By Bryan Scott

The East Contra Costa Fire Protection District (ECCFPD) provides an essential government service, responding to the best of its ability to calls for help.

The state of California describes these services as “critical to the public peace, health, and safety of the state.”   (Health & Safety Code Section 13801)

Unfortunately, the district is unable to adequately provide these services.

They can’t, for the simple reason that the funding rate for the ECCFPD was set nearly four decades ago.  It has not changed, even though the area’s population has gone from 8,000 to over 110,000 people.

Assemblymember Jim Frazier recognizes the dire situation, perhaps better than any other state politician, as he has served on the Board of the ECCFPD as well as the Oakley City Council.

“Please know I will do all I can to investigate solutions that do not involve raising taxes so we can properly fund our fire district and protect lives and property by reopening closed fire stations,” he said in a press release broadcast on July 7.

Funding the fire district with new taxes has repeatedly failed, as three tax measures proposed since 2012 have all lost.  Voluntary reallocation of property taxes has been discussed, but local governments refuse to give up future revenue increases.

Assembly Bill 898, proposed by Assembly Member Frazier earlier this year, involuntarily reallocates $10.5 million from the East Bay Regional Parks District.  It was withdrawn from discussion at the Assembly’s Committee on Local Government on April 17, 2017.

So as of today, no funding solution is moving forward.

All possible solutions need to be examined.  One unexplored solution is an Emergency Services Additional Revenue District (ESARD), created by the state legislature for the fire district.

An ESARD could correct the fire district’s underfunding by providing money borrowed from the state in combination with a portion of the 1% ad valorem property tax revenues generated in unincorporated county areas.

An East Contra Costa Fire Protection District ESARD would be a distinct legal entity, and would be authorized to receive a declining share of unincorporated community areas’ property tax growth increment, borrow and repay money from the state treasury, and determine the adequate and necessary funding level for the fire district.

The ESARD Board would be appointed with elected and community stakeholders, reflecting both local and state-level oversight.  Limited administrative costs and a local administrator may be needed to organize and operate the board until the ECCFPD administrative staff can take over these duties.

A comprehensive and fully acceptable financial model could be developed to illustrate that tax dollars would eventually exceed loan payments, and show that upon dissolution the ESARD would distribute excess ad valorem increments to tax receiving agencies.  This publically interactive model would be available on both the ESARD and ECCFPD websites.

The ESARD would operate in a fashion similar to a redevelopment agency.  This type of government entity dates back to the 1945 Community Redevelopment Act.  Subsequent laws established “tax-increment financing” as a viable method of government funding.

The advantage of establishing a fire district ESARD is that the amount of additional funding would be flexible, established by its Board.

An “adequate and necessary” ECCFPD funding level, which might be six fire stations instead of the district’s current three, could be provided with the help of loaned money from the state.

The ESARD would eventually sunset out of business, once the amount of property tax increments being collected is sufficient to repay the state treasury money that had been borrowed, plus interest.  The property tax increments will then be assigned to the ECCFPD to maintain adequate and necessary service levels, with surplus increments being returned to their source government entities.

California redevelopment agencies accomplished a great deal until 2012, when they were disbanded.  Using the same principles in East Contra Costa could solve the public safety funding emergency.

Bryan Scott is a Brentwood resident and Co-Chair of East County Voters for Equal Protection, a non-partisan citizens action committee whose aim is to improve funding for the ECCFPD.  He can be reached at scott.bryan@comcast.net, or 925-418-4428.  The group’s Facebook page is  https://www.facebook.com/EastCountyVoters/.  

By Bryan Scott

Across our nation one essential service that government provides is responding to calls for help.  Taxes are paid with the expectation that a reasonable response will be provided when members of the public need the police, the fire department, or emergency medical assistance.

Across our nation the first response to a 9-1-1 call is usually the police or fire department. The arrival of this first responder means that someone trained to handle a crisis is taking charge of the situation, be it a crime, a fire, or a medical emergency.

The time for this initial response is typically three-to-five minutes.  The City of Brentwood specifies a response time goal of three-to-five minutes for all emergency calls in their General Plan.  Service models everywhere include this goal.

In East County, it is intended that East Contra Costa Fire Protection District (ECCFPD) provide the first response for medical emergencies.  The May, 2017, ECCFPD 90% Response Time was 10 minutes 26 seconds for Brentwood West, and 9 minutes and 53 seconds for Brentwood East.

In cases where necessary follow-up assistance arrives later, once the first responders have assessed the situation, and perhaps stabilized it.

When the need is for emergency medical service this secondary response is an ambulance from a private business.  Contra Costa County provides this ambulance service for most parts of the county, including the service area of ECCFPD.

By contract this business, American Medical Response (AMR), has agreed to response time goals.  For the service area of ECCFPD (except Bethel Island) the contract states that an ambulance must be onsite for Priority 1 (Potentially Life-Threatening) Emergencies within 11 minutes and 45 seconds.

The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) is an international standards organization that has developed response time standards for fire and emergency medical response organizations.

In the NFPA 1710 standard describing a fire district’s response to a medical emergency it says that, at a minimum, the fire district must be able to “… arrive within a four-minute (240 seconds) response time to 90 percent of all emergency medical incidents.”

This applies to the fire district whether they provide a fundamental First Responder (AED) trained staff or Basic Life Support (BLS) trained staff.

The NFPA 1710 standard describes the same response time for fire calls, “the fire department shall establish a time objective of four minutes (240 seconds) or less for the arrival of the first arriving engine company at a fire suppression incident, …”.

This public safety response model works when there is a first response in the four-to-five minute range, and a secondary response at 11 minutes and 45 seconds.

The response model does not work when both first and secondary responses arrive at the same time, or within a minute of each other.

Last month Brentwood residents needed to call 9-1-1 for help 338 times.

In the Brentwood West area the response time was 1,190 minutes longer than the nationwide goal, using the 90% response time numbers.  Collectively that’s nearly 20 hours late in one month.

For Brentwood East the response time was 900 minutes longer than the nationwide goal, using the same 90% response time numbers.  In this aggregate case help arrived 15 hours late in a single month.

As with the financial investment disclaimers we see, these numbers are averages and may not reflect your individual performance, or the time it takes for you to get help, should you need it.

This public safety response model is plainly broken.  Government needs to take action to fix it.

Bryan Scott is a Brentwood resident and Co-Chair of East County Voters for Equal Protection, a non-partisan citizens action committee whose aim is to improve funding for the ECCFPD.  He can be reached at scott.bryan@comcast.net, or 925-418-4428.  The group’s Facebook page is  https://www.facebook.com/EastCountyVoters/.  

By Bryan Scott

People are dying in East County, homes are burning down, and residents are paying dramatically escalating insurance premiums, often increasing by over 200%.

The fire district serving the needs of over 110,000 people in two cities, half a dozen unincorporated communities, and spread over 249-square miles of Contra Costa County is critically underfunded.

The state of California set-up the funding for these services in the 1980’s, when all that was needed were several groups of volunteer firefighters to serve 8,000 people in a couple of East Contra Costa County farming communities.  The need for fire and emergency medical services in East County has changed dramatically in the last 40 years, and the population has grown to over 110,000 residents.

All fire districts in California are funded with property tax revenues.  A permanent solution to this funding problem requires reallocating some of these property tax funds from the current recipients to the fire district.

Contra Costa County Fire Protection District receives ~14% of the property tax revenue.  The fire district covering the San Ramon Valley gets ~15%, and the fire district serving the Moraga-Orinda area is funded at~ 21%.

The East Contra Costa Fire Protection District (ECCFPD) gets less than 8%.

A survey conducted last Fall found that on a per-person basis ECCFPD gets about $106 each year, compared to $349 per-person for San Ramon Valley and $366 for Moraga-Orinda fire districts.  This unequal funding is to provide essentially the same services to county residents who pay the same property tax rate.

Gus Vina is the City Manager of Brentwood, and Bryan Montgomery is the City Manager of Oakley.  Combined, these two these public administrators are responsible for managing the safety of 100,000 residents.  They have a moral, if not legal, duty to ensure the safety of their employers, the taxpaying residents of their respective cities.

Both City Managers should be applauded for their efforts in dealing with this crisis.

In 2015 a government-employee task force was formed, under the leadership of Vina, and temporary funding was obtained from the two cities and the County.  This funding kept a fourth fire station open for 18 months.

In 2016 both City Managers helped get a Utility User Tax (UUT) on the ballot in their respective cities, even though public opinion polling said the measures would gather only 40% support, at best, with the voters.  While a general tax measure of this type requires only a simple majority to pass, Brentwood’s vote came in at 39% in favor.  Support for the UUT in Oakley was less.

Both Brentwood and Oakley are now talking about another temporary funding contribution, along with the County.

These temporary band-aide funding measures, do not address the fundamental problem, the structural property tax funding deficiency.

It is too bad neither one of these municipal managers has gotten behind the permanent solution to the funding crisis, reallocating property tax funds.  But perhaps it is understandable.

The challenge here is that the money for a permanent fix comes from the current recipients of property tax funding.  These recipients include the cities both Vina and Montgomery are paid to run, Brentwood and Oakley.

And while they have endorsed short-term financial contributions, they have not worked towards the obvious and final fix to the funding crisis, the reallocation of property tax funds.

So, East County residents will continue to die, homes will continue to burn down, and insurance premiums will continue to go up.

Scott is a Brentwood resident and Co-Chair of East County Voters for Equal Protection, a non-partisan citizens action committee whose aim is to improve funding for the ECCFPD.  He can be reached at scott.bryan@comcast.net, or 925-418-4428.  The group’s Facebook page is  https://www.facebook.com/EastCountyVoters/.