which showed response times to all areas of the county from fire stations staffed by specific fire agencies or volunteer fire departments.

“There may be some additional areas,” Jacob noted. “I don’t think we’re ready to abandon ship.”

Since fire service agencies are also the pre-hospital first responders, the February 18 discussion included plans to establish an EMS First Responder Subcommittee. Committee members will be recruited in the future, and subcommittee plans include the establishment of a basic level of service, which will likely be Advanced Life Support paramedic engines although a transition from Basic Life Support to Advanced Life Support may be necessary for some areas.

“It sounds like the task force is still viable,” Traylor said. “It sounds like we will continue on.”