Stunning Developments in San Carlos-CalFire Relationship

Maybe the city should have thought before they jumped.

I agree with Tom, and I think you’re jumping to conclusions about outside pressure. It doesn’t take a genius to see that this is a mess that no one with any sense would want to get involved in.

Maybe they should have hired the consultants and carefully considered their report before they decided to dissolve the JPA. I read the entire CalFire letter at http://www.epackets.net/cache/2/uoiwln45nw4dhrvbpw0ab2ma/1029600811202010075215713.PDF and I don’t see any reason for the paranoia.
It looks to me like CalFire carefully considered whether to partner with San Carlos and decided there’s really nothing in it for them. CalFire has no obligation to rescue San Carlos, whether the city likes it or not, and decided not to. That’s the chance they took when they decided to dissolve the JPA without knowing what other options are available.
CalFire is not a “safety net” for bankrupt cities; it is a State agency that is required to put its base mission, protecting its own areas, ahead of anything else. They also say they could not take over by October 2011, which is the dissolution date for the JPA. Anyone who has ever tried to get anything done at the state level will find that easy to believe. Unfortunately, Royce, Ahmad, and Klein are new in this business, so maybe they don’t know that.

Hi Pat,
Thanks for your comments. A few thoughts:
First, I do take exception with the last line of your post. The dig at the councilmen is out of line. The insinuation is that because they are somewhat new, they were unprepared to handle this situation. The fact is that the council members you mentioned signed up for a volunteer job that nobody else wanted. For example, in the last election, council members ran unopposed. They are thrown into a disaster of a financial situation and basically get raked over the coals each time they need to make serious cuts.
The fact of the matter is that San Carlos had a 3.5 million dollar budget shortfall, and really nothing left to cut. Further, San Carlos gave its residents every opportunity to help possibly save some of these cuts through the submission of Measure U to the voters in November of 2009. The half-cent sales tax would have generated a minimum $2.2 million dollars each year, and would have made up for 2/3s of the shortfall. Personally, by the looks of Laurel Street nearly every night of the week, I think we would have done better than 2.2 million. In any event, this measure was defeated and the council had no choice but to outsource police and fire.
In my opinion, hiring a consultant to tell you that there is no way you can possibly support yourself in the JPA is a waste of what little city funds we do have.
Next, San Carlos is not a “bankrupt” city. While they have had to make substantial cuts, the fact is that they have made drastic cuts to stay out of bankruptcy.
Finally, of course the letter from CalFire is not going to directly come out and state the reason for their sudden non-participation in the proposal process….thus the reason for their fourteen point evaluation system. All I am saying, and those close to the situation appear to be saying, is that it is quite odd that CalFire had a sudden change of heart. CalFire had no problem giving us an initial bid months ago when were were in the exact same, if not worse, financial situation. Additionally, CalFire had this to say in their faxed letter,
“To be successful, it is imperative that there is support for these agreements amongst all the stakeholders, including public officials, local citizens and labor organizations,” stated Ken Pimlott, the Cal Fire director in a faxed letter sent to assistant city manager Brian Moura. Clearly, all were not in agreement with CalFire working for San Carlos.
This is a situation where a smoking gun will never be found. The best you can do is take a totality of the circumstances approach and put the pieces together.
Bob

Well you are all wrong. Local 2400 contacted the Interantional Association of Firefighters and they threatened serious problems for San Carlos and CAL Fire if the contract was offered. At the national convention for the IAFF Contra Costa County Firefighters, San Francisco Fire fighters and Local 2400 ( San Mateo) stood up and called CAL Fire ” Scabs” and threatened harsh union actions. Local State Assembly members threatened to block any legislations having to do with CAL Fire at the state level.This is the truth. The sad part is that a City does not even have the right to run itself anymore.

I don’t know who this Pat is, but it’s not me. Sounds like this person has a lot of inside information, or a good imagination! It fits in nicely with the conspiracy theories that are popular at city hall these days.

Bob
I believe your “reading” of the situation may very well be right.
Let’s be honest – this is all about money money money.
It is not about what’s best for our community. It’s not about community service. It is about MONEY.
And it doesn’t matter what uniform the public employees wear.
Outsourcing police won’t save San Carlos taxpayers money if the County gives their officers 5% increases every year. The County will just pass the cost on to us next time.
Public employees KNOW they have a “sweetheart” thing going and they will do every thing they can to prevent any changes.
Here are the facts:
During this recession, millions of Americans have lost their jobs. Unemployment rates in CA are 12% and about 10% in the USA.
Very few if any of these lost jobs have occured to public employees.
Yes some public employees have lost jobs but in truth the number of public employees has actually increased slightly during this time.
So private employees have felt the brunt of the recession not public employees.
Many Americans who have kept their jobs now work at lower salary rates.
Yes some public employees may have had to take pay cuts but by large the OVERWHELMING majority of public employees have continued to receive their annual 3% 4% 5% cost of living increases over the past 3 or 4 years.
Public employees receive retirement and health benefits UNAVAILBLE to most Americans.
OK?
I question the integrity of anyone who denies the truth of the above.
Public employees act like they are ENTITLED to these regular increases and rich pensions and to hell with anyone else – just raise taxes – which means “TAKE MONEY OUT OF YOUR POCKET SO I CAN PUT MORE IN MINE”.
Note the average San Carlos public employee has an income higher than the MEDIAN household income in San Carlos. OK?
I am waiting for public employees to do the right thing, put the me first attitiude aside, and acknowledge, they are doing pretty well compared to most other Americans.
Please review the tactics public employees in Menlo Park and Palo Alto have gone to protect this “gravy train” and you will understand, public employees will not voluntarily give anything up – after all, they are ENTITLED to it.
Between our ever growing “welfare entitlement” class (abut 45% of our population pays no income tax) and constant never ending demands from public employees for more money every year; our cities counties state and nation are being driven towards bankruptcy and yet most public employees do not seem to care one bit.
It will not be easy to save our communities from financial disaster.
Public employee unions are organized, have lots of money to support their agenda (and let’s not forget that the money comes from us, the taxpayers!), provide campaign cash to politicians who will support their wish of higher taxes and more money for them, and generally the good will of the public.
But any honest look at the financials shows the current path we are on is MATHEMATICALLY not feasible. We can’t keep increasing pay for public employees at a rate of 3% 4% 5% a year and provide retirement incomes up to 80% of top pay to each of these public employees for 30 to 40 years after they stop working. THE NUMBERS DON’T WORK.
This is not being mean to police, fire, school teachers and other public employees, this is just simply a FACT. We see it every day – in every corner of our nation – yes tax revenues are down slightly but the biggest parts of these defecits are due to the fact that expenses continue to increase at an absurd rate. Most government expenses are for personnel costs or for entitlements so clearly that is where the solution must be found.
Ultimately, we need to decide who is in charge of our nation.
Is it the 5% of the population who works for the government or is it the 95% of the population that doesn’t work for the government?
When public employees ask for more money they often say “we are members of your community”.
I say it is time they start acting like they are members of our community, understand their financial demands are destroying many comunities, that they are not entitled to ever increasng incomes and adjust their financial demands to reflect the truth.
So we need to be clear.
Public employees will fight with everything they have and use any method available to them to maintain the status quo. And that’s OK. Unions are formed to represent the interests of their members and to increase financial compensation for their members.
We need to understand and be clear that WE the TAXPAYERS are the EMPLOYERS of these public employees and we have an equal right to protect our interests, too. Protecting our interests is not being mean or unfair to public employees. It is OUR RIGHT.
Ulitmately, I have confidence that what’s best for the majority will prevail.
But it won’t happen without concerted effort.
This is only the beginning.
The next few years will tell the story.

Herbert Stein’s law: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” Unions squeezed our industries dry for outrageous wages and benefits; for a long time companies managed to survive but eventually shuttered their factories. Public employees are a bit different because they can manipulate their employer to write laws that (temporarily) defy reality – but in the end, as we’re seeing in Europe and perhaps our last election – governments will buckle when they can’t affordably finance their debt and/or convince the populace that they’re being responsible. 5 years ago no one talked about public employees; now they’re ‘public’ enemy #1. Everyone says the public employee contracts are immutable and a fact of life; that’s true only so long as the trend can continue.

Time to restart the volunteer fire department?

Bob; Regarding your statement that “The half-cent sales tax would have generated a minimum $2.2 million dollars each year, and would have made up for 2/3s of the shortfall.” It needs to be recognized that one of the reasons that these Laurel St establishments are in fact successful is due to the fact that they’re able to keep a lid on costs. Although a half a percent increase may sound trivial, one has to draw the line somewhere, and to my way of thinking, 9% is already way too much. Although I am not a restaurateur, I do know that this is an incredibly competitive business, as witnessed by the number of decent Laurel St. restaurants that have had to close down in recent years. I have little desire to cast a vote that would take still more money out of the pockets of these hardworking folks, just so our city workers can maintain their exceedingly generous (at least compared to what I get in private industry) benefits packages.

Tony, I would strongly disagree with your conclusion attributing the success of San Carlos businesses to the lack of a 1/2 percent bump in sales tax. It just defies reality that someone willing to drop $100 on a meal at Town would suddenly balk if the price is $100.50. Likewise, How many people would realistically incur incremental gas costs to go to OSH and avoid paying an additional quarter on a $50 purchase at Home Depot? It was a short-sighted decision rooted in this backlash against public employees that you constantly see in posts here (look no further than Arn’s rant). Perhaps the city could have done a better job communicating what can and can’t be done to control public employee costs. But when you have folks claiming that public employees haven’t been impacted by this recession (ludicrous if you just examine the cuts to teachers alone) or that $0.50 surcharges will cause the hottest restaurants in San Carlos to close their doors, obviously it’s challenging to have rational dialogue.

JJ:
We obviously have different perspectives on this. But a few thoughts for you to consider:
– Although I agree that the extra 50 cents may not force most restaurants to “close their doors”, it’s certainly not going to help our local businesses either. And if you’re correct in that the extra 50 cents won’t matter, then I’d much rather see it go into the pockets of the restaurant workers themselves, most of whom are in greater need of these funds than our city employees.
– The above notwithstanding, I would actually be in favor of the half percent tax increase IF it solved our budget situation in the long term. The reality however is that it would only be successful in postponing the inevitable revenue shortfall for another year or so. Even if the tax increased had passed, I believe that there would be a better than average chance we’d be voting on another sales tax increase next year – or maybe next year we’ll leave the local businesses alone and go after the home owners. And who knows, if the current trend continues, 5 years from now we may be looking at adding toll booths on Brittan Avenue. I know I’m being a bit facetious, but my point is that there’s only so long that we can add band aids to this problem.
– We need to face the reality that the current government employee compensation system, for better or worse, is no longer sustainable. This is not a “dig” or an attempt to scapegoat government employees; it’s simply an acknowledgement of the difficult economic times that we unfortunately live in, which regrettably are not going to go away any time soon.