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HomeMy WebLinkAbout08/02/96 BAKERSFIELD MEMORANDUM August 2, 1996 TO: HONORABLE MAYOR AND CITY CO FROM: ALAN TANDY, CITY MANAGER SUBJECT: GENERAL INFORMATION 1. Attached is a copy of the transcript recorded at the May 29, 1996 meeting of the Citizen Advisory Committee for the Metropolitan Bakersfield Fire Service Study. This transcript is being provided to you to give you a sense of the areas in which the Committee was specifically concerned and asked the consultant for clarification. I'd like to call your attention to the following pages: 6 - 12; 14 & 15; 19 & 20; 23; 26; 29; 32 & 33; 36 & 37; 41 - 48; 51 -53; 55. & 56; 58 & 59; 62 - 66; 74; 76 & 77. Unfortunately, there were a number of questions that the consultant was not able to respond to. Should you be interested in any area for which there is not a complete explanation, please let staff know, and we will contact the consultant and ask him to provide further information. Be advised that the transcript is rough, and no editing has been done as yet to names and/or sentence structure/grammar. Staffwill send the transcript back out for editing if the Council should feel it necessary. 2. In the Council goal setting session you instructed staff to do a study of a Convention Center arena expansion. A preliminary paper on that from Lee Andersen is enclosed. We are doing a low cost architectural study of where and how much and will report that back to you in response to the goal in six weeks or so. 3. I am planning to take at least part of the week of August 19-23 as vacation. During my absence, Gall Waiters will be in charge. 4. An update on the City/County recycling programs is enclosed. The County plans to set up four drop off recycling centers. Per our joint recycling agreement, if the County operates four of their own drop off centers, they don't have to pay the City for the program operation. However, they will be paying about triple the cost for their own centers compared to what they are currently paying the City. 5. In last week's General Information, we reported that there could be a possible delay in starting the Stockdale Highway/California Avenue intersection expansion. We have since met with PG&E and the contractor regarding our concerns and have worked out the scheduling problems. Construction will commence on August 12th and should be completed by November 1st. Honorable Mayor and City Council August 02, 1996 Page 2 6. A summary of retiree insurance changes is enclosed. Out of 308 retirees, 55 elected to make changes in their medical plan. We should realize a significant savings from that, as will the retirees. 7. We plan to submit a grant application for a HUD-sponsored program designed to assist local governments in undertaking programs for the identification and control of lead-based paint hazards in eligible housing. A detailed description of the program is attached. 8. We have received the County's reply (enclosed) to our inquiry about their participation in the Allen Road trunk sewer pipeline extension. We are preparing a response, and a staff level meeting will be set up. The County continues to believe that the CSA-71 Agreement gives them an open fight to the wastewater plant without paying the associated costs. We believe we can require a reasonable means of payment. We'll continue discussions. 9. Also enclosed is the latest annexation newsletter for the Chester #3 area. Because of the large Hispanic population, the newsletter includes a section written in Spanish. The final newsletters for three of the four Phase One annexation areas will be distributed in two to three weeks and will include an opinion survey on annexation. 10. The Development Services monthly status report is enclosed. Note Item #10 - yet another incident involving lack of cooperation from the County Environmental Health Services, which only reinforces our desire to take over the Environmental Health function within the city. 11. Enclosed for your information is the CIP Status Report for July, prepared'by the Public Works Department. 12. The video systems we observed for the Convention Center are of terrific quality and run $100,000 less than the previous version we have been shown. We'll move toward the bid phase. 13. We held a settlement meeting to try to get out of the Kern-Delta/North Kern lawsuit. North Kern would let us out; Kern Delta apparently not. More on this will come out later. 14. The Jehovah's Witnesses are holding their District Convention at the Convention Center this summer over a period of six weekends. Enclosed is a very complimentary letter from them regarding the condition of the convention center, the downtown area and lodging. Honorable Mayor and City Council August 02, 1996 Page 3 15. Responses to the following Council referrals are enclosed: · Speeding on Panorama Drive; · Request for Staff.to communicate to County the impact of additional traffic in the western Rosedale area; · Update regarding traffic signs in Spruce Street alley; · Options available for speed limit and traffic controls along White Lane; · Address traffic issues at Old River Bridge/Palm/Calloway; · Plans for the Traffic Operations Center (specifically, signal sequence); · Update on additional turf at Yokuts Park. AT:rs cc: Department Heads Pamela McCarthy, Acting City Clerk Trudy Slater, Administrative Analyst FIRE SERVICES STUDY MEETING May 29, 1996 I think we could probably start by going around the table and introducing ourselves and then we could -- Ben, if you want to just start with the agenda. HR. COX: Let's start with the introductions. My name is Louis Cox and I'm part of the Study Committee. MS. WAITERS: Gail Waiters, Assistant City Manager. MR. FINE: Bud Fine with the County Administrative Office sitting in for Del Klein. MR. SMITH: Steve Smith, committee member. MS. BRUNNI: Conni Brunni, committee member, from the City. MR. WITTE: Ken Witte. I'm on the committee as well. MS. PPOUT: I'm Cathy Prout Kraut with MR. CLARK: Dan Clark, County Fire. MR. KELLY: Mike Kelly, City Fire. MR. ROWDLEY: Gordon Rowdley of Tri-Data, consultant. MS. WAITERS: Okay. How about let's go around the room, also? : Sure. MR. ALT: Jim Alt, County Fire. MR. THOMAS: Herb Thomas, City Fire. MR. LEWIS: Curt Lewis from County. MR. WILLIAMS: Larry Williams from City Fire. MS. CHICHESTER: Susan Chichester, City Fire. : . : , Bakersfield Californian. MR. LUCAN: Tim Lucan, City Fire. Fire Services Study Meeting 2 May 29, 1996 MR. AMBRY: Jim Ambry, City Fire. MR. COX: Greg Cox, Supervisor Patrick's office. MR. WATKINS: Watkins, City Fire. MR. ANWOOD: Dean Anwood, City Fire. : , City Fire. MR. COX: Thank you. The second item is approval of minutes - of last meeting. : I move that we accept the minutes. : And I will take that motion. : I'll second. MR. COX: we have a motion and a second. All those in favor say aye. CHORUS: Aye. MR. COX: Opposed? : Public Statements. MR. COX: This part of the meeting is open to anybody in the public who has a comment or a statement they would like to make concerning this study. : When the Chair comes, then we can bring that up again and he can decide how he wants to proceed. MR. COX: Thanks, Terri, for bringing that up. I appreciate that. Any other statements? : Yeah. You want everybody to sign that, Marie? : Yes, I do, please. MR. COX: Under old business, I guess we get to the heart of the matter which is the qUestions that the committee members may have. And Mr. Rowdley? Fire Services Study Meeting 3 May 29, 1996 : Actually give his presentation. MR. COX: Under old business? Okay. : Yeah, so maybe we could just do something without signing . MR. cox: We'll go to new business. : Well, technically speaking, Items in the minutes could be considered old business, but I think maybe we could defer old business until after the new business. MR. COX: We'll defer old business until after new business. : I think I'd like to hear from the consultant. MR. COX: You want to hear from the consultant first? I would prefer that Les be here so we could all -- if we could do that. : Louis, have you presented to Gordon a list of the questions that we've kind of come up, or does he already know about what we're investigating? MR. COX: I assume -- and you know what you do when you assume something -- that he is off to both City and County. : I believe Adel has presented those questions. : Yeah. I've had a considerable amount of feedback so I don't know if I have all the questions, but I've heard a lot of questions. MR. COX: Okay. : Since we are waiting for Les, how about if we just have a general overview from the Fire Chiefs for the sake of the audience and just trying to get a perspective on what it is we're doing here and then leading into Gordon's presentation? Just a general overview so that the audience knows what we've done so far and what the committee is about? If you don't mind? MR. KELLY: Well, we've received I believe six draft documents prior to receiving the final draft. This will be I believe our sixth meeting going through the process of reviewing Fire Services Study Meeting 4 May 29, 1996 the draft. We have identified areas within the document as provided to this point, which through discussion we feel warrant either more information or more specific detailed analysis in order to determine if they should be implemented or not. The committee at their meetings has come up with a varied list of questions a~d concerns. Chief Clark and I have commented in regard to our interpretation how the system currently works and also our opinions in regard to possible improvements, both in efficiency and showing an acceptable level of service in a more economic way, if possible. There also has been a great deal of input from of course people within both departments in compiling the information from which the study was created. I think we're to the point now that both the advisory committee, myself and I'm sure Chief Clark also would like some more specific clarification on some of the suggestions that were provided in the study itself. As far as I know, that's the emphasis for today's meeting. : Now, part of the proposal for this fire study when we commissioned Tri-Data was that once the study got to a final draft stage that the consultant would meet with the committee to review the actual findings as well as the recommendations and then ~nce that was done, then a final report would be submitted. So ~ 'are at the stage now where we have all reviewed the draft fire study and quite naturally, we have some concerns about it on both the County side and the City side. And so we have given some information to Gordon and he is here today to respond to questions and to make some clarifications. When we have accomplished that, then the committee will continue working, and the committee,s role is to assess the recommendations and the study and then to make a recommendation to report out to both of the elected bodies on their findings of the study. So there is going to be a separate reporting to the elected bodies, both the City and the County, by the committee as well as by staff. And we've suggested to the committee that they take as long as necessary so that they can be comfortable with the information and so that when we get to the point where we are making a presentation to the elected bodies that everybody is comfortable with their recommendations. (Discussion about meeting dates) CHAIR: Okay. New business -- presentation to the Board. I guess we'll start off with an intro and then I'm sure that you'll find out that a lot of the committee members have some questions involving your study, want to know if you know what you're talking about or if you know all that kind of stuff. Fire Services Study Meeting 5 May 29, 1996 : Excuse me. When we asked for public comment, there was someone in the audience that wanted to address something to Tri-Data, and we need to see what you want to do, if you want to have questions from the public at this time or do you want to wait? CHAIR: Well, I think we wait. He gives his presentation and then we'll have the committee ask some questions and then the public can certainly -- I know it's a public meeting, and I don't have a problem with that. So, welcome to Bakersfield. MR. ROWDLEY: Thank you very much. It's nice to be back in Bakersfield. I've been coming back now it seems for about a year and a half on a fairly regular basis. I have some overheads, and if we get a projector I'll use the overheads, but in the meantime I'll wing it and if I have something good on an overhead I'll hold it up so everyone can have a look at it. My name is Gordon Rowdley. I work for Tri-Data Corporation. We're based in Arlington, Virginia, and we do studies primarily of fire departments and other emergency service organizations for cities and counties across the U.S. and Canada. We also do a considerable amount of work for the U.S. Fire Administration and other fire service-related organizations. This study for Bakersfield and Kern County is of about twenty-five that we've done in the last four years. It's been one of the most interesting and challenging ones, and let me start off by thanking first the four key staff people that we work with: Gail Waiters and Del Klein and Chiefs Clark and Kelly, who've been extremely helpful to us in trying to get this job done. It's been long and interesting. I'd also like to thank the staff people from both the City and the County who've been most helpful. Now we have a citizens group and it's your challenge to figure out what should be done now with this information in front of you, and I have to admit that there probably isn't a clear path laid out as a result of the study. We were asked to come in and look at the situation with the City and the County and say, "Where should this fire service situation go from here?" Given it's gotten to this point, we have an existing relationship, the joint powers agreement between the City and the County which is working,~ but there's a lot of concern whether it is the absolutely best answer and we want someone to come in and give us an outside, impartial, unbiased analysis based on factual information of just where we should go. And this is what we've tried to do. Fire Services Study Meeting 6 May 29, 1996 Our findings, which you have in the report in front of you, are inconclusive to some extent because they don't say that you should go absolutely in one direction or another. So let me read from my overheads and tell you what we've got. The objective: first, to identify the most cost effective and efficient manner of delivering fire services to the metro Bakersfield area in the future. We did that in two phases. We said first, examine and evaluate the existing system and identify alternatives that stem from that existing system. And then in Phase Two, analyze those alternatives and develop _ recommendations. After looking very carefully at the existing system, we found~that it is working. It is reasonably effective. It is reasonably ~efficient. It is reasonably reliable. It does meet current needs, so there isn't a big problem with the existing system, at least not one that jumps out and says, "Fix me." It's complicated. There are two fire departments basically covering the same geographic area. There's a complicated formula for how the budget gets divided up. They share a communications system. They use the same training facility, but have their own training staffs. They do some things together and some things separately, but the whole thing works. The other thing that's important to note is that over the last five years with the budget situation here, and which is fairly typical of California more so than the rest of the country lately, is they've both had their budgets cut significantly so they're both working with very trimmed organizations. If we'd have looked at it five years ago, we might have been able to say, "Well, there's some fat we could trim away if we really wanted to get down to a lean, mean organization." But somebody got here first with a knife and cut all the fat away. So there just isn't much fat anywhere that's available to cut. There's just about enough to get the job done and no more, and probably some areas -- if I take my mean consultant hat off and put my fire chief hat on, there's some things that I would probably want to add more than subtract from the system. But there isn't a lot to be saved. So we did look at the alternate of approaches in relation to the cost and the performance of the existing system using where were are today as a benchmark. Given that it.works reasonably well, it makes efficient use of the available resources and it's reasonably cost effective, it's fair to say that most of the significant cost savings that could be achieve through cooperation or consolidation of the two fire departments have already been achieved through the joint powers agreement. They operate for the purposes of responding to emergency calls as if they were one fire Fire Services Study Meeting 7 May 29, 1996 department. We noticed, in looking carefully at the way they operate, that increased cooperation could improve the operational effectiveness for emergency operations, so they're dispatched, so that the closest units to any particular emergency respond whether the emergency is in the city or the county, whatever units are closest to that emergency or whatever combination of units are closest to that emergency respond together. They're dispatched by the same communications center. But there are a lot of little things about the way they operate that are not as smooth as they could be if they were all working off the same music. It's as if you have half brass band and half string orchestra, and when they show up to play together, it's not quite as smooth as it could be if they all practiced together all the time. They both do a good job at their own thing. They work out okay together, but it's just not as good as ir'could be. So a recommendation we would make is if all the training was the same, the standard operating procedures were the same, if everybody trained and practiced together, the operation could come off a little bit smoother. There's nothing to be saved there; it's just a matter of performance could be improved. We also noticed that increased cooperation, coordination or consolidation could improve the efficiency and cost effectiveness of some of the non-emergency response functions of the fire departments. Non-emergency programs, which is fire prevention, public education, fire investigations -- all these things are done in parallel. The City does it and the County does it, and they both do them but they don't do them quite the same way, and in one the City might do a little better and in another one the County might do a little better. But really it's the fact that they're different more than the fact that one is better than the other, and there's some redundancy there, when you get do~n to say you have two different groups performing the same jobs basically side by side. If we all got together and did it the same way, there probably isn't much to be saved but the net product might come out a little bit better. It also applies to administrative services, things like payroll or purchasing. There's a payroll system that pays the County people and payroll system that pays the City people. When the City Fire Department needs 3omething, it goes through the City Purchasing Department, and whe~ ~he County people need something it goes through the County Purchasing Department, so two paths to accomplish the same things. Fire Services Study Meeting 8 May 29, 1996 Support functions -- things like vehicle maintenance. There's a good vehicle maintenance and replacement program in the City; there's a good one in the County. They both work. What we're saying is that if all of those things were consolidated, it would probably come out working a little bit better and a little bit more efficiently. Ail of the areas that we looked at where improvements could be made, those improvements could be made through cooperation or functional consolidation or absolute consolidation of the organizations. A lot of it's already been achieved just through cooperation by agreeing to work together. So the fact that you agree to do it together and actually do proceed to do it together really can work for most of these things. Lynn said, "What if we stop doing it the way we're doing it? What if we terminate the joint powers agreement and just say, ~Okay, County take care of the county or City take care of the city, or let's slice the pie a different way, but let's get out of this relationship because it seems to make people uncomfortable?,,, Well, one thing that would happen is it would be more expensive to provide the same level of service through a individual department, or there would be a decline in service because what happened when we went into the joint powers agreement, the fact that we cut all the fat out of the system, took out all the redundancies so there were just enough fire stations and just enough companies throughout the metropolitan area to get the job done. And if you tried to pull them apart again, you'd have to add companies back in for either one to be able to fully fulfill its mission. So that's just not a good idea. As I said, there are no major differences in the risks or the demand for service between the incorporated and the unincorporated portions or areas of the metropolitan area. Once upon a time when this relationship started up, there probably were. There was a County Fire Department that protected the thousands of square miles of sparsely populated area around a densely built-up core of the city of Bakersfield. And what's happened in the intervening years is Bakersfield has spread out into a big, sprawling mass of quasi-suburbia that drifts off to the edges, part of which is County and part of which is City, and you really can't say that the City is a different bit of geography than the County. In the metropolitan area, it all looks about the same. It has about the same fire risk characteristics. It needs the same kind of fire department, basically, so those factors are all pretty much the same. Fire Services Study Meeting 9 May 29, 1996 We talked about whether you should have one fire department or two. We came up with the startling revelation that there's no compelling reason to maintain separate City and County Fire Departments. When you look at it, there's nothing that comes up and says you absolutely should have two separate fire departments, and there's no compelling reason that says you ought to merge them into one fire department. There's nothing that jumps out and says it's so obvious that anyone can see that that's the only answer. It works the way it is. So we caught between the two boundaries of you don't clearly need to go one way or the other; you're in the middle, and either way would work. We noticed a lot of what we call impediments to progress. It's hard to put the right tone on it, but'if we look at the two together, first the histories of the two fire departments and their organizational cultures are different. As a fire service person, I've been around fire departments for thirty-odd years. When I go into a City fire station and I go into a County fire station, there's a different organizational culture. They come from different backgrounds. They approach life differently. They're not -- they're not the same fire department. They're both okay, they're both fine, but they're not the same. And the relationship between the City and the County probably isn't perfect, and I'm not going to talk about that a lot, but I guess people who live here may have noticed that occasionally there's some disagreement between the City and the County on different things. So they don't mesh together very well. : But you're not talking about the Fire Department. You're talking about government. MR. ROWDLEY: Government and fire department. The fire departments.get along, but they're not transparent. You couldn't just lay one on top of the other and say there's no difference because there clearly are. There's a visible difference. When you see the white fire trucks with blue stripes and the red fire trucks with-the white tops, they look different, and when you talk to them, the way they approach business is different. So they're not absolutely the same. This gets in the way doing a lot of things together. The joint powers ~greement is a good way of doing business, but two different cultures of the organization makes it hard to do that as well as it could be done. We also noticed that the maintenance of the JPA relationship requires a significant effort by both fire departments Fire Servic%s Study Meeting 10 May 29, 1996 and both jurisdictions. It seems a tremendous amount of energy goes in to trying to make this relationship work -- what do we do next, how do we do it? We've agreed to have one training academy, but now we have a facility, we're both under the same roof, and now we're talking about who gets which office, who has which program. There's a constant back and forth just trying to maintain it. In the communications facility -- it's interesting in communications. The original concept to go into one communications facility -- it makes sense to have one communications facility for the two, but the City fire dispatchers and the City communications system and the County dispatchers and the County communications system and put them in the same room side by side. Over the years, the people who work there figured out, "This doesn't make sense for us to do it this way and them to do it that way. Why don't we all among ourselves figure out how to do it together and make ourselves interchangeable?" So while on paper and in payroll they exist as City personnel and County personnel and City fire stations that are dispatched on one set of radio equipment and the County on another set of radio equipment, all the people intermingle, and do the same jobs so everybody can do all the same jobs in the room, but they're still the same. This carries on to everything about the relationship. This relationship has been studied and studied and studied, and that comes to why we were brought in, because there's constant effort required to maintain and figure out where to go with this relationship. It seems to be virtually impossible for this relationship to plan, and this is a growing area. The population of the whole area is growing, the City is annexing, so the balance between what's City and what's County is changing, and you haven't been able to figure out a way to decide who is going to do what. Who builds the next fire station where? If the City builds a fire station here, is the County going to build the next fire station there? If the County builds a fire station there, will the City build a fire station here? Well, the JPA to agree on all of these things, but they just can't seem to agree on them. So it's a difficult relationship. I was thinking about this last night, and I said, "If a couple had this relationship, they'd get a divorce." But you can't do that because you can't divorce the geography. No matter what you do, the City and the County geographic areas and the service areas and the population that needs to be protected are going to stay intermingled. So it's not that easy. You can't pick up and go home or move out. Fire Services Study Meeting 11 May 29, 1996 What would consolidation do? Consolidation, whether it's functional consolidation as in "Let's just figure out how to make this all work together," or absolute consolidation of "Let's put these two into one," first it would improve the operational coordination, the things you notice about, they don't work quite the same out there. Well, they all work on the same standard operating procedures and all have the same training, all set up their apparatus in the same way, then they could really be interchangeable and both do the same things when they go to an emergency, and it would work better. And through consolidation in whatever form, you could unify the management. Right now there are two separate management structures within the fire departments. There are two fire chiefs and there are two administrative structures and there are two chains of command. You could bring them together and have one. within the County and the City, a fire chief of the City reports to the City Manager. A fire chief in the County reports to the County administrative parallel relationships. You could get that into one organizational reporting to one set of bosses instead of two reporting to two sets of bosses. To address the relationship problem by doing away with the parallel structures, they'd have to agree on everything and just bring them into one kind of a unified structure. So we think that there are benefits from bringing them together. Some other findings that may or may not be relevant, depending on how you look at it -- they seem relevant to us. One is that the expenditures aren't directly related to revenues, that. the amount of money that supports the two fire departments can't be tied back to how much revenue is generated by the ares that they serve within the metropolitan area. You can't that the City provides sixteen million dollars' worth of service and gets sixteen million dollars out of the area it serves, and the County provides twelve million dollars worth of service and gets twelve million dollars' out of the area it serves. It doesn't happen that way. The most significant factor is that the County operation in the metro area brings in, the best estimate we've got, about six million dollars that's generated outside the metro area from a tax base outside the metro area that supports operations inside the metro area. So when you try to look at cutting the metro area out of the County and dealing with it separately, you end up with this question of now where does six millions .~ome from? Now, to look at it easily and say, "Well, it's the County's six million dollars so the County can move it anywhere it wants it," and I guess that's the simple answer. But somewhere Fire Services Study Meeting 12 May 29, 1996 you've got to figure out what to do about it. That's about a quarter of the total budget. Another consideration -- and depending on where you sit it's either, good or bad -- is thaa the County resources in the metro area to some extent support operations in the rest of the County. So if you cut the metro area of Kern County and said; "You know, let's make a metro area fire department that's separate," now you're cutting a hole out of the doughnut as far the whole County operation is concerned because the County uses those units to some extent outside the metro area. And if youput one'hat on, you can say, "Well, gee, that's efficiency because you're using resources on the larger scale." If you look at it the other way, you say, "Well, you're taking our resources to protect an area that's outside of our metro area." Yes, they're both right. It's just a matter of how you want to look at it. Having done all that analysis, we got down to saying, "Well, what should be done?" You should increase the operational coordination. It's obvious to us that that should happen. Just to simplify things, consolidate the emergency communication center into one organization. The employees have already figured out how to do that. The only thing that's still separate about them really is the two separate radio system and the employees get paid by two separate payroll systems, and having those two· separate systems just complicates things like scheduling and hiring and figuring out if you have to add a couple of dispatchers because it's busier, now do'you add City dispatchers or County dispatchers. Put it into one and figure out how to pay for it, but let it happen. The second thing is upgrade the hardware and the software in the communications center, because what's there was really good when it was put in fifteen years ago approximately, but it's old and it's outdated and it really needs to be improved. So let's go out and let's get the right stuff. The next thing -- really consolidate the training divisions. When the JPA was put together, they said, "One training center -- instead of having two training centers, let's have one ~training center." Well, now they have, as I described earlier, one building with two training organizations in the same building which do some thing together and other things separately, but the net training that comes out is at least half-different. So if we're really going to operate together to the extent we're talking about, let's have one training division that trains both so that everybody operates the same. It increases efficiency within the training system and fully integrates the procedures that they operate with. Fire Services Study Meeting 13 May 29, 1996 Increase the level of coordination and cooperation in fire prevention, public fire safety education, fire investigations and hazardous materials management programs. Again, in each of these areas there are two programs going on side by side. It would take essentially the same number of people the same amount of effort, but it would probably come out smoother if everybody was doing it together instead one group doing it one way and one group doing it the other way. And in those things that we're talking about -- you know, getting together on programs, we could talk all day about, "Well, the way we do it is better than the way they do it," or "The way they do it is better than the way the other guys do it." The one thing is get it all together and do it the .smart way. It doesn't matter if it ends up being the City's way of doing it or the County's way of doing it. Figure out which way works better and do it the smart way. Cooperate and consolidate as much as you're comfortable to do on administrative services, support functions, and joint purchasing. Joi~t purchasing is one where there may be some money to be saved. It's hard to put a number on it because they're both fairly sizable organizations, but the more you buy the better your buying power is, so if you buy things together you can probably save money. If the City is going to buy'two fire trucks and the County is going to buy two fire trucks, together they're going to buy four fire trucks and you can probably buy four fire trucks a little bit cheaper if you all cet together. On the same thing with the helmets and coats and boots and gloves and flashlights and hose and everything else, so the more you get together the more efficient you can be. Coordinate planning -- what service level we're going to provide, where fire stations are going to be located, and we'll probably talk about that more later on, but where to build them, when to build them and who's going to build them. And if there's only one fire department the who part goes away and a lot of the back and forth goes away. Applying apparatus and equipment specifications -- that blends with the purchasing recommendation. And the other areas -- everything else that the two organizations do differently probably end up doing better if you do them the same. Everybody's interested in the money. It's not a big surprise. Right now in the metro area, the spending -- and this is based on '94-'95 figures. It's probably gone up a little bit. The County is spending about twelve point one million dollars to Fire Services Study Meeting 14 May 29, 1996 support the operation in the metro area, the City about sixteen point two. Where are the savings? If you merged the two into one organization, about the only thing that you could really get rid of is a fire chief and a couple of administrative people. You'd have one too many fire chiefs. That probably makes the two fire chiefs in the room uncomfortable. Probably makes a lot of the other people smile, but they won't let on. Together there's maybe three hundred and fifty to four hundred thousand dollars whick is somewhere between one point two and one point four percent of 2he total budget, which isn't enough to be a compelling reason to do it. There just isn't enough money to say, "Do this to save money." It's nice to save three hundred and fifty to four hundred thousand dollars. Having been around this kind of operation for a while, the process of doing it would probably use up the savings for the first year or two. By the time you figured out who goes where, and who's going to get laid off, or who bumps into another job or how do you take these two systems that do it differently and bring them together, probably those savings for the first year or two would get lost in the shuffle. It's not enough to be really worthwhile to do it for that reason. In the long run, you could say, "Yeah, we'd save four hundred thousand dollars a year forever," then that's nice and you build that into the equation. But it's not a lot of money. It's not -- you now, we're not talking saving millions. Right now, there are two Cit~ battalions and two County battalion -- that's battalion chiefs on duty, so there are four battalion chiefs on duty in the metropolitan area. My mean budget- cutting consultant hat on, I say yeah, we could get by with three so we can get rid of three of those battalion chiefs. Put my fire chief hat back on, I'd fight like hell to keep those battalion chiefs because they've already given away as much as it's comfortable to give away out of this organization. So there's another two hundred and fifty thousand dollars that maybe, could be saved I wouldn't recommend doing. The next thing we did was look at the different structures under which this relationship -- (End Side A, Tape 1) (Begin Side B, Tape 1) MR. ROWDLEY: -- the relationship exists now. You can keep it -- it works okay, or you can have separate City and County fire departments or go back and say, "We're going to separate, but we're Fire Services Study Meeting 15 May 29, 1996 going to maintain an automatic mutual aid relationship which is not as expensive as the joint powers agreement. We're not going to go around everywhere to the closest unit, but we'll have a relationship where it makes sense." The only losers there is the citizens. They spend the same amount of money, the service isn't quite as good. Doesn't seem like a good idea. What you can do with that mutual aid, we just say, "Okay, we'll take our fire trucks and we'll cover our area. You take yours and you cover your area." Again, costs the same, the citizens lose service. Wouldn't recommend that. so we said, "We bring them together into one organization," which seems to make sense operationally. The City could contract to serve the County areas. Expand the City's service area and the County pay the City to provide the service to the metro area, or to a somewhat larger area, or the County could contract to serve the City areas, either way. Either one would work. It would be okay. The City contracting to serve the -- sorry, the County contracting to serve the City areas is in essence the same as making it all the County fire department~ whether~it,s a single service area or a contracted service area, the effect is the same. If the City contracted to serve the County areas, it would have the effect I described earlier of cutting the hole out of the doughnut which would decrease the overall efficiency of the County organization. So.~that wouldn't be real attractive to the County. Number 4 is a lot like 3B, a single County-wide fire department. Number 5, a metropolitan Bakersfield fire department is kind of like 3A, which there would be a fire department that serves the metro area and a single separate from the fire department that serves the rest of the County. It could have any kind of relationship you want to have, and we recommended -- or at least suggested; I won't say recommended -- a structure of a fire authority. This single organization has to report to something or somebody. It can report to the City or it can report to the County. What's been done and is becoming more popular is a fire authority, which is to say that you have a board, and the County appoints some of the members of the board, and the City appoints some of the members of the board and the Fire Department reports to that board, and that board becomes the governing board over the Fire Department. That way, the City and the County both have part of the responsibility, like you have a unified chain of command. So that's one way of doing it, and people who have done it seem to like it. Fire Services Study Meeting 16 May 29, 1996 The other way is a special district. It's a more traditional way of doing it. Trying to create a new special district in California with the tax situation that it is today seems to be virtually impossible, so we don't think that that looks like a real good idea. The one that makes the most sense, at least to us externally, is a single County-wide fire department. We think that would work best. Absolute compelling reason -- that that would be the only reason, or the only thing to do, I can't come up and find any absolute reason why that's absolutely the only thing to do. Looking at it externally, looking at all of the things that we see about it, that's probably the best answer in the long run. But there are a lot of reasons why people probably wouldn't agree with it, and I'm willing to talk about them and discuss them and debate them and think about them. I've got one more slide here that I have to 'show you. People in the back room that made up my graphics stuff decided that we should have an opener like this, but we use it as a.closer. But they kept coming back to me and saying, "Should we have the two fire trucks face to face or ~ack to back, side by side, or just have them run into each other?" So we decided face to face was probably the best way if doing it. That is the extent of the prepared presentation. Probably the best thing I can do from here on is to try to answer questions. CHAIR: At this time then, we'll go in to those several committee members who have questions with regards to clarification and a little bit more explanation on the study. So we'd open up to committee members. You raising your hand? : Yes. I just wanted to make some kind of recommendations. Committee members as well as staff at the table, and then how you want to get questions from the audience. CHAIR: Well, my recommendation was, as I said a while ago, I just as soon go around with the committee -- his presentation, let the committee ask some questions, and then after that then open it up to the public for the public You're welcome to make comments. Le~'s go ahead and go through this in a committee standpoint. We've put together a pretty good lis~ as far as having questions for the consultant. I think most of you have them in your packet, but it tells you on Page 44. I looked through there and I couldn't find the Fires Two. There were some other ones that were discussed prior to that, so I would think it would be appropriate -- I think most of you have in your book as Fire Services Study Meeting 17 May 29, 1996 we go through the first forty-some pages. I mean, I think we pretty well agreed that some of these questions need to be asked, so to make sure that each committee member has the opportunity to ask some of the question in the first part of that, I'd certainly open it up for discussion to the committee members to see how they want to handle that. Let's go ahead and~ get started here. As far as Page 44, I think it would be best to go into executive summary, and most of you have your book pretty well '~attered and tattered by now. Let's see if there's any questions t3~at you'd to ask of the consultant. We're open to discussion, so with that we'll go ahead and get started. I think I'd like to kick it off by just asking the -- on the very first part of the -- we talked about City and County government and their role in, you know, proving anything, realizing this is just a recommendation from this committee. They'll make the final decisions through the City Council and the Board of Supervisors. But I would think that in starting the study that probably the original charge -- see, at the time it was agreed by the City and County would jointly sponsor a study. Was there instructions given at that time or just free rein? Was there actually documents presented by from the City and the County, or how did that work? M~. ROWDLEY: There were limited documents at the time. The instructions were to look at a number of issues, and I can't -- there's a list of issues and I don't remember exactly what was on the list, but it was "come in, give us an external look at these particular issues and report back to us." CHAIR: Okay, but the City had a list and the County had a list? : What we did was we presented a request for a proposal and we had consultants come in and make presentations. And in the request for proposal, we outlined specifically the areas that we wanted to cover, some of the issues we wanted them to address and some of the alternatives. I do have a copy'of that here. CHAIR: But it was a joint list? : It was a joint product. Fire Services Study Meeting 18 May 29, 1996 MR. ROWDLEY: Let me add, though, there wasn't a City position and a County position at any time at all. It was, "Come in and look at us and tell us where we ought to go." CHAIR: Okay. I guess we follow up in this matter -- you know, we have the report and then the committee makes that recommendation back to both the City Council and the Board of Supervisor. Okay. Just making sure that we all know which hymnal we're working from. As far as executive summary, is there any questions there as we go through? _ : I have one on Page 7. CHAIR: Okay, before 7 is there anybody else that's got a question? I'd sort of like to just thumb through this so we dcn't keep going back and forth. I did this once in Sunday School and we never did get through the chapters. Okay, what do you got, Conni? MS. BRUNNI: Item Number 13 on Roman Numeral IV. CHAIK: Roman Numeral IV, okay. MS. BRUNNI: And this was touched on, Mr. Rowdley, by you in your presentation -- in regard to this six million dollars, I'd like to know how you calculated that. What is that number based on? MR. ROWDLEY: We calculated that by seeing what -- I wish I could reconstruct the map in my head -- how much the equivalent fire tax revenue is. Have you gone through the equation of the equivalent fire tax? MS. BRUNNI: I understand what the fire tax is MR. ROWDLEY: Yes. There's an agreement that was reached between the City and the County to establish an equivalent fire tax rate, so while the total amount of property is fixed, there's an agreement which says to equalize City and County service areas, to agree that there is a quote, "an equivalent to a fire tax," and we apply it to the City areas and to the County areas, and you can trade back and forth between the City and the County. When we add up -- if that's applied to the County areas and if that's applied to the City's areas, well, there's another six million dollars that comes into the system. And that comes in from County tax areas that are outside the metro area. Fire Services Study Meeting 19 May 29, 1996 MS. BRUNNI: And they're not receiving any service in relation to that six million dollars. MR. ROWDLEY: They're receiving County Fire Department service. They're part of the service area of the County, but like anywhere else, there's more revenue that comes from this areas than comes from another area, so it has the effect of flowing in. When you put a fence around the metropolitan area, it flows into the metropolitan area. MS. 3RUNNI: I think we equated that partly to some of the oil-prod~cing property, but they receive service back, I think is my point. MR. ROWDLEY: Yeah, and it's a real abstract figure the way property taxes are constrained in California because you can't really identify what's the Fire Department's piece of the revenue any more. It's an equivalent figure. CHAIR: What was the next page then? Who's -- Louis? MR. COX: I had Page 7. CHAIR: Page 7? MR. COX: The responsibilities outside the JPA, last sentence, "Any major changes in current arrangements inside the JPA area would have some impact on the delivery of fire services to the rest of the county." Could you explain that? MR. ROWDLEY: Yeah. If, for instance, we cut out the metro area and made it a separate fire department serving the metro area, and separated it from the rest of the county, then the units from inside that area would Jot be part of the county-wide system. So if something happens in some other part of the county that needs to draw some of those resources, then they would be under a different kind of relationship rather than one fire department. It's also evident that some of the County's key facilities are in the metro area -- the apparatus maintenance area, administration, training -- all those things are in the metro area, so that could just be a convenience factor of having those key facilities in an area that's not part of your service area. But that would be a convenience factor. The real service delivery impact would be to cut out that much of the organization from a fairly key geographic location in the county and make it part of another organization. Fire Services Study Meeting 20 May 29, 1996 MR. COX: So when that was -- you were specifically talking about a metro fire district as opposed to consolidation? MR. ROWDLEY: Yeah, basically. I'm thinking in the concept of anything that would change the relationship of what happens inside to what happens outside. Any way it changes would probably have some impact on the area outside. If it all became one fire department, it would have less impact. If it became a separate fire department, it would probably have the most impact, and any other change would have some impact to some extent. MR. COX: On Roman Numeral VI, the first full paragraph: "While it's determined that the desired objectives can be achieved to a reasonable extent with either continuation of JPA relationship or full consolidation of fire departments, consolidation is the more attractive option in the long term." Then I get confused. i'm just trying to understand how you're thinking on this. Then you go back over to Roman Numeral -- what, the three little i's? On Number VII there, you say there's no compelling r~son from the service perspective. I think I understand what' ou're saying, but maybe give me a little bit more clarification on that. I got a little confused when I read that, and I read one of the ones on VII there, because it says, "There's no compelling reason from a service delivery perspective to maintain separate City and fire departments in Bakersfield or to merge them into the same organization." MR. ROWDLEY: Let me start off with that, when we say there's no compelling reason to merge them or to keep them separate. When you come and look at it, the first thing you look at it, say well, is there something going on here that you would save millions of dollars and everything would work better if you merged them, or is there something that you could save millions of dollars and get substantially better service if you kept them separate? Is there one or the other. Not really. It's okay the way it is, and it would be okay with either one of those options, but there isn't some absolutely compelling reason that says go one way or the other. So now, we're down to looking for the smaller reasons why. There's a little bit of money to be saved by consolidating, but a little bit. Now, we're talking about one, one and a half percent of the total budget, which really isn't compelling. Then what we see the biggest problem is the relationship problem, that trying to keep these two organizations working together effectively side by side to provide service is really the biggest problem that we can see. It means having to come back every few years and renegotiate the relationship, every decision having to be played back and forth between the City and Fire Services Study Meeting 21 May 29, 1996 the County, between two fire department administrations, between the County board and City Council, County administrator and City Manager. Every decision has to be played back and forth. Well, the ~est thing that we can see for the long- term good is to do away with that dual relationship, get it together, have one organization that's responsible for providing the service and go on with a much simpler life. MR. COX: What about following up with a -- in your presentation, you didn't mention anything about a potential for a fire authority being created. Could you give me a little bit of thoughts? What do you about the fire authority and how that might work? MR. ROWDLEY: Now, a fire authority -- first time I came across is was Fort Collins, Colorado, about fifteen years ago where they had on a smaller scale, a similar relationship -- a fire district that took care of the rural area around the city, and a City Fire Department. And they got together and said, "Wouldn't it be smart if we had one fire department instead of two?" And I said, "Okay, but how do you govern that?" And they said, "Well, we don't want the City to take over the County area and we don't want the County to take care of the City area. Let's appoint a neutral body and call it a fire authority." And the fire department reports to the fire authority, and there the City Council I think appoints half the members and the -- the actual word is the fire district Board appoints the other half, and they're the governing body. That's where the Fire Chief reports to, that's where the decisions get approved. And then the City and the County fire districts both appropriate the money that makes the whole thing work. But that body puts the budget together, justifies and approves the budget. So that becomes the neutral body that provides the unit. It works there. It's come up a few times in between. The most recent place it's come up is Orange County when Orange County got into their financial difficulties last year. They changed the structure of the fire department in Orange County. They had a County Fire Department that has service contracts with a lot of the incorporated areas in Orange County. They realized that there was a big financial problem and said, "We've got to change the structure and make ourselves into something else so we can survive." So they created an Orange County Fire Authority, which is the actual governing body that provides fire service in Orange County, and all of the incorporated municipalities are represented on the Board of that fire authority. So it came up there, and there are a couple of other small ones that have come up just within the last couple of years, and mostly in situations similar to this one where you have two different jurisdictions that Fire Services Study Meeting 22 May 29, 1996 realize it would make sense to have one fire department but can't agree who ought to run it. MR. COX: In a situation like that, then, the County has one vote and the City has one vote, plus you have representatives, or the County and City , or how does that work? MR. ROWDLEY: The money still has to come from the City and County. The fire authority doesn't have any taxing authority, so the budget has to be contributed by the two. But what they do is _ they give it to the Board members and say, "You figure out what the budget ought to be and bring it back to the two bodies, and we'll give you a basic agreement. Then if you think it's right, we'll support it, or we'll reappoint the members of the Board." MR. COX: But the day to day stuff is handled by the fire authority. MR. ROWDLEY: Yes. WRen the Fire Chief has to get approval, the Fire Chief goes to that board for approval rather than going to the City or to the County. : Does that Board then report to the City and County? MR. ROWDLEY: The members of the Board are appointed by the city and the County, or in the Fort Collins case, by the County Fire District Board, which is the appropriate board. But in Orange County, it's by the individual cities -- appoint their members. : But does that Board report to either governing body, or just only report to the citizens? Does it have the final control, or does it have to report -- let's use Fort Collins, if I could. MR. ROWDLEY: It has the final control except it still has to get the money from the parent organization, and it's the money that really drives things. __: Right. MR. ROWDLEY: So the budget still has to come from the City and from the County Fire District. In Orange County, one of the things that they've been dealing with -- I'm not sure where they've gotten to is that they had some big incorporated cities and some little incorporated towns, and they all had -- they each had one Fire Services Study Meeting 23 May 29, 1996 member, so there was some disagreement in representation by population. But the last time I checked on it, they still had forty members on that Board, and it was one vote per jurisdiction. MS. BRUNNI: I've got a question on the same thing. Are you aware of any other counties in California, cities in California, that are geographically similar to the Kern County-Bakersfield area that are either looking at or have accomplished what you're proposing? Let's use the fire authority. MR. ROWDLEY: Orange County is the only big one that I'm aware of, and within Orange County there are a couple of others that have been proposed, and I don't know where they are. Within the last six months I've heard some parts of Orange County talking about 7etting together that way where they have joint powers. MS. BRUNNI: I guess I'm confused. Orange County would be very different geographically than Kern County. That's why I'm asking more specifically -- it's a more compact -- MR. ROWDLEY: Yes, far more densely populated. I can't think of one that's equivalent of Kern County as far as having a densely populated spot in a vast, sparsely populated area. But there's a lot of movement, a lot of parallel thinking to what's going on here occurring in other parts of California. We did some extensive work with Sacramento about two years ago, and at one time -- I can't remember how many, but a lot of individual fire departments in Sacramento County and gradually all the little fire department have merged together to where there is the Sacramento city Fire Department, and then a small number of fairly large fire districts, and they're getting together now. They're trying to figure out how they can develop a relationship. They've gone together with the City, actually moved their communications into the County communications facility so they have one communication system now. They respond together, similar to the joint powers agreement. So they're moving in that direction. So what's going on here has a lot of parallels, really driven by the budget situation in California. : Could I ask a question while we're on this? How would the JPA, the joint powers agreement, with this type of fire authority -- kept as it is now, would the fire authority -- or how would that work? I don't see that any place in this. MR. ROWDLEY: Well, the joint powers agreement works when you have two separate organizations, when you have a City Fire Fire Services Study Meeting 24 May 29, 1996 Department and a County Fire Department. If you go into a fire authority, you want to make fire department. : You couldn't have two separate reporting to a board which was appointed by the City and the County? MR. ROWDLEY: I guess you could, but why would you want to? : It's just a question. I didn't say I wanted to. MR. ROWDLEY: Well, if you took the two existing fire departments and had them report to -- you know, the City Fire Department report to the fire authority and the County Fire Department report to the fire authority with respect to .the metro area, or even make it a County-wide fire authority -- I guess it could go that far -- I don't think you've accomplished anything. : Okay. MR. ROWDLEY: You've unified the high level, but you still have two parallel organizations and you don't gain anything by smoothing out the inefficiencies between the two organizations. MR. COX: The one thing you touched on in your presentation was the reduction of personnel, but there was no mention of reduction of actual -- the authorized position. In reference to Page 4, Bakersfield Fire Department has 201 positions and Kern County has 520, of which 147 are allocated to JPA. I mean, there's no recommendation or -- how did you approach that? MR. ROWDLEY: Well, we looked at the areas where it looks like positions could be saved, which is basically in administrative areas. MR. COX: But there's no -- as far as the folks out there right now in the work, I mean, there's no -- MR. ROWDLEY: No, you just barely have enough to get by now. MR. COX: I know. That's the point I was going to make, because back here in front of the study it talks about we're running a skeleton crew now, the City and County both. But there's nothing in there as far as like numbers, the one and a half percent that dealt with any cut in personnel except for the administrative part. Fire Services Study Meeting 25 May 29, 1996 MR. ROWDLEY: Yes, and we're probably talking four or five out of MR. COX: Which would be . It's just one of those things that -- MR. ROWDLEY: And that really comes from having already cut everything out of the budget that could possibly cut. MR. COX: Well, as we go through the study, it's obvious that there's places here that -- as far as the manpower, the budget constraints or whatever, it's -- of course, a part of the conclusions that you come up with. : Can I ask a question about -- getting back to Fort Collins for a minute, they don't have the same kind of like doughnut hole in the doughnut problem. They have -- that fire authority is looking at the potality of the whole area, not a joint powers agreement and the rest of the county. Now, am I understanding this correctly, that you're proposing a fire authority for the metropolitan area of the joint powers agreement area only? MR. ROWDLEY: Well, I think it could be done either way. When we first came up, we were thinking of if you wanted to do something and make a metropolitan area fire department, what would you have it report to? So that's where the idea first came up. My mind went to work and said, "Well, this is the way Fort Collins does it for a city and a surrounding area." Just -- you know, it isn't an eight-thousand-square-mile surrounding area, but it's a city and an unincorporated surrounding area. So that came to mind first for the metro area. You know, you look at it and say you couldn't do the same thing for the County and make up a County fire authority, if that's what you wanted to do. That would probably get a lot of political interest up, because now there's some other incorporated areas within the county that contract with the County for fire service. So I might have to look at those relationships as well. : And how does Fort Collins deal with the allocation of resources? If they had a range fire out in Timbuktu and they had to take everything out of Fort Collins, what do they do about that? MR. ROWDLEY: That's what they pay the Fire Chief for. They say, "You got to make this work, so don't let the city burn down Fire Services Study Meeting 26 May 29, 1996 and don't let the county burn down Here's what you've got, and you make sure it works." That's basically the bottom line. CHAIR: Any other questions or we move on? Okay, anything else? MS. BRUNNI: I'm still trying to get more information about what's being proposed or been proposed. The next to the last paragraph, the very last section says, "Many fire departments of California have had similar experiences in the past five years." And what I wroteto myself is, "Let's see the numbers and how do we compare?" That's a pretty bold statement, Mr. Rowdley, with all due respect. MR. ROWDLEY: Well, it's an observation more than a calculation because the business we're in, we deal with fire departments. The issues we're seeing here are the same issues that we see with a lot of the other fire departments that we deal with across the country, but particularly in California because the budget squeeze has been so tight in California. So comparing numbers I don't think makes a lot of sense because you're looking at apples, oranges and bananas when you look at different accounts. You have to find what is right for Kern County. The pressure is the same. The pressure is there isn't enough money to do what they would like to do, for everybody to have the fire department that they would like to have. Everybody wants this to be the most efficient, cost-effective and reliable fire department that you can get for the money that's available. Well, the pressure is saying it's smarter to get together and -- you know, for cities and counties to work together than to have parallel organizations. That's why the Los Angeles County Fire Department every year, it seems, is taking on more contracts. More cities are saying, "You know, it just doesn't make sense for us to keep operating our own separate fire department when we can contract with the County, give away the administrative overhead or just pay a small share of it and be part of a larger County fire department." That's the trend. MS. BRUNNI: For cities of this size? MR. KOWDLEY: There's some pretty substantial cities in Los Angeles County. MS. BRUNNI: Can you name them? That's what I'm really getting at. I'd like to be able to call those cities. I'd like to find out what their experience has been. I think that's really the heart of the question. Fire Services Study Meeting 27 May 29, 1996 MR. ROWDLEY: Well, if you want to look at cities, then probably Los Angeles County is the best place to look because there are several cities in the hundred thousand range that have made the move. I can't tell you off the top of my head what the populations of Pasadena and Pomona are, but we can come up with that if you want. MR. COX: As we're going through, I received an article from one of the concerned citizens in Kern County talking about Sacramento going through some of the same thing as far as consolidation, so I'll be happy to share that with the group, too. It's talking 'about the same thing: "Budget pinch spurs fire departments to work in concert," and of course, they do the typical editorial --"Protecting turf can block consolidation," and it goes into a lot of the problems that they're dealing with. Of course, Sacramento, looking as far as the Triangle of it different, but I'd be more than happy to share that with you. MS. BRUNNI: So did they consolidate? HR. COX: They're still working on it. MS. BRUNNI: And we've been working on it for two years as we heard earlier. HR. COX: I don't know what their is. MR. ROWDLEY: It's probably been going on for about five. We were working with Sacramento City about two years ago, but watching it, we've seen all of these little fire department coming together into bigger fire departments, and now they're talking between City and County -- between the City and the County fire districts saying, "We've got to work together. Is there a way that we can come together?" : But one of the difference in Sacramento was there's a lot of those fire departments were volunteer fire departments as well. MR. ROWDLEY: Some of them. : And particularly like in Solano and Yolo County, there just a lot of little volunteer fire departments all over the place, and they're seriously looking at the joining together. That's what makes Kern County very unique is the fact we have had a wonderful fire department for Kern County and for the Fire Services Study Meeting 28 May 29, 1996 City, and they've done magnificent jobs compared to the rest of the state. MS. BRUNNI: And did they have a JPA core, or this is just all the -- MR. ROWDLEY: What they had before was a lot of little relationships, a lot of little fire departments with relationships between them, and gradually they came together and formed bigger and bigger ones. So now there are two big fire districts. There's American'River, which used to be seven or eight, and Sacramento County Fire District, which used to be about ten individual fire departments in Sacramento. Now there are three where there used to be fifteen or so, and they are actively looking at how to work together. But that's different because here you have one and one - - one City fire department and one County fire department. You got past that stage some time in the past. I don't think you were ever there. : Another question about Sacramento -- do they have a working agreement between a structure fire, or is it kind of like What used to happen in Taft whenever it was a fire in the County, the Taft Fire Department wouldn't respond. They'd just stand there and watch the thing burn. Do they have a joint powers agreement with the City and the American River and the -- as the outside and the inside of the city? Do they work together? MR. ROWDLEY: Yeah, the City Fire Department now and the two big fire districts that are now on it have basically erased the borderlines, so it's the equivalent of a joint Dowers agreement. They do it under an automatic response agreement, but whoever's closest goes. CHAIR: Anything else before we get to -- I'm on Page 7 now. Page 10 -- I think the one thing I'd like to talk about on Page 10 would be the third paragraph, the second sentence where it talks about the current distribution of resources appears to be adequate for the interior but as far as outlying folks, it seems to be pretty thin. As far as consolidation and/or continuing on with the same, me living in an outlying community, that's not a good thing, I guess is the best way to put it. As far as consolidation, if there's consolidation, is that going to improve that situation? That's not going to improve that, is it? It's just a matter of hiring a few more folks. Mlq. ROWDLEY: Yeah. The only way that it would improve it is that it may smooth out the planning to increase coverage and get Fire Services Study Meeting 29 May 29, 1996 away from bouncing back and forth between City and County -- who's going to build the next fire station where? But it doesn't solve the problem of being able to afford to provide fire protection to the geographic area. And one of the problems you have here in the metro area is very similar to what they had in Phoenix, which is the leapfrog development. Suddenly someone jumps out four or five miles from the built-up perimeter and starts building, and now you have to deliver service out there. Well, when the first house gets built do they get a fire station within five minutes or keep waiting till there are two houses or four, or how many before you build another fire station up there. And the same thing is happening out on all the perimeters. There's pressure to extend the coverage point all the time, and as a result, the edges of the blanket are always ragged. As it fills in, you can afford to provide more service, but you can't until there's more development in those perimeter areas. And it's a real problem for this kind of sprawling city. MS. BRUNNI: But consolidation won't fix that. MR. ROWDLEY: Consolidation doesn't fix that. That's a matter of -- MS. BRUNNI: That's a political decision. MR. ROWDLEY: Well, politics and economics, really. Nobody can afford to keep building fire stations farther and farther away because you end up having fire stations that protect very small population groups until the areas grow. If you look at revenue, they don't generate nearly enough revenue to support a fire station, and you have a fire station up there and you're paying a crew, and they maybe going -- as they start off, they go on one call every other day, and then they go one call every day and then they get up to two calls a day. Meanwhile, the ones in town are running twelve calls a day. CHAIR: We're going to take a break in about fifteen minutes. We need a call, Gail. As far as Page 11, the last paragraph, "The existing JPA relationship does not provide a mechanism for determining when new stations should be built, what service level should be provided, or which fire department should protect which areas in the future. I thought that that was a part of the JPA. Isn't that a part of the JPA, the responsibility? I think it is, isn't it? MS. BRUNNI: There is a sort of a provision in the JPA, and maybe Deanna or Mike can help me out here, where both entities get Fire Services Study Meeting 30 May 29, 1996 together and discuss now the next fire station is going to be constructed and where, but there is no criteria to say that it will happen or that the separate entities have to agree. And I think there is a provision that says, "You discuss it for two years, and after two years, if you don't come to an agreement, you do whatever you want to do." CHAIR: If it's annexed into the City, then you do what you want to do? Is that what you're saying? MS. BRUNNI: No. Annexation is -- CHAIR: Or the County, and then they do what they want to do? Oh, it don't say annexation. If it's in the City, you do what you want to do and if it's the County, they do what they want to do. : If you've worked to try and come to come to some kind of agreement, there's a two-year -- (End Side B, Tape 1) (Begin'Side A, Tape 2) : -- the organization that staffs that station is annexed or it's wide open. So -- right? MR ROWDLEY: That's correct, and the original joint powers agreement, Gail was fairly correct, that it was just specific when either entity planned on building a station, the two sides would sit down and discuss that issue and try to come to agreement. But the most recent revision of the joint powers agreement, there is in fact a clause in there, and it expires some time in August of '96. That's when the two years is up, and after that expiration date, either department can notify the other that they plan to build a station, and if they cannot come to an agreement within 180 days then they can go ahead with what they had planned. CHAIR: Okay, so -- but if you were to do the fire authority or consolidation then this of course wouldn't be as big a problem. MR. ROWDLEY: Yeah, it should iron that out. CHAIR: So that's what you're handing out here. MR. ROWDLEY: It's written with the expectation that reasonable people should be able to sit down and say, "Okay, we'll build one here and you build one there, then we'll go on forever.,, Fire Services Study Meeting 31 May 29, 1996 But it doesn't seem to work that way, and the discussion seems to go on forever. CHAIR: Okay. Moving on to Page 15 -- 16 -- : There's a reason for what Gordon described, and it has occurred in the last couple of years, and it's because money was'thrown into the equation. It's not necessarily something that the two fire chief couldn't do themselves. It's a matter of when you build a station, there's an exchange of money depending on how that works, and that totally complicated a very simple system that was in existence before the Board . : Also an effort was initiated shortly after the first of the year to discuss this issue jointly and plan for a future station, and basically because of the study, it did not proceed and an effort was made. : So what are you suggesting is going to happen here in August when this expires? : I would like to think that there would be some general direction jointly given from the committee as well as the political entities, maybe not some specific far and fast guidelines but a time period, a directive for the two departments to come up with criteria for the future. You have ninety days, and at the end of that time period we want you to come back with a joint recommendation that you both can agree with which way should be the future station. And I think that can be done. I think the directive has to be given and it has to be very clear -- "We need this from both of you. The external issues need to go away." CHAIR: Okay. : Mike, I have a question for you. Do you guys work whenever you -- this plan for a fire station -- you're working with the Planning Department or the City and the County to figure out where that growth in the city is going to go? MR. KELLY: Yes. We usually have a fairly good feel for not only what is currently developed, but the projected development in the future and the comment that I believe Gordon made earlier about you cannot build fire stations everywhere that a need exists is absolutely correct. And that is one of the things that is going to be very difficult in the establishing, citing criteria for the future. What are the definite trigger mechanisms that yes, you Fire Services Study Meeting 32 May 29, 1996 have reached that point? And very candidly, there are not always monetary or political. Those actually cloud the issue at times. : I think that"s kind of outside the scope of this committee, anyway. I mean, I still see the : I have a question. Fire stations coverage areas based on two miles or two minutes forty-five seconds response travel time. And I wondered if there had been any cost benefit analysis done in making those determinations. MR. ROWDLEY: dost benefit analysis is which sense? : Well, we ultimately would have one on every corner, obviously, and have virtually no response time So what I'm looking at is there comes a point where there's that diminishing return, and so I'm wondering if in your experience in doing this, have you done some cost benefit analysis to determine at what point that diminishing return occurs? MR ROWDLEY: No, but I have spent a substantial part of my life trying to figure it out. : I'm sure it's different for every community. MR. ROWDLEY: Well, it's not only different for every community. There's a big question mark as to just what the limits are. It really boils down to what kind of response time do you want to have. Do you want to be able to get a unit on the scene in three minutes or four minutes or five minutes, or three and a half minutes or four and a half minutes or five and a half minutes from the time an emergency occurs? That's what really drives the geographic area coverage. How fast do you want to get there, and then how fast you can drive on the streets to get there is a factor. The bigger cities tend to go three to four minutes. Suburban areas tend to go four to five minutes. You very seldom go under three or over five, and if you look at all cities in North America, they're probably -- in a big majority of them you're going to see a response time of somewhere between three and five. I can't give you a dollars and cents figure for how much more property you can save or.how many more lives you can save if you have three-minute response time versus five-minute response time. I can tell you that you can probably save more lives at three minutes than at five minutes. You can probably save more property Fire Services Study Meeting 33 May 29,~ 1996 at three minutes than at five minutes. But I can't put a dollar figure on it, and I've studied it and studied it and studied it. Lots of people who haven't studied it as much as I have can give you a dollar figure. The more I study it, the harder it is. : On Page 21, £ have a big question about -- I'd like to have you explain that a little farther: "It would also be efficient to assign secondary response vehicles to these companies so they can respond to medical and rescue incidents with vehicles that are more suited to the purposes and save wear and tear on larger vehicles." We talked a lot about using the hook and ladder truck for medical emergencies and so forth. What is your suggestion? MR. ROWDLEY: Well, the ladder trucks -- the thing that seems to work is what we call "tenders" in Phoenix. A big city has to have a couple of big ladder trucks. You don't want to have too many of them, but you got to have a couple them because there are situations where you need them and they're monsters. But to use people efficiently, you want to use those people to respond to medical calls and little situations where running a big truck doesn't make a whole lot of sense. So in that case, you start off with a smaller vehicle that just has the equipment on it that you need for those smaller kinds of calls. Say if you get a small call, take the small truck; if you get a big call, take the big truck. We started that off in Phoenix about 1985, I guess, and it was a pretty radical suggestion at the time. We started off with a four-door pick-up with a camper shell on the back of it and gave it to a ladder company and said, "If you get a medical call, take this truck. If you get a call for a structure fire, take the big ladder truck." We had eleven ladder companies and ten of them wouldn't try it. The eleventh crew went with it. Now, all the ladder companies in Phoenix have a small truck and a big truck because it works. : Gordon, have you ever heard of anybody, any city doing that same thing, except contracting the smaller truck out? In other words, using an ambulance service or something else to do the emergency? MR. ROWDLEY: Lots of different ways of providing emergency medical service, yeah. Most cities today find it cost effective to have the fire department to be the initial responder to medical calls, because you have to have the fire department there to provide fire protection. To provide a basic level of fire protection that you need to be a city, then you have to have fire trucks and firefighters distributed around, but you can't keep them Fire Services Study Meeting 34 May 29, 1996 busy fighting fires and the citizens keep having medical emergencies so it becomes very cost effective between fires to take care of those medical emergencies. That's our ready resource that's available to do it. You can handle a lot of medical emergencies between fires unless you have too many fires. So that's makes sense. To come in and say, "We're going to bring in another group to do that initial response to medical calls," then you've given up the efficiency of using the firefighting force in two roles. Now you're going to pay the firefighting guys to wait for fires and have this other group that you're going to pay to take care of the medical emergencies, and lost the cost effectiveness of having one group take care of two kinds of calls. There are lots of different ways of doing it, but more and more the trend is for fire departments to provide medical service. There are very few cities left where they don't, actually. A lot of the big ones have fallen in the last couple of years. New York City is the latest one. They said it would never happen, but it happened. MS. BRUNNI: This is more of an observation that I made by looking at some of these maps that are on the next pages -- 23, 24 -- having to do with the ladder truck coverage. But I live in northwest Bakersfield, and I had a concern about coverage for that an area that is growing rather rapidly that appears to have been largely ignored in some of these calculations. Here's my map and I drew a big hole over there. That happens to be sort of in the area where I live. I don't see anything up there. So I'm asking - - do you know how many people live out there? MR. ROWDLEY: One of the good things about that part of town is there aren't a lot of tall buildings there. It's mostly one story, so as far as the ladder work part, you don't need to rely on a ladder truck, but you still want the things that a ladder company does, which is all of the things other than squirt water. The County tends to operate by having engine company crews do that. It's an unnatural act in a lot of fire departments for engine company crews to do ladder company work, but in County fire departments it tends to happen. The other thing that's happening is the ladder truck, and Chief -- Mike, correct me if I'm wrong -- is the ladder truck planning to go and use the airport station? Is that part of the plan: MR. KELLY: That was a plan, yes. ~R ROWDLEY: That was a plan. Fire Services Study Meeting 35 May 29, 1996 MS. BRUNNI: But my understanding is that once it's there, what's at the airport station won't be available for outside the airport. Is that not accurate? MR. KELLY: That's not true. It's just to serve a new facility that we plan to add on to house the ladder and we'll respond to wherever the call is. MR. ROWDLEY: The -- so I would call it the strategic plan was for the fire station to move to the west side of the airport and then for the ladder truck that's up at 63 to move over there to provide better service for your area. MS. BRUNNI: As fast as you can get there, though -- eleven minutes from my house. I can . MR. ROWDLEY: Well, probably the area where you are, you would be better served by one of those engine companies being a quid than by having a ladder truck out in that area, one of those engines that has a seventy-five-foot ladder on -- well, your house is probably only sixteen feet high, and you probably don't need the seventy-five-foot ladder. But you want the tools and equipment that are on a ladder. MS. BRUNNI: I'm not just referring to ladder trucks, though, and really that's what I'm trying to tell is that some more overall concern that I saw which was as we're planning and we're looking and we're talking about Brimhall area and all that, that's an area that I think has grown maybe more than people have recognized. I'm there every day. I see it, maybe that's why. MR. ROWDLEY: As an outsider, I looked around and I said, "It's growing in all directions." MS. BRUNNI: The city and county -- I mean, it's probably half and half, equally split. CHAIR: Okay. So we're going to build a fire station right next to your house? Is that the recommendation then? MS. BRUNNI: No, that's not what I mean. It would probably be better further west, actually, but it's an area that I saw that address. CHAIR: Okay, observations -- Page 25. On Number 3, "the JPA provides very cost effective use of resources." The reason I'm reading this in case the audience doesn't have this. "Any plan Fire Services Study Meeting 36 May 29, 1996 that would discontinue that approach of shared resources in the metro area would have a significant negative impact on overall cost effectiveness." Let's spend maybe a minute or two discussing that. MR. ROWDLEY: It's best to look back and say, "Once upon a time there were fire stations, and City fire stations responded to calls in the City and the County fire stations responded to calls in the County, then somebody looked at it and said, "There's some areas of the city that are closer to County fire stations and some areas of the County that are closer to City fire stations, and it would be smart if the closest fire station responded to the fire or the medical emergency rather than going by jurisdictional boundaries, particularly where the jurisdictional boundaries look like an ink blot." Then we looked at it and said, "And when we do that, we can thin out some of these fire stations. There are too many concentrated in one area and not enough in another area, so we can spread out the blanket if we look at it as one system." So the cost effectiveness was brought in at the time the JPA was brought in by looking at it as one service delivery area and maximizing utilization of those resources. So if you said, "Well, maybe that wasn't such a good idea. Let's go back to the old way," well, you're going to give away some of that cost effectiveness somewhere. You either have to build more fire stations to make up for that loss of cost effectiveness, or you're going to end up with areas where the closest fire station isn't going to respond to somebody's call, so you're going to lose service delivery, one way or the other. : I have a question, just for my own information. If there's a fire outside the JPA, how does the City respond to that anyway? MR. KELLY: Well, actually we do have a rather unique agreement, specifically for our hazardous materials team where basically we will go anywhere in the County if they're on the scene and they have a significant emergency and they call for our assistance. If it's outside the JPA, normally in the responses they would be designated in the computer, we would not in fact be included in the response, but you can certainly have a situation where if the County had something else going on and the resources were greatly depleted, certainly within reason if it's outside the boundary, we have the equipment and the personnel, we would respond. : Well, my thinking is eventually some time down the future, in 2010 or something like that that the City of Bakersfield will probably fill up everything in the JPA and then Fire Services Study Meeting 37 May 29, 1996 you're looking out beyond the JPA. How is that -- what's going to happen after that, and what's the relationship going to be? MR. KELLY: I think that's the same concept as one of the key issues along with the siting of additional facilities and stations -- where they're built, when they're built, who builds them. Also in that whole formula is going to have to incorporated the concept of the fire fund revenues and expansion of what is designated as the JPA area, because it would make no sense to build an additional station that the first end response area is only 36% within the JPA. The JPA boundary itself would have to be adjusted also. MR. ROWDLEY: If you look at the logic of having a JPA, you want to have a JPA where there's a benefit of having two fire departments work together. If the City fills up the whole area within the JPA boundary, then the perimeter moves out, so then the logical thing to do is make the JPA area bigger. You don't need to have a JPA when you're far enough away from the City that you only need County Fire Department units to respond. If it's a JPA, you want that boundary to encircle the area where both need to work together. CHAIR: All right. Let's go ahead and take a quick break and we'll start up on Page 27, Fire Stations. : I'd like to revisit the issue of the quid. When we were discussing it with our fire chiefs, the question was raised about their ongoing arrangement. There had been some concerns. I know the City had at one time considered buying some - Dlanes and actually decided not to do that for a number of reasons. I think the most notable we were told was the ongoing maintenance and down time of these planes. Is that right? MR. KELLY: That was one of the problems. The maintenance once again is tied to things such as weight, and the actual unusual construction of the vehicles, so yes, that's partially correct. : And item Number~ 5 actually deals with the quid. That's why I'm bringing it up at this time. I wrote in my book that that is not a long-term efficient answer, so I'll put that on the table. CHAIR: On Page 26? : Yes, item Number 5, the quid specifically. There may be other things or apparatus that are available. I'm simply not familiar with that area. Fire Services Study Meeting 38 May 29, 1996 MR. ROWDLEY: I don't know that that's the right conclusion. It depends on the area you're looking at. If you're looking at downtown Bakersfield, if you want to have a big, full-size ladder truck, which doesn't necessarily have to be a quid, but it can be a quid. If you're going to have a ladder truck and it's going to be a big truck anyway, the question now is whether you have a pump and hose on it. The tendency more lately is to put the pump and the hose on it because it can operate more efficiently by itself. Get away from downtown where the tall buildings are two stories, but you still need to have an elevated stream device -- well, to put a great big ladder truck like that in one of those areas doesn't make a lot of sense. It makes a lot more sense to put a quid in a place like that. (Break in tape) MR. ROWDLEY: -- increase the total response time of up to five minutes and thirty-five seconds at the outside of a two-mile perimeter. : So with the outside being four miles, then, we look atla theoretical 5.1 to 8.0 miles, would that be a four-mile outside? MR. ROWDLEY: It would be two miles from the fire station to the farthest location in that service area, and .f everything works according to the model, you should be able to get there in five minutes and thirty-five seconds after the call. CHAIR: Okay. We're at Chapter Four, Emergency Activities, Work Load -- Page 33? : I have a question. I have three questions aDout source. The first is in the third paragraph -- actually, the se~ond full paragraph -- 83 calls annually per 1,000 population. Is that consistent with similar communities and fire departments? MR. ROWDLEY: Yes, and that comes from dealing with a lot of fire departments, and that's what we do all the time. Seventy-five to a hundred is about the range we see in communities. So 83, that's in the window. : Did you do analysis when you came up with -- I mean, 83 is a pretty specific number. I guess I'm asking did you look at some specific communities? I'd be interested in the list. Fire Services Study Meeting 39 May 29, 1996 MR. ROWDLEY: Well, the 83 is what it works out to in Bakersfield. We said how many calls do you have and how much population do you have and it works out to 83 calls per thousand. So that was simple, when them just said is that in the window, I said, "Yeah, that's in the window." : And that's a range around the country? MR. ROWDLEY: Yeah. : "Activity levels of 3,000 to 3,500 calls annually begin to cause concern in most systems." That's in the very last paragraph, and it's in parentheses, on Page 33. Again, I'm asking -- MR. ROWDLEY: Again, that one comes from experience, from looking at calls. There's an amazing consistency almost across the country of the average time that a company is committed for a call. We looked the dozens of fire departments, and the average virtually comes in between fifteen and twenty minutes. Sometimes it's sixteen, sometimes it's eighteen, but it's in there. When you process that out, and say they get so many calls per day and call they're busy an average of seventeen and a half minutes, to take an average figure -- you know, what percentage of time they're busy. Now, what's the probability that they're not going to be available when the next call comes in? Well, up to about 2,500 to 3,000 calls a year, it doesn't have any measurable impact. When you start going over 3,000 there starts to be an impact from how busy a company is. When you get up to 4,000 and 5,000 then there's a substantial percentage of the time when there's a call for a company in that district that they're already on a call, so you have to ~end somebody else, so response times get longer. CHAIR: Page 34? : I have 34 and 35 combined. The very last sentence at the top of Page 35 -- "These relationships are complex and must be carefully considered when changes to the overall health care system are proposed." What's complex about the relationships? I read what you write in the last paragraph of 34 and I go to the top of 35 and I find "complex." MR. ROWDLEY: It's fairly simple when it's stag. Part of ~his is this was written at the time when the health care model was in a state of flux, and it seems to have stabilized, at least temporarily. But when this was written, a year and a few months ago, this particular section, there was a lot of pushing and Fire Services Study Meeting 40 May 29, 1996 pulling as far as what.ambulance services would do and what fire departments would do, and adding extra services and so on. Maybe not here, but -- : Okay, well, I'm talking about in Bakersfield. MR. ROWDLEY: Yeah, and this was a more general, nationwide statement. Here -- CHAIR: Although it's here and done right now (being done right now?) There's a lot of discussions going on about that right now here in Bakersfield on who's going to do what, how many doctors are going to ride in the back of your emergency vehicle, I guess is the question. Anything on 35? : One other thing is that Gordon, you and I were just discussing before in regards to using fire emergency vehicles for low-priority calls, and it was enlightening to find out what other communities are doing in regards to dealing with prioritizing or triaging services. You want to elaborate on that? MR. ROWDLEY: Yeah. There are some triage models that are used, and it's a question of people calling in with medical emergencies and saying, "Tell us what's the matter," and we go through the series of questions and decide what to send. That applies a lot more when you have varying levels of service that you can send. .You can send a basic life support unit or an advanced life support unit, then you do send an ambulance to certain calls, and you don't send an ambulance to others. So you have a lot of choices, then triage makes more sense. In a situation where what you have is BLS fire trucks and ALS ambulances, then there aren't a lOt of choices to be made. Either you send them or you don't. The question is sometimes do you send a fire truck, not an ambulance, or do you send an ambulance and not a fire truck on certain calls? And the answer here boils down to most of the time unless the call is really a non-emergency call, you get a fire truck and an ambulance. If it's something that clearly doesn't need the fire department, then on some calls just pass to the ambulance company, and say, "This is really a non-emergency call." Part of the problem with it is where do you set the threshold of where we go and where we don't go, and that gets into the big liability question, because you can be right 999 times. The one time you're wrong, you end up on 60 Minutes and you end up in court. So the pendulum swings toward the respond side of the scale more, which tends to use up your resources but keep you out of court and off t.v. Tough situation everywhere. I think most of the systems we look at, probably a third of the calls that the fire Fire Services Study Meeting 41 May 29, 1996 departments respond on for medical emergencies don't really need to go to. But you don't know until you get there that you didn't need to come. : I think you'll see a greater flux in this chain, in the use of 911. As soon as we can get you down the road to the next three or five years, I think you'll see that the 911 calls for medical aids will dramatically decrease. I think you'll see HMO's, and that has nothing to do with this study, but just a little information. Health maintenance organizations are now saying, "Don't call 911. Call a private seven-digit number. Call the number we're contacted with. You're going to see that. Eventually 911 calls for medical emergencies will probably drop thirty to forty percent within the five years. MR. ROWDLEY: It's going to be exciting because a lot of things are happen, because you're going to have -- people are going to call a seven-digit number and then they're going to die before the ambulance gets there and then they're going to sue everybody because the HMO told them to call the wrong number. : They can't sue the HMO's. They can only go to arbitration. CHAIR: Let's move on. I can't think of anything good about HMO anyway, so what are we discussing it for? : I work with HMO's for a living, an4 I know that that's not true. They cannot tell patients not to call 911. CHAIR: Let's go -- Page 35. Page 36? : I had 35. On the last paragraph, it says the Bakersfield area has a relatively high frequency of fires in relation to the population. That's a rather broad statement that I wanted to know what the source of it is. I mean, compared to what? MR. ROWDLEY: Well, it's another one of those statistical comparisons. We look at other cities in the same population range and how many fires do they have in relation to population. And this is something I figured out in Phoenix and confirmed in Bakersfield, is when you live in the desert, you have more fires than if you live in swamp. Seattle, which is very damp, has a relatively low number of fires per thousand population. Phoenix and Bakersfield, which are extremely dry have a relatively high number, because in the summer time, we look at something at it Fire Services Study Meeting 42 May 29, 1996 bursts into flames. And it doesn't necessarily ~reflect on severity. You can have a lot of relatively minor fires, like you have more fires, more ignitions. So it's just a relative scale. : So Phoenix would be one of the cities that you used to compare. MR. ROWDLEY: Yeah. I have a file in my office that has every statistic you want on every city any way you want to slice them, so that's why I feel this is so -- ten fires per year per thousand it happens is a relatively high number, but that's all it is is interesting. That's a characteristic of a desert community. CHAIR: Okay, we're going into Chapter 5, 37. : Second paragraph, last sentence. "Assistance is sufficient but could become more effective through improved coordination." I think you probably addressed that a little bit this morning, but could you explain about that? MR. ROWDLEY: Yeah, again that is non-scientific personal evaluation and observation from looking at a lot of fire departments. When we look at the two of them working together, we say, "Yeah, they respond okay. The response is efficient. But when they get together, they just don't work as well together as they could." : Are there avenues other than training that you discussed this morning? Are there other avenues other that those that we got earlier? MR. ROWDLEY: Training, standard operating procedures -- both trained with the same command system so the structural part is the same. But it really boils down to what they're trained to do, how they approach a situation, and that comes down to the company level training, standard operating procedures, and how the vehicles are set up. CHAIR: Page 37 -- anything else on 37? 38? 39? Conni? MS. BRUNNI: Has Mr. Rowdley had an opportunity to review the Bakersfield firefighters' material? MR. ROWDLEY: Yeah. Fire Services Study Meeting 43 May 29, 1996 MS. BRUNNI: One of the comments that was made here was that the City's training chief and his staff were never interviewed, and I wanted to know if that's so, and if so, why? MR. ROWDLEY: I can't recall, because when we did it, it was so long ago I don't specifically remember, but if they say they weren't, then they probably weren't. We may have missed them. We interviewed a lot of people. We spent a lot of time. If we missed somebody, it must have been an oversight. Part of the process we have, however, is we prepare drafts and send them to be commented on, so if we have overlooked something, then the chiefs who reviewed the drafts had the opportunity to say, "You got something wrong," or "You missed something here," and then we come back. - That hasn't come up until now, so I -- until I saw that comment, I didn't know that we had missed anything, or anything of any consequence. MS. BRUNNI: For me, that was significant because there were a lot of comments made about training, lack of training, etcetera and that really shouldn't have happened. But I didn't know if it was a true statement or not. Before I drew any conclusions, I needed to know. CHAIR: Okay. Anything else on 39? 40? We're into Chapter 6, Communications -- 41, 42, 43? : In the very last paragraph, you talk about the examples of communications centers that serve multiple jurisdictions or departments. Some of these centers are operated independently. Do you have any place in mind that this happened? Could you give us an example of some place? MR. ROWDLEY: That has an independent? You sort of put me on the spot. I can't think of one off the top of my head. Well, one comes to mind we worked with most recently is St. John's County, Florida, where a County Emergency Services Department operates the communications center. Neither one of the fire departments -- it's a separate department that provides it, and if I sat down and made a list, I could probably come up with a dOzen places where there is some other organization that provides communications rather than the fire departments themselves. I don't like that model, but it's done. CHAIR: Okay, Page 44? Our agenda that was sent out April 24th -- it was mentioned in the first part of the meeting there were questions that were put together for the consultant, and I guess we'll go through these for clarification and some answers, Fire Services Study Meeting 44 May 29, 1996 but I'm not sure who asked some of the questions. They'll probably be go ahead and go through it. I think at this time we were all on board as far as the questions that remain for the consultant. We'll go ahead and go through, but these other questions for the consultant, I'm certainly not going to discourage that, but this is where we started, trying to formulate the list so we wouldn't have to go specifically maybe page by page. (End Side A, Tape 2) (Begin Side B, Tape 2) CHAIR: Page 44 -- clarification is requested on the recommendation for an ECC training officer and the merits of the additional cost. MR. ROWDLEY: The first thing, we had to look at the communications center in detail with Steve Souder, who runs the communications center in Arlington, Virginia, which happens to be where our office is located, but it's only coincidental. Steve and I have been friends for a long time, and we both ended up in the same city. He runs probably the best combined public safety communications center that I know of personally. I've looked at a lot of them. He came and looked at this one, and said one of the things that jumped out at him is they need to have somebody focus on training because right now their training responsibility is divided up among several supervisors. It's not a clear-cut assignment to anyone, and the best thing that he could recommend to make things work better in the communications center would be to have a training position focused full time on training people there -- training new people and sharpening the skills of the people who are there. So that comes from a practitioner. : In that model or in that setting of the 911 service back there, did they have both the combination of employees like we do in Kern COunty? MR. ROWDLEY: The City employees and the County? : Yeah. MR. ROWDLEY: I don't know anybody else who would even try to do that. : Who hires the employees? Fire Services Study Meeting 45 May 29, 1996 MR. ROWDLEY: Well, in Steve's center, he's the head of the public safety communications center for Arlington County, so he uses the Arlington County personnel system to hire people. They're County Public Safety Communications Center employees working for him as the director of the communications facility. : So you're recommendation would be that they would be all one entity or the other. MR. ROWDLEY: Yes, all one or all the other. Right now, the manager is a County employee and the facility is a County building, so if you got to one way or the other, it seems to be easiest to go County. It works that way. If you put eight employees in a room, say, five of them work for one employer and three of them work for the other employer, now let's make this work smoothly -- I don't think any of us would recommend that as a good way to do business. CHAIR: Is there any additional questions on that from the committee? : I didn't get a figure on the cost. I got the figure on the savings, but did you have anything, an idea of the cost to consolidate? MR. ROWDLEY: The cost to consolidate would be whatever it costs to bring everything together and get through that stage of sorting everything out. I can't guess on a figure for that. It might go easy, and it might not. If everybody came in smiling and in a good mood and said, "Let's just figure out the easy way to do it," there might not by any significant cost associated with it. Probably the one that would hard to figure out would be things like evening up pension contributions, if that was going to be done, evening up salaries and benefits because you've got two contracts that are about the same place, but they're not exactly in the same place, so at some point you got to even those up. There's an even point, but I don't know where it is. That's the cost of getting into it. The long-term cost should level off. : As the next question on cost, if I could, please -- we're talking about the ECC and all the recommendations. You have any idea how much it would cost to implement those recommendations? MR. ROWDLEY: Yeah, we really thought about that as a separate issue because we said that's something you should do whether you consolidate or not. You should do these things to fix up the communications center, but I don't remember if we figured a Fire Services Study Meeting 46 May 29, 1996 cost for them separately. I don't' think we did. That's really independent of the consolidate or not consolidate. : And I have one other question. Twelve-hour shifts -- has somebody done a proficiency study on what happens after eight hours? MR. ROWDLEY: Yeah, in fact -- well, it works well for dispatchers is what we'.ye found, and Steve Souder, the guy who did it has experience with eight to twelves, twenty-fours, and any other permutation and combination, and he said twelve works. Start going beyond twelve and performance drops off. Up to twelve it's still okay;, unless it's a real hairy twelve. If it's twelve hours of push and pull and shove, performance drops off. If it's twelve average hours, it works out okay. And the employees like it, and that has a lot to do with it. CHAIR: Okay. Anything else, Louis? : We're back to the cost. That's kind of where my eyebrows are raising. My understanding was that you company has been through the consolidations before. 'Couldn't we be given some examples of those consolidations? MR. ROWDLEY: I don't know that anybody has ever come back and said how much did it cost us to consolidate. From my experience, that's -- : That's that? MR. ROWDLEY: Yeah. I don't recall it ever having been so bad that anybody regretted having done it. It's like getting over a speed bump. CHAIR: Okay. Anything else on cost? Okay, the next question -- let's see -- "The national trend is for fire incidents to be down as well as firefighting forces due to prevention activities." And the question of course is what is the documentation for this statement? MR. ROWDLEY: Again, what experience is, it's the business we're in. That's what we do, so fires are down. Nationally fire incidents is down about a third, fire deaths are down about a third over the past fifteen to twenty years, so we're on a good trend for fires overall. Fire Services Study Meeting 47 May 29, 1996 CHAIR: Our next note in the blue page, I'll refer this as the blue sheet, Page 66, so I'm going thumb real quickly through -- if there's anything between 44 and 66 in the committee's notes. : I have a quick questions. When you were talking about the savings in consolidation earlier this morning, did you take into consideration having only one training officer, or one training chief? MR. ROWDLEY: As I recall, we looked at it and said you have about the right number in training, so -- : With the combined -- with groups? MR. ROWD~EY: Yeah. If you put the two of them together, you have about the right number of people -- the mix between captains and battalion chiefs might change a little bit, but that's ten percent of somebody's salary. That's not a main (big?) consequence. CHAIR: Okay -- 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53. : May I have a clarification on 52? CHAIR: Sure. : I made a sweeping note in my book apparently from our conversation about the 800 megahertz. This stuff is over my head. Eight hundred megahertz, and then I wrote, "Not feasible due to the mountains and uneven terrain in Kern County." Is that what I wrote? Is that my opinion? I don't my opinion. MR. ROWDLEY: You can do it. It's just more expensive. Ask your Motorola salesman. They can do anything if you've got enough money. The whole communications technology is changing and it seems to change about every three months, and there's a completely different way of doing it, and the rules are changing. We know that the existing radio frequencies are going to be refarmed about ten years down the road. Somewhere between five and fifteen years down the road, everything we have today will be obsolete and we'll have to have all ne technology. So it's g°ing to change. Right now, the most complicated, expensive and capable technology that's available is the 800 megahertz stuff. That may not be the same answer two years from now. Fire Services Study Meeting 48 May 29, 1996 : And is it usable? I guess that's the question I'm asking myself. I wrote that it was not feasible in Kern County. Is it or is it not? That's a question maybe for the Chief rather than you, but -- MR. ROWDLEY: It's usable, but it's expensive. And the technology that you have now is not too bad. We can make it work. : Okay. I don't mean to dwell on it. It's just something I wasn't really clear on. : I have a question on 62. "Significant savings could be achieved through the increased purchasing power that would result in joint purchasing and warehousing of supplies and equipment, along with more efficient distribution.- What significant savings? When you talked before about saving, you said it's insignificant what we could get. MR. ROWDLEY: It's hard to calculate. We're talking about en percent on some items and five percent on others. I can't put a figure on it. You save money by buying in bigger quantities, but I don't know how to put a dollar figure on it. : If you took~five percent of the two budgets MR. ROWDLEY: If you take five percent of the whole budgets, it would be a lot of money, but when you get down to how much of those budgets are spent on items you actually go out and purchase, we're talking about five percent of five percent. : Well, I looked at "significant.- MR. ROWDLEY: You have to start out by saying that ninety percent essentially goes to salaries, now you're dealing with the last ten percent is what you get to spend, and probably half of that is on things that you purchase versus things like electricity and stuff. It gets smaller and smaller the more you look at it. CHAIR: You have something on 62? : It's the very first statement on 62. "The County Fire Department does not have funds specifically set aside for apparatus replacement and has to fund new replacement apparatus through its annual budget process.,, This morning Mr. Rowdley made the comment that both the City and County fire departments had a good vehicle replacement program, and that was something that I Fire Services Study Meeting 49 May 29, 1996 noted for myself as a question for you. I don't think that's a good replacement program myself, personally, having served in the budget process and knowing how difficult that can be. And I know why the City did what they did. So maybe you know something we don't know or you could explain it to us. MR. ROWDLEY: Well, they both have pretty good fleets of apparatus. I grew tremendously jealous of the account that the City has for apparatus replacement. When I was a fire chief, if I'd had that budget, I would have been the happiest guy in town. The City has done something like setting aside a replacement fund and having that money on hand to buy apparatus. It's a bookkeeping issue. Rather than saying, "When we need a fire truck, we'll take the money out of current revenues and we'll set aside money every year and we have an account, so when it's time to buy a fire truck, we just spend out of that account." I think that's great. The important part is that you get the replacement fire trucks when you need them. When we looked, they both needed some replacement vehicles. The City had the money on hand to buy them, the County didn't. I don't know what's happened since then, but if the County can appropriate the money to buy them when they're needed, and -- it still comes down to the fact that the apparatus gets replaced when it's needed. : Okay. BeCause the comment is made -- this is talking about the County -- "These trucks are twenty-three to twenty-five years old and are both overdue for replacement." And that was having to do specifically with ladder trucks. But I guess for me, I'd like to know from your experience -- for me that translated into a level of service issue. If for some reason the day comes and steals more from the County and/or the City, for instance which they've done on more than one occasion, and the money isn't available to do something that needs to be done, can that translate into a level of service issue? Is the equipment's age a level of service issue? MR. ROWDLEY: It becomes a level of service issue if the apparatus gets so old or so dilapidated that it can't do the job. The County's ladder trucks really looked old, and it was time for a replacement. They've;e spent some money on one of them, and when it was old, but it still operated, but then we looked and said, "Yeah, it's about time to replace this ladder truck." The City's in-service ladder trucks happen to be in pretty good shape because they were newer. So it wasn't a service delivery issue at that point. If they deteriorate to the point that they're not doing the job, then it becomes a service level issue. Fire Services Study Meeting 50 May 29, 1996 : Can I have Page 64, please? Second paragraph, last sentence -- "There were so many administrative and support staff functions eliminated from the Bakersfield Fire Department that it was observed to be having problems meeting basic requirements." What basic requirements? MR. ROWDLEY: At the time we looked at the department, which was getting on a year, year and a half ago now, it probably wasn't the best time in the history to look at the Bakersfield department, and I frankly don't know how things have improved since then. At the time we looked, things weren't going very well administratively. There were vacant positions, a lot of turnover. It was just barely getting by as an organization. In fact, that happens to organizations. We talked to Chief Kelly at the time and he said, "Things aren't real good now, but they're going to get better." And so I think it needs to be looked at now rather than how i~ looked when we did the report. But it wasn't going very well at the time. : This says "basic requirements." : I know it's much better now, I understand that. But I'm looking at the report and that's all I have to -- MR. ROWDLEY: Just having the people there to keep fire prevention programs working, to get basic administrative assignments done, there had been so much turnover that a lot of things were happening right at the time. CHAIR: Okay, we're up to 66. Is everybody on 66? Question on Page 66, which would be -- what, the reference on the third paragraph -- "Administrative program once nationally recognized is on the decline." What is the source of the this statement and what data is available to support it? MR. ROWDLEY: That comes from my boss, Phil Shaman, who's the President of Tri-Data, has been sort of a guru of public education for the last fifteen or twenty years, and when we were first looking at coming to Bakersfield, he said, "Oh, boy, that's great because I've worked with Bakersfield and they've got some really neat public education stuff there, and I'm really excited because we know them and they know us for public education stuff." But we came here and he looked at it and he said, "They're not doing that stuff any more." That's the source of that statement. CHAIR: The next page is 69. States that "Kern County estimated at close to a hundred percent of buildings that require Fire Services Study Meeting 51 May 29, 1996 annual inspections receive one either from a fire suppression company or a fire inspector in '94." Document for this statement is requested. MR. ROWDLEY: One of the questions that we ask routinely, and. we asked both the City and the County, "What percentage of the buildings that you're responsible for do you inspect per year?" And the answer from the County apparently was close to a hundred percent. We had the figures at the time. I don't have them now, but that's how that statement ended up in the report, and Chief Clark might be able to elaborate on that one. MR. CLARK: Except for the output of the record keeping system, each building is given a computer generated inspection form, and we can track how many of those come back in, and how many buildings set by the County how many we sent out versus how many come back. MR. ROWDLEY: There's certain categories of buildings that require annual inspection and some that don't, and our questions was of the ones that require annual inspection, do you get them all done, and the answer was "close to a hundred percent." I don't know exactly what the number was. I'd have to ask the question again to get the answer. : I think what gave rise to the question for me is, and I can't find , but there's comments about the City's ability to do this,and it was documented in a much greater way, and so I looked at that and said, "Okay, he's documented what the City did. Where's the document for what the County does?" ~at you're telling me is that you talked to the quy and he said, "This is it." MR. ROWDLEY: I'm sure we looked at the figures at the time. I just don't have the figures now. We wouldn't have written it down without looking at the figures. CHAIR: Okay. The next comment states that the City arson investigators are not as well trained as the County. Again, how do you back that up? That's basically the question. MR. ROWDLEY: Can you turn the recorder off? : No. CHAIR: Okay, no. Fire Services Study Meeting 52 May 29, 1996 MR. ROWDLEY: My boss came up with that one, too, and I don't' know what the source is, and I can't substantiate it. But he looked at it and that's what he wrote. CHAIR: Okay. So he doesn't know. Moving on -- unless you see anything, we're going to 79. Anybody have anything for 79? Where is that reference on Page 79? : It's in the third paragraph. CHAIR: Okay. "This revenue is supplemented with approximately eight million dollars in other revenue to support the cost of operations. A substantial part of the differences come from structural fire tax revenues collected outside the JPA area, and some comes form other revenue sources." Is any consideration given as to the benefit of having equipment located in the metro area or the outside area? I guess they're wanting to know if they've double dipped, or if they haven't double dipped or should we take credit for that? : Is that what that question means? MR. ROWDLEY: I guess it depends on how you look at it. As I tried to describe earlier, there's money that flows from outside the JPA area in from taxes that are paid outside that come ink, and there are some service from resources inside that go out, so there's some balancing factor. The balance is more dollars flow in than service goes out, but as far as trying to put a dollar figure on it, we didn't try. CHAIR: Okay. We'll move on to Page 84 unless noted by the committee. : 83 -- just a clarification. I wrote in my book on 4/24/96 the statement number four about Station Number 62 fully funded by the airport and dedicated to airport operations. Chief Clark indicated that was not quite the way it works. noted anywhere, but am I incorrect today? Is that correct? MR. CLARK: It is not funded by the airport, no. : Okay. : I was wrong. : No big deal. I just wanted to clarify it. Fire Services Study Meeting 53 May 29, 1996 : Well, you weren't wrong when you reported it. That's just a recent change in the last four or five years. :When you reported it, it was half funded by the airport, and now will be funded by a general fund contribution here, whatever source of revenue we dream up to pay for it. CHAIR: Okay. Page 84, and the statement is that "Admission to the degree of rivalry between the two organization which has created a barrier to highly integrated operations." What is the rivalry? That was the question. MR. ROWDLEY: It's just there, and to some extent it happens everywhere. Every fire department I know there's a rivalry between Station One and Station Two, between A shift and B shift. There's just natural rivalry, but when you have the guys in the red trucks and the guys in the white trucks and you have two different histories that you have here, there's just a lot more rivalry. It's a bigger factor. And as you look at the two organizations, it just becomes obvious that there's a rivalry between the two of them. You talk to the City guys and say, "Oh, well, you know how the County guys are." You talk to the County guys and say, "Well, you know how the City guys are." They don't fight. They just have a rivalry. : This is not significantly different from any place else, is it? MR. ROWDLEY: No. It's more of a factor when you say, "How do we make the whole system work?" Because if you have one fire department and there's rivalry within the fire department, that can be healthy or that can be a minor factor, but when you have two fire departments trying to do the job and there's rivalry between the two organizations everywhere you look, it becomes a barrier. I think it's just obvious as I was looking at it that that's a significant factor in this relationship. : Do you have any examples of how other fire entities have been able to resolve -- besides this rivalry, there's other issues as well, and you've stated some, that the price difference or pay differential and unions and everything. How did other fire entities try to resolve that? MR. ROWDLEY: Sometimes they don't, and sometimes they never get them done. If you look at it as "How do you iron it out when you consolidate," go through -- you know, time works those things out. It gradually wears away. You bring them together and they Fire Services Study Meeting 54 May 29, 1996 start off, "You came from the City and you came from the City," and about forty-five years from now we're down to the third generation, they start to forget who's grandparents worked for the City and who's grandparents worked for the County. That works out over a period of time. It doesn't go away instantly. How do you make it go away if you have two organizations and their rivals? I thi~k it goes away by just being determined to work closer together. Like I say, there's an organizational commitment that we're going to get along and make this thing work smoothly. So if the organizational commitment is part of our job is to provide service smoothly to this combined service area and a fact of life is there are going to be two of us, then we have to work together. Then you can smooth a lot of those things out. I've seen it happen in metropolitan areas where there were fire departments that didn't get along, and they figure out they could get along and still maintain their independent identities, but they work pretty smoothly together. It takes time and commitment. CHAIR: The next I guess is more of a statement. I guess one of the members was in a bad mood or something. It says, "Why would the consultant recommend something like consolidation when there's no cost savings and the implementation of the condition would drive a knife into the community?" That must have been reading unrest. MR. ROWDLEY: I think the best answer I could come up with is we noticed that there's already a knife and we're trying to pull it out. I think the best answer to heal is first you got to pull out the knife and then you got to heal around the wound. CHAIR: Okay. Anything up through Page 87? Page 87 -- "The existing system works reasonably well with two cooperative fire departments with some improvements to be made if the administrators and policy makers can agree upon the objectives and overcome the barriers that resist change." This is a judgmental statement. What is the basis for this? MR. ROWDLEY: It's a judgmental statement, and it's a judgmental statement that comes from looking at this whole situation and comparing it with a lot of other situations. So yeah, it's judgmental. CHAIR: Okay, we'll go to page 89. : I had two left on 87. This is almost like contradiction. The one through third full paragraph down, "The metropolitan area does not need two separate fire departments. That does not benefit having them. At the same time today there Fire Services Study Meeting 55 May 29, 1996 would be only one fire department serve the area." The next paragraph says, "On the other hand, as long as there are two separate fire departments directed by two separate political and administrative systems, systematic problems will continue to exist." MR. ROWDLEY: I don't know that that's contradictory. If you called me in and said, "We don't have a fire department. Design something," I could absolutely guarantee you that I would not design what you have today. The problem you have is, you have a City and you have a County, and they're probably going to go on for a long time. The problems that exist here of having a relationship between a City fire department and a County fire department will probably exist as long as you have two separate organizations unless somebody declares magic. I don't see a way to make this thing work a lot better unless people get a lot better at'making it work. Does that make any sense? CHAIR: Okay. Page 89 -- "What is the major cost savings of these combined measures?" That's in the first paragraph, the last sentence. MR. ROWDLEY: There's no major cost savings. I think we talked about that the best we could see is maybe one percent, two percent, which isn't much. If there was five percent in it -- you know, I could point at five percent and say, "There's a good deal." CHAIR: Also on Page 89 -- "The major weakness that was identified relates to a lack of coordination between the two fire departments or between the City of Bakersfield and Kern County. Please elaborate on this statement." I think we've covered that in the first part of the meeting. I don't know if there's any additional comments. : I think we've covered it. CHAIR: That's something that's above this committee. As far as the City and the County go, that's their problem. 89, and then we go to 90. And I think rather than me read this, the first statement at the top. "Please elaborate on this statement." All right, I'll read it. "Most of the recommendations that come from analysis could be implemented by existing organizations. If the fire department, fire chiefs, administrators and elected officials could agree on working more closely together and reach a consensus on the best approach for each issue. In reality, it has proved to be difficult to achieve this level of consensus or agreement on any of the issues. This needing to conduct this study is evidenced by Fire Services Study Meeting 56 May 29, 1996 the difficulties that the City and County 'have experienced in working and planning together." So who said that? MR. ROWDLEY: I did. I've probably done twenty-five studies like this of fire departments and different kinds of questions. This is at least a tie for a first place in difficulty because I can't seem to find any basis for agreement on anything. Everyone's nice and everyone's friendly and everyone's cooperative, but every issue gets looked at from the City's perspective and the City's perspective, and other than saying that we want the most efficient cost effective answer in the end, we can't seem to find agreement on anything in between. It can work. I've seen fire departments work together side by side and blend well, and have no problems getting along, and I've seen some where it just doesn't mesh very well. I'm pretty sure that what we're talking about can happen with two organizations. I just don't see it happening. If it could, I would support it. I wouldn't recommend consolidation of the two just for some superficial reason, but as I look at it, I see that as being the only way to get past this problem of never being able to agree on anything. CHAIR: Then the next statement -- "What has been the success of departments consolidating under a fire authority?,, And I think we pretty well covered that earlier today, didn't we? Is there any other questions on the success of the fire authority? : We discussed that thoroughly. CHAIR: If there's no other questions, we'll move on. Okay, we'll go to Page 96. Page 96 reviews a ~number of consolidation issues -- working hours, etcetera, noting that "each of these issues would require some effort to resolve. However, the process is a zero sum exercise that should be based on the calculations of each jurisdiction, their existing assets and liabilities. How did the consultant come to that conclusion?. MR. ROWDLEY: Well, some issues would have to be worked out, but if the. two organizations were to be consolidated, there's some obvious things like different work schedules. The County works forty-eight on, ninety-six off? Forty-eight and forty-eight? And the City works twenty-eight. So they -- you know, they balance out. The net is essentially an equal number of hours but the schedule is different. So to bring them together, you got to work out a schedule. There's differences in benefits and working conditions that would have to be worked out. I don't see those being major dollar issues. There's some difference in dollars, but not a big difference that we could see. It's more of a problem of Fire Services Study Meeting 57 May 29, 1996 just working those things out. So you say zero sum, you say the total cost of the end being about the same as it is today. It would probably get split up, being a little bit different. I mean, you can't really figure out how that would split up without going through it issue by issue. At this stage, you bring up the hours issue, the forty-eight hour shifts or twenty-four hour shifts. My guess is that the County guys would all be in favor of forty-eight hour shifts and the City guys would all be in favor of twenty-four hours shifts. And the same thing probably applies to any other issue that you want to look at. If you're going to get together, you just have to decide which way you're going to do it, come up with the smart answer and move on. I think when it comes to dividing up the cost, there's an imbalance now between what the - County pays more than the City pays. Just on the relative sources of revenue, that six-million-dollar issue is going to be a factor somehow that needs to be resolved. You can't resolve it unless you can get together and agree on -- (End Side B, Tape 2) (Begin Side A, Tape 3) : Before you go on, I still have one other question. Have you seen other municipalities have a fire tax like Kern County has? MR. ROWDLEY: Oh, yeah : Have they had to try and resolve how to combine that together with a -- like with the City using it out of their 'general fund? MR. ROWDLEY: There aren't many states that have done what California did with the property tax Proposition 13. There are a lot of places that passed tax limitations that are causing problems, but nobody hit it quite as hard as California did. So it's more of an issue here than anywhere else, and I don't think there's even a trend for how people are resolving it here. Everybody's just struggling at this point. CHAIR: This would be the fourth paragraph -- the first two of 97 -- "The actual savings are not likely to be significant in proportion to the total expenditures. How did the consultant come to that conclusion? MR. ROWDLEY: I think that's the same thing we talked about before. Fire Services Study Meeting 58 May 29, 1996 CHAIR: Okay. Page 98 -- let's see. "Report does not state the savings that would be incurred due to increased efficiency." MR. ROWDLEY: Well, I guess the figure you might like to see is how many more lives would be saved or how much more property would be saved if you consolidated, and I can't tell you. I can tell you. that operations could be more effective, that you'd probably do a better job if everybody was coordinated, but I can't put a dollar figure on it. If anybody can, I can refute it. CHAIR: Okay. Is it one of those things where it goes in and comes out? MR. ROWDLEY: Yeah. Pick a set of numbers. There just isn't a history there, looking at dozens of fire departments and dozens of situations, there's -- it's not there. CHAIR: The next question -- "Did the consultant take into account the history of the.city incorporation and a formation of a separate fire department in his analysis?" MR. ROWDLEY: Yes. I looked at how it got to be the way it is. I didn't go back to see what year thing were incorporated, but I think you would a little bit. "Once upon a time there was a city surrounded by a sparsely populated County and over the years they blended together." Frankly, that's not important. What's important is from today toward the future, because you can't do anything about the past. What you want to do is make things better for the future. CHAIR: Okay. Any comments? Okay. The reports states that "if it were being done today, there would not be two fire departments." I think we've already talked about that. "What's the basis for the conclusion?" Unless we want to elaborate a little bit more, I think we've covered that throughout the day. Page 99 is sort of an interesting page, really. Our statement -- Page 99 -- "This is particularly concerning the members of the Bakersfield Fire Department who are concerned about being absorbed into a larger County fire department. What is the basis for this conclusion?" That means, I guess, you talked to some of them. MR. ROWDLEY: I talked to a lot of them. I think there are a lot of them in the room. It might be worthwhile to ask them. CHAIR: Okay. Anything else ,- it seems like I'm missing something. Oh, "the fall savings would be small. The improvements in efficiency and effectiveness would be desirable, and the only Fire Services Study Meeting 59 May 29, 1996 significant reason for maintaining the two provider system is that it works reasonably well and avoids the difficult process that would be involved in merging the two fire departments and establishing a new organizational structure. Where Bakersfield and Kern County deficiency is the result from having parallel organizations may be an acceptable compromise." And I guess they're wanting to say, "Why did you say that?" MI~. ROWDLEY: Again, that's judgmental having spent a long time looking at it. As a scientist, I would say that consolidating the two organizations together would give you a better result long term. Having some political experience and looking at the situation between the two organizations and between the City and the County, it may just be that leaving it alone is a better answer if you can accept not saving that last two percent and accept being a little bit inefficient to avoid going through what it would take to bring the two together. I think that's a political question. If everybody's satisfied, leave it alone. : When you said better results, are you referring to the fact that there'd be better efficiency than it was better cooperation, communication and better response time? Is that what you're referring to, is long-term? MR. ROWDLEY: Yeah. I think when everything shakes out, if they went together, when the dust settles, the operation would probably be a little bit better operation, a little bit more efficient overall. Wouldn't save a lot of money, but probably do a little bit better job, and you get away from spending all this time sitting around a table trying to decide what to do. : You figure two percent. MR. ROWDLEY: One or two percent. When you look at the dollar savings, they're in the one to two percent range. : Total budget? MR. ROWDLEY: Yeah. CHAIR: Okay, Page 100 -- "There's a trend particular in California to consolidate the fire departments and reduce the number of individual organizations that are delivering the fire services. What is the source of that statement?" Fire Services Study Meeting 60 May 29, 1996 MR. ROWDLEY: It's experience. That's what's happening. That's what's going on, nationally to some extent, but more in California than anywhere else. CHAIR: Well, that concludes the blue sheet. Any other remaining pages that anybody would like to ask the consultant any questions about? Okay, if not, then we'll -- unless someone wants to go into more of the -- any other information in the back part as far as attendance. : What I wanted to suggest for reviewing parts of this particular section is if we could allow staff to get clarification on some of the issues that are in the study also, and then once they do that, then I think . CHAIR: All right. Go ahead. : Well, I just have a few things, but I'd like the chiefs to start if they have -- if they need some clarification from him. CHAIR: As we go through let us know the page and stuff. Okay. Who wants to start? : I'd like to ask just a couple of thing in general. There's been quite a bit of discussion about the concept of rivalry between the two organizations. Do you feel that it actually affects their performance in emergency situations? MR. ROWDLEY: To some extent. I don't think there's hostility at the scene of incidents. I don't think they don't cooperate. I think the loose end is that they don't train together. Their standard operating procedures are a little bit different, so when they show up at the same incident they don't blend together as smoothly as they would if they practiced and do everything the same way. And in some extent from watching a few operations the times that we were in town, we went on some calls and just watched the way the two of them showed up together and they got along okay. And then we go back and talk to them, and you hear things like, "Well, we had to go in there and we had to lay a supply line because those County guys never lay a supply line," or "The ladder company showed up and it was the other guys and, well, you know how they are." It was at that level. They get the job done and they work okay, but it's not as smooth as it could be. : Did you comment earlier that that's common in other places, in other areas? Fire Services Study Meeting 61 May 29, 1996 MR. ROWDLEY: It happens everywhere. When Station 11 shows up and Station 12 shows up, they say, "Well, you know how these guys are at Station 11." It's just more evident, more obvious here. : The reason I brought that up, a week ago tomorrow, we had a very, very high incident of grass fires and as it turned out the total resources of both departments in the metro area were depleted, were staffing reserve apparatus, the one activity in the Rio Bravo area that we had ten of our twelve engines, and I would think the vast majority of your things (eurethanes?) in the metro area were all Working together. At one time they had eight or ten different fires going at once. They're all trying to communicate on one or two radio frequencies, and as far as I know -- I don't know how the operation could have gone any smoother. So that concerns me a little bit if rivalry or a training difference would really affect the overall operation, I don't know how they would perform that way if it's really a significant problem. MR. ROWDLEY: Put it in scale. I'm-not trying to say that you guys are so screwed up that you can't work together. You get the job done effectively. It happens, it works. I was thinking it could be a little bit better if everybody was training and practicing and using the same standard operating procedures. But the job gets done, and it gets done pretty well. : Another area I wanted to comment on, and maybe wondering if you'd be kind enough to tag along with it. I don't remember what page it is on, but it must be a section that has something to do with change. It indicates that the two chiefs have in fact indicated that they are receptive to looking at change. : 97 or 98, I think. : And identifying and implementing different approaches if in fact a mechanism was identified, that once the two chiefs had come to agreement on some of these things that there would be a more efficient mechanism . MR. ROWDLEY: I don't remember where it is, but I remember something to that effect. MR. KELLY: And I think both Chief Clark and myself have shared that maybe two or three times since -- Fire Services Study Meeting 62 May 29, 1996 : And that comment tied in with the comment at the top of Page 90, to my way of thinking it's very significant, a critical factor in the whole thing, regardless of what decision is made, how to work towards improvement, and if in fact it is able to do it in a less costly manner and be more efficient, I think those two thing are critical and sort of go hand in hand. We've made the commitment to do it, and if both of us are still involved in the process, there has to be a mechanism to where we have the kind of support we need to get it done. That's all I had. : I think overall my comment is that throughout the study and the recommendations and the findings, I didn't get a sense that any of those things considered a transition where the City would be seen as the viable lead agency, and I wanted you to give me some sense of why, why not? If there was consolidation or if there was a metro -- MR. ROWDLEY: I really tried to look at both ways. If you going to consolidate, one or the other has to lead or you have to create the third. The problem is if the City takes the lead, then essentially it cuts that area out of the County area, so you lose the efficiency of the City and County being one. If there's a value in having an organization that doesn't have a constrained boundary, then that makes the County the better choice, all other things being equal. : Then are you suggesting that -- because I'm still not quite clear -- are you relating it back to the revenues that are generated from the County and that the City -- you had talked about the doughnut hole or whatever -- that it would impact the County's revenue generation and thus funding level for operations? MR. ROWDLEY: Well, one of the first things we looked at -- I said, "Gee, six million bucks is a lot of money, and if you change the rules, how are you going to deal with those six million bucks?" : Yeah, but where is the six million bucks coming from? That's what I'm trying -- MR. ROWDLEY: That six million dollars, it's generated outside the metro area and spent inside the metro area. If you cut the metro area out of the County, how easy is it going to be to move that six million dollars across the line? My original pass at it, I said, "Gee, that could be a significant problem," one I brought back to the administrative review people. They said, Fire Services Study Meeting 63 May 29, 1996 "Don't worry about it. We'll handle that." So I said, "Okay, fine. It's not a problem." So I just looked at it from an organization and service delivery perspective and said, "If you have to do it one way or the other, which way is better?" I think to have one big organization would be better than to have two medium sized organizations, one with a hole in the middle. : But I'm still trying to get back to -- so your basis for not considering that the City would be a lead is connected to the six million dollars that -- MR. ROWDLEY: No. : So -- that's what I'm trying to get a -- MR. ROWDLEY: I took the direction which said, "Don't worry about that," and so I stopped worrying about that. : Right. So then minus the six million, what's your basis for none of the recommendations suggesting that the City could be a lead if -- you know, if you're talking about the training center, you're talking about the communications center, you're talking about generally fire services as a whole? MR. ROWDLEY: Well, I guess it's because if the City took the lead in the metro area, then the County would still need lead all of those things to serve the rest of the county. The County would still need a training system. The County would still need an administrative system. The County would still need a fire prevention officer. It would still need all of those things, so you don't gain any of the efficiency, either operational efficiency or dollar efficiency, by having one instead of two. You just move the boundary. : Okay. So I guess in our initial request of you and the request for proposal when we required that the study take in the metropolitan area, then was that not feasible because you went outside and went to the rest of the County? I mean, I don't think that we ever got back to saying, "Well, okay, yes, you san take in all eight thousand --" MR. ROWDLEY: We didn't spend a lot of time looking at the rest of the County, but we had to look at the two organizations. I don't know what it would be as a portion of the organization, but let's say it's twenty-five percent of the organization. Twenty- five percent out of the County fire department and make it part of the metro fire department -- you can't ignore the fact that it's Fire Services Study Meeting 64 May 29, 1996 going to have an impact. So we didn't spend a significant amount of time measuring that impact, but we're aware that that impact is there. And when we're talking about the organizational issues, we know that what's left of the County fire department would still have to have all of those things that you would blend together in the metro fire department. That's really the only reason why it tends to lean toward the County rather than the City doing it. : On Page 11, there is a comment in the footnote, and I think probably in some other areas of the study where you allude to the fact that funding to increase operations would be proposed to some extent. And I was just curious -- did you just make an assumption that maybe from the City perspective that no additional revenues could be generated from our general fund to increase our resources? MR. ROWDLEY: I didn't make that as an absolute assumption, but experience told me it would be difficult. : Experience from whom? From where? MR. ROWDLEY: Just from being involved in city government and trying to get a bunch more money out of a limited tax base is always difficult. I learned that somewhere along the line. : We've got a two hundred million dollar budget we're proposing this year, so our revenues are moving up. Okay. I was just curious if someone had said something to you. On Page 39, at the last sentence of the page you say, "Many of these objectives can be achieved with or without further organizational consolidation if effective leadership is provided." The effective leadership comes from where? MR. ROWDLEY: From elected bodies, the administrative levels and the fire chiefs levels I think is where it needs to come from, and I probably shouldn't leave out the unions. : Okay. : Gail, can I ask you a question? Isn't there a that taxation from the fire tax, that's mainly based from the -- most of that money comes from oil producers and the oil taxation? MS. WAITERS: Oh, you can't ask me that. Fire Services Study Meeting 65 May 29, 1996 : What I'm thinking about, as Gail has asked me that question, is that we're making the assumption that the oil companies are going to keep on paying that tax forever, and that there's going to be not a plethora of money, but looking at my crystal ball, I don't think that money's going to be out there forever, and it's going to be diminishing as well. And so it might well be that the tax base in the city will have more money into it than the general fund and what the County can provide to provide fire services down the road. Could be. : That could be in the long term, but a disproportionate share does come from oil taxes. : But if that diminishes to the point where there's a negligible kind of monies that are coming in, then the County Fire Department is going to have tough time trying to support things like a net and their farther out stations. And so is part of the money also for the -- the Kern County Fire Department -- does that solely come from the fire tax, or does it come also out the general fund in the County? : They have a general fund contribution and they get a portion of our public safety funds . And then they generate revenue on their own -- State contracts. : I'm concerned about looking in the crystal ball and whatever's determined, where all that funding is going to be coming from in the future. : Okay. Then on Page 102, when we're talking about "should the joint powers agreement area be expanded, Number 3 says it includes a reasonable perimeter of developable land where annexation by the City could be expected or anticipated." I was just curious as to what your definition of reasonable perimeters might be. MR. ROWDLEY: Well, I guess the way the question was asked was should the boundary be expanded? And I think I tried to describe the criteria for expanding later, is when the area where the two organizations need to interact crosses the boundary line. So you look at it now, the perimeter stays outside that. There isn't anywhere on that perimeter now that it would be beneficial to have the two fire departments work together, except a couple of individual spots like right around Rio Bravo is right on the edge, so there might be a little benefit to extend the boundary there. The rest of it encircles the area that counts, so it doesn't need to be expanded now. Fire Services Study Meeting 66 May 29, 1996 : Well, we've already gone, I think, five miles outside of the JPA as sort of -- that was supposed to be the area for the study, so are you -- the reasonable perimeter, is that within that five miles or outside of that five miles? MR. ROWDLEY: Where it sits now is okay for how things are now. : Yes, but I guess what I'm getting to is that the City and the County, working together on an ongoing basis dealing with annexation,a nd you allude just slightly on Page 106 about annexation, and so to me it's real -- that they're sort of connected, and I was just trying to get a sense -- when you said reasonable perimeter, were you taking into account that ongoing negotiations for annexations may already take us outside. MR. ROWDLEY: If the City annexes outside the existing boundary, then it's time to move the boundary around the area that the City annexed. Maybe I didn't make that clear enough. : The last one I had was on Page 115, and I guess it was almost sort of tongue in cheek, but in the second paragraph where you talked about the dispatchers, you say the cooperation involved dispatchers handle calls from both City and County, but then the last sentence says that County employed all of the dispatcher staffing decisions could be based directly on work load requirements. What if the City hired all the dispatchers? Would the same basis apply? MR. ROWDLEY: Yes, the same. CHAIR: Okay, is there any other discussion from the committee before we open up the public? In opening up the public, we are under the Brown Act. You all know what that means. Nobody's talking about people. You do that, I got to get upset and say you can't talk about people. That's a personality type deal and we're going to make sure that we say out of that type of situation. And also as far as questions to the consultant, that's fine. As far as questions to the committee, I don't know if the committee has any answers yet, so I'd be careful about asking the committee anything. I know we're still working and you've learned just about as much as we've learned today, so as far as some of the questions -- of course, several of us have gone though this several times as far as the document. With that, I certainly don't have a problem with taking some comment and/or questions for the consultant. So we're open up to the public. Could you introduce yourself and all that good stuff. Fire Services Study Meeting 67 May 29, 1996 MR. LUCAN: My name is Tim Lucan. I'm a firefighter for the Bakersfield also a metro firefighters. In reading the recommendations, since my last name is Lucan I can say this is kind of a Lucanwarm reception to the recommendations. It's pretty tepid. It's "Well, we can't go this way, but we can't go that way." It really doesn't sound like there's a lot of savinqs approved. Some amounts you're throwing out I don't want to nitpick every little thing. But the cost, that is a concern I think. I refinanced my house a couple of years ago. I remember doing that. It was like, "Oh, I'm going to save all this much money on my house payment." Well, okay, how come? Originally it's going to take me fifteen years to repay the cost of - the refinancing, so it may not be the best investment. So I think that's a real concern that I have as a citizen and that's who I'm responsible to is the Bakersfield population. And on the other hand, you keep hearing -- or I've read several times in there that the JPA seems to be working, and makes an efficient use of our resources, up to ninety-eight percent, ninety-nine percent. It's almost like well, you've got a hangnail; let's cut your foot off. What about just approaching fixing JPA? If there's a problem with JPA, what are they? I mean, delineate it very well. Yes, there's problems with it, it doesn't handle planning ery well, it isn't necessarily a thrilling document. Instead of throwing away the Bakersfield Fire Department to address that, let's fix the JPA. Let' s look at setting some criteria for the staff stations laid out. There's a lot of criteria that can be used. Some criteria for establishing the JPA boundaries, if we get those down, and establish some of those criterias, triggers and mechanism that can work for the future instead of having to revisit this problem every five years, then the JPA becomes a living document changes · I'm curious as to why -- it didn't seem like there was any recommendations, "Well, let' s fix the JPA. Let's MR. ROWDLEY: If there wasn't a problem with the JPA, I don't think we would have had a job. I think the reason that we were hired to look at it, and I think part of the reason that this advisory group exists is because there's some recognition that this relationship doesn't work as well as it could because if it were working fine everybody would just leave it alone and let it work. so it's not working as well as it could. I agree with you that if everything worked smoothly, there wouldn't be any reason to change it. If the planning took place as smoothly as it would be nice if it took place, if the relationship carried on as smoothly as it would be nice if it took place, leave it alone. Don't discount the leave it alone option, but if you're going to leave it alone, fix Fire Services Study Meeting 68 May 29, 1996 the problems. Figure out how to plan together, figure out how to develop the mechanisms to smooth out the problems and eliminate the need for consultants. MR. LUCAN: Yeah, I'm pretty with that also. I had a couple of things along those lines there before I . I think part of the problem is the JPA and it has been that for the last probably sixteen years, and then the constant pressure to consolidate has come all the way up to this level here, and I think as far as working in the field and working together, I think we do do that. I think we could work closer together, but when you have that constant pressure applied to you over that long term, you tend to start thinking, "Well, if we do this together and we do that together, pretty soon your consolidation program is going to fall into place." And there's that little thing hanging over your head all that time. But I do think we work very well together, and you're talking about that blending -- two organizations can work as good as one organization. I think if that kind of threat was removed you'd see that blending, that working together. Some little highlights I wrote was -- you're talking about the metro area working together and the study was focused on the metro area. I think some of the concerns would be when we came together, we're talking about training in the metro area, but we've got eight thousand square miles and I don't work for the County, but I'm sure they're role outside the metro area is a lot different than in the metro area. So to say that we can just have one training area and we'll just train everybody, you still will end up training two different functions there. When it comes to apparatus and equipment, you have rural -- some of the apparatus carries more water than different types of apparatus, so as far as In a working relationship, there is a difference between ~etropolitan Bakersfield and the rest of the county. And lastly, I just wanted to say that borders, we do have some areas right now that the city -- if not the closest target,then the second closest and we haven't adjusted the borders and that needs to be updated and addressed. MR. FRAIZE: Chief, if you don't mind, what I'd like to do is just update a committee a little bit on fire prevention and arson. I don't think that they have all the proper -- : I'm sorry, what is your name? MR. FRAIZE: I'm sorry. My name is Captain Fraize. I'm currently in charge of the Arson nd Prevention Bureau for the City of Bakersfield. I was reading over this, and actually there's a Fire Services Study Meeting 69 May 29, 1996 couple of comments. First of all, I'd like to clear up one misconception. It says here that the Bakersfield Fire Department arson investigators aren't trained as highly as the Kern County arson investigators. That's incorrect. All of our people in there are trained on a regular basis. They have all the certifications. We are not limited to just arson. We also do prevention training, and so we do actually all high-rise, all different types of inspections that way, so our training goes both ways. So what that does,though,it makes us more rounded because that kind of training actually helps us in our investigations because we know building construction much better that way. So although we're not limited to just arson, we do both, our arson conviction rate right now is about ninety-nine percent, and so it doesn't seem to be hurting us this way. The other thing is as far as working with the City and the County, since I do both parts with the arson investigators, right now we work together on a regular basis, and we just had this rash of fires that Chief Kelly was talking about -- all of our people have worked with their people very side by side, trying to solve this rash of fires, which it did include City and County. That's not where we start. We're working on a database right now where all of our juvenile fire setter information is being shared between the two of us. We're putting it into a computer system this week. As we speak, they're putting it in. Also all of our arsonists, any time they're released from prison, any of that information that we get we share with the County and vice-versa, so we're actually getting a very good working relationship with the arson, wE're also looking at the possibility of doing cross training as far as our weapons are concerned so that we'll all have the same training that way. So these are all possibilities that we're working on right now. When it comes to the prevention side of it, just last Saturday as Chief Clark saw and Chief Kelly saw, also we had a very successful media day in which we incorporated the City an the County, worked very hard together, incorporated the local ambulance companies, just to give the media an idea oaf exactly what we do out in the field so they'll better understand what we do and we abetter understand what they do, and that was very successful. That was a joint effort. At two o'clock I have a meeting today with one of the County captains and we're going to meet with the Fair Board, and we're actually putting together a fire safety pavilion for the Kern County Fair this year, which is a joint effort between the City and County, plus we're bringing in and the Forestry Department and everyone. And so we work very close with them on the fire prevention aspect of it. So the information here is not quite correct, and I thought that you should know that we work very close with them right now. It's getting better all the time. There are certain areas that are very distinct to the City, and the City arson or City public education Fire Services Study Meeting 70 May 29, 1996 has to take care of that, and there's the same things for the County. So when we need to work together, we work together very well and when we need to do our own thing, we do our own thing very well. MR. KELLY: I also -- Ron, just very briefly, touch on the mail out form for the inspections as well as the inspection manuals to be used int he 19094 Uniform Fire Code. MR. FRAIZE: The City and County work together and we both adopted the '94 code. This is the first time, I think, we've done this together in a long, long time, if we ever have. So we're both out of the '94 Fire Code, which is the latest version. Working with another captain with the prevention unit, we went together and put together an inspection manual which all of our engine company captains will have in the stations, and they're almost identical. There's a few things that the City has the County doesn't and vice- versa, and there are City ordinances that we have to abide by that they don't. But for the most part, they're together. As far as the mail-out program Chief Kelly's talking about, it's a new program we're developing so that we catch all the B occupancies, which are the Mom and Pop stores and stuff like that had -- due to cuts in our budget, that we had to drop some programs. We're trying to pick those back up. The County was very interested in that program, so now they're taking a look at our program so that they'll be compatible to ours. So as far as cooperation, there's not a problem there. We work together when we need to, and when we need to do our own thing, we're very good about doing that also. : If I could just make one comment. Because we recognize in the study that there was this concern laid out, in our proposed '96-'97 budget we have proposed, and I believe the Council will approve, the public information specialist position back into the fold, and so that's going to help a lot in that area also. MR. FRAIZE: The way I understand it, that person will work directly under the Fire Marshall, which will coordinate all of our public education plus our PIO announcements, public information officer announcements. One other point we had is that the study said that the captains in there are torn between fire safety and arson, which they are sometimes. Sometimes it's very hard for us, I'll agree with that. But we also have two very well-trained civilians that are trained as highly as we are as far as doing -- not the investigations, but doing the inspections, and so if there is a time when we have something set up and we can't make that appointment, we have civilian inspectors that slip right in there and can take over for that. So we cover it very well. Thank you. Fire Services Study Meeting 71 May 29, 1996 : You made the comment about some differences, and I think I heard you say there are some ordinances that the City has by which the County is not required to abide. Can you give us an example? : Well, it's not that they're not required to abide, but it's just that something that the City has put together that the County doesn't have. I don't know if our fire lanes are exactly the same. I'd have to check, to be real honest. I couldn't quote them verbatim, but I know we have like fire lanes in our City ordinances, and things like that that I know that we enforce in our inspection manual that they don't. Now, I'm sure that the County has things like clearances around buildings or around structures that we can't really address because it's not a problem for us. So that would be something in the County ordinance. : I don't believe they have any fee schedules in the County, do they? MR. FRAIZE: Yeah, we charge -- that's another thing. We charge for different things that the County doesn't charge for as far as permits. Some permits we charge for and they don't, and vice-versa. So there are some differences, but the main part of my , the meat and potatoes of the whole thing is the same. We go by the same fire codes, the same building code. We expect the same. MR. KELLY: Excuse me. Fire lanes for what? Are you talking like at supermarkets? MR. FRAIZE: Yes, stuff like that. That's the first thing that came to my mind, Chief. I don't know if it's the same as ours. It probably is, but that's one of -- it's a City ordinance, it's not out of the fire code. It's . MR. KELLY: We have this, too. MR. FRAIZE: Yeah, I thought that you probably did, but I didn.'t know whether they were the same or not, that's the only thing. CHAIR: Okay. Thanks a lot. Anybody else from the public? MR. ALT: I have a couple of comments. My name is Jim Alt. I'm with the County firefighters and the president of the union, and probably only four people that's in this room, or have been in Fire Services Study Meeting 72 May 29, 1996 this room today, has been in the joint power process for its entirety. But I can assure you -- I've heard some comments and some questions by the committee that related to things that should have happened or didn't happen or could happen, and one of the things was the fire department's letting buildings burn down because they didn't cooperate. That's never happened in the twenty-eight years I've been in the fire service. I have never seen a department not take action° I've seen the relationship -- when I first came to work for the fire service, I could have came to work as Chief Kelly with the City or I could have came to work for the County. I chose the County, but twenty-eight years ago, the City and the County did not work well together. As a matter of fact when initial attacks sometimes somebody refused to help each other, and taxpayers lost buildings. I don;t think there was ever any lives lost. There may have been earlier to me coming into the fire service, but the joint powers was put into effect to require the departments to work together and they have. I can see numerous improvements in every aspect of prevention, firefighting --the old adage that we only put out grass fires, anybody with any common sense would tell you that there's almost seven hundred thousand people living in Kern County. Only a hundred and ninety thousand of them are protected by the City of Bakersfield. Now, who in the hell protects the other people? They live in houses, too. There's structure fire out there. The same requirements 'for training that the City has, the County has. We don't have as many high rise, but we have a lot more refineries, and I guarantee you, I've had five or six fires over the seventh floor in refineries. But it requires the same type of training that the City firefighters get in their high rise training. I've noticed that the chiefs probably cooperate with each other at least a thousand percent better than twenty years ago. (End Side A, Tape 3) (Begin Side B, Tape 3) MR. ALT: -- study. I do agree with a portion of the study that refers to working closely together in consolidation. I personally believe if as the City grows and the County's out there, if there's continuous, the slightest disagreement without a clear object and what we're doing in there fire service between the City and the County, eventually the odds will play against us and we will kill one of our own or even worse, a taxpayer. It behooves this committee to look at this study and make sure that the recommendation you give will be in the best interest of all taxpayers. There is not but one station in the City that has the necessary fire tax to support the people in it. There's only three Fire Services Study Meeting 73 May 29, 1996 County stations in this metropolitan area that have the tax money. The money is the root of the problem. Conni Brunni alluded to the problem. There's not a fire station in that area. The City and the County does not work together. Why do we have to move back and forth to have this committee meeting? It's the same fight. It's always going to be there until you tell the politicians enough is enough. We don't need to waste our time, and I can look around this committee -- this is not a waste of time, but it can be wasted if nothing comes of it. We all go back and it's business as usual and there's a meeting next month or next week or two years or five years, and we still have to hash this problem out and nothing is done, and you haven't accomplished anything and you've wasted your time, and the City and the County has wasted their taxpayer dollars. And it's quite ironic that she sits on a committee now to look at people who wasted money at Bakersfield College. If we can only save one million dollars by improving the relationship between the two entities, twenty years, that's twenty million dollars. And who knows how much money it will be? A million dollars could be five million dollars in twenty years. So there's a lot of money to be saved,a nd I think if you look at this , it was three hundred thousand here, four hundred thousand there, maybe ninety thousand there, maybe a hundred and fifty -- it all adds up. It is taxpayers' dollars and I think we ought to do it the most efficient way. I thank you. MS. BRUNNI: And I'll take exception to your comments, thank you. I believe that was directed at me. CHAIR: Okay. Is there any other public comments? MR. THOMAS: My name is Curt Thomas. I'm from the City Fire Department. I have a question about the budget, the six million dollars. That six million dollars that was a concern, if the County contracted with the City that might be lost, right? Because six million of it was based on fire tax and six million was from other sources. MR. ROWDLEY: The six million is essentially fire tax money that comes from a tax base outside the metro area that gets spent inside the metro area. MR. THOMAS: Okay. But the -- so the County has to supplement the money from outside the area. Well, we both have fire tax money, right? Fire Services Study Meeting 74 May 29, 1996 MR. ROWDLEY: Well, the County has fire tax money. The City has equivalent fire tax money. It's all part of the City general tax, and then they -- : For the sake of semantics and stuff, it's -- yes, that's correct. MR. THOMAS: Okay. Well, if the County's metropolitan area isn't supporting its area by itself, the City metropolitan area isn't supporting its area by itself without using other sources, so if we contracted with the County, how much would the City lose to that amount, too? You're saying the County would lose six million. Well, the City would have to lose part, too. MR. ROWDLEY: I wish there was any easy way to answer that question. It took me a long time to make myself think I knew what was going on. You got to look at what Proposition 13 did when it put a cap on the. total amount of property tax that can be collected. You can only tax one percent in property taxes, and then that has to get divided out among all the things that the City needs to do or the County needs to do. So there's a finite amount of money and an infinite amount of things that people want to spend it on. So you take today's condition, the City takes an amount of its revenue, most of which is property tax revenue, and pays for the City Fire Department out of that. The County has its revenue stream, part of which is dedicated to the fire department, part of which is dedicated to public safety, and part of which is undedicated and can be spent from the fire department. That supports the County Fire Department and then because there's this exchange of areas, they calculate a figure and transfer some money because you cover some of our area and you cover some of your area. To try to unscramble that is a mess. MR. THOMAS: It's easy to say that you're transferring money, but a certain area costs so much to operate. You know, we're able to operate our City area with just metropolitan funds. We don't have that other money on the outside to bring in, so if they've got that area, they should have to be responsible to operate that area with their funds. It's not a matter of bringing it in from another source. It's just a matter of a different way of looking at it. MR. ROWDLEY: Well, if you looked at it that way, then if you said the County Fire Department could only spend what it collects in the metro area, then you have to cut the County's fire budget in the metro area about in half. Is that right? By about six million out of about twelve million. So you'd have to cut what the County operates in the metro area by fifty percent. Then if the City took Fire Services Study Meeting 75 May 29, 1996 that over. Let's say okay, now the City is going to provide it, you're either going to do without that or figure out a way to pay for it. Where's that money going to come from? MR. THOMAS: How can we collect so much more money in our metro area than they can collect in their metro area? MR. ROWDLEY: More tax base. There's more property value in the incorporated area than in the unincorporated area. MR. THOMAS: Mr. , I have one last question. On that one and a half percent, one or two percent, that was on the twenty-eight million dollars for metropolitan Bakersfield? MR. ROWDLEY: Yeah, total. MR. THOMAS: So the total, if you merged, you'd really be talking sixty-something million dollars -- either that or Kern County budget?. MR. ROWDLEY: No, that was only referring to the metro area. MR. THOMAS: You're talking about merging them both, so you would have one budget, and one budget would be sixty something million dollars. MR. ROWDLEY: Yes, but what you could save out of it wouldn't increase that -- MR. THOMAS: Well, what I'm getting at is actually you're looking at half of a percent, not one or two percent. MR. ROWDLEY: One or two percent of the twenty-eight million dollars, which is less than one percent of the sixty million dollars. CHAIR: Okay. Any other comments from the public? MS. DETZ: My name is Susie Detz, and I'm a student at Cal State, and I think you've probably got my research paper up there. Does the committee have a date as to when they're going to be able to make a decision on this? CHAIR: I'll answer that. I give a deadline of mid-June to answer that question. Now it's up to the committee to accept that challenge. Fire Services Study Meeting 76 May 29, 1996 : The 12th or 13th of June. MS. DETZ: At that time you all, as a committee, will come to an agreement as to what your decision will be CHAIR: That would be my persuasion. But I'm only one vote, remember. The challenge was to get this done by mid-June. We're going to do the best we can, but our original charge by the Chairman was to do something by mid-June. Anybody else in public? Okay, then we'll bring it back to the committee. Committee members? : It sounds like that it's really kind of a choice between either leaving it as a status quo and improving those areas that are really need to be improved upon in the JPA in the acquisition of materials and the emergency response, or accepting not a metropolitan plan, but incorporation of the two fire departments together because the metropolitan plan doesn't sound like it's going to -- there isn't any cost savings involved and there isn't any long-term benefits for that. Is that what I'm hearing? MR. ROWDLEY: That's my reading of the situation, and what's going on in fire prevention sounds like it's the right stuff. If you told me, "We want to keep two fire departments," then I would say, "Well then, fix all those things we talked about." We could do it better by getting together, which sounds like that's what they're doing int he fire prevention and investigations area, so that's on the right track. If that's what you want to do, that's the way I'd do it. Or let's just get this over with and get together with one fire department, I think the better way to 4o it would be to go County-wide rather than metropolitan, but the metropolitan's not -- it's not an impossible option. We just think that County-wide would probably be the better option. : And in the last analysis, the only way that that can happen is with the government entities, Gail and Adel getting together and leading the fight and making sure that that blends · together, the JPA. : Let me get back on what Ken was saying, because you a~lso alluded to -- I think earlier when we were talking about Orange County, if in fact there was a decision to consolidate, what is your -- what kind of time are we talking about for that to actually happen, to make it happen and start serving the community? Fire Services Study Meeting 77 May 29, 1996 MR. ROWDLEY: I would say about a year is a realistic time for the process to take place. : No, what I said is to make it happen and start serving the community, because I think you were saying Sacramento's been going on for five years and Orange~County had something else. What do you think a competed consolidation -- MR. ROWDLEY: You never stop serving the public. You keep serving the public every day. So if you decide to consolidate, there's a day in which it happens. My experience is about a year is a realistic time, say. If we made the decision today to _ consolidate them, I would say maybe look at the first of July next year as a date for it to happen. Count on about a year to get everything lined up. : So within a year, you could make all the changes in the personnel issues, all the charter and ordinance changes and everything like that, and we'd be ready to go. MR. ROWDLEY: It can be done. You can take a lot longer if you want to drag your feet. : I have never known that an elected body could make all those major decisions within one year's time. If you have two separate ones that have got to go through all their -- MR. ROWDLEY: It happens best when there's some external force making it happen. It can happen in forty-eight hours if it has to. CHAIR: Okay. Is there anything else from the committee? : I~ve got one question here for Chief Kelly, and I don't know whether it's appropriate to do this, to this that I was sent, because I kind of felt I was asked to review this study here and not -- this was sent later -- but it has to do with a location, a fire station location, so it kind of does go back to the study. And it refers to this here on -- about the current JPA boundaries, and it says, "restrict City stations providing closest engine response," and then it says, which is the spirit of the whole agreement, "an example is the area north of Lake Ming off of Round Mountain Road. The City does not respond there at all. We are arguably the closest station." Where would the closest station be to Round Mountain Road, north side of the river -- City station? Fire Services Study Meeting 78 May 29, 1996 MR. KELLY: The City station, the closest -- of course, depending how far out you are -- the closest City station would be the station there at Lake Ming. : But you have to go back down the China Grade Loop at the river bridge to get across. MR. KELLY: Across Points Ferry, but if you're down towards that way, then Station 8 by Bakersfield Community College would be closest. : Do you think that's closer? It might be closer in miles than Highland Station on North Chester, but I think response time would be closer than the County station. : I was just curious if they did that study by using just a map and not noticing where the bridge was. MR. ROWDLEY: I have no idea. I do not -- CHAIR: Okay. Conni? MS. BRUNNI: A small thing that came up -- it was actually a comment by a member of the public who's currently by the Rio Bravo station. Well, I wish the Fire Department would come back because he burns things in his yard or something -- I wasn't real clear, but it used to be I guess you could get a permit for two or three weeks at a time. Now he has to get one daily, and he used that as an intrusion on the City's Fire Department. Is that an area perhaps where we have different standards? I didn't know if that was the case. : The only thing you're allowed to burn within the City is tumble weeds, and you have to have a permit. You cannot burn just regular weeds, though I find it very difficult to understand why he would need a permit for more than one or two days if he's just going to gather -- because normally, he'd gather the tumbleweeds, come get a permit, we would go look and make sure there's an adequate fire break and he's got a shovel, a hoe, a garden hoe -- something for retarding the fire's spread if it gets away from him. We'd go inspect it . So I don't' know, maybe Dan can comment, but we don't allow anything in the city other than tumbleweeds. Fire Services Study Meeting 79 May 29, 1996 MS. BRUNNI: Is it a place where there's a difference maybe? Are your permits different? I didn't' know. This was just something that came up and I said, "Whoa, maybe this is an issue." : Certainly not, though we -- I have the latitude to say you cannot abate this hazard by any other means except burning. I can think of a lot or a field'or whatever, but as far as a permit to burn, it's much the same as what you described for tumbleweeds. Rarely would we burn a lot, although we do do that , and we do do it for hazard reduction. But other than that, you might get into a yearly permit for agricultural burning -- almond prunings, for example. There's - stuff like that, but that is outside the homeowner arena. : I do want to make one other comment while I have the floor. Conni mentioned something a couple of meetings ago, and that in the JPA, if that continues -- I don't know if it's true for other localities, but to make sure that there's community input into the JPA process, just like we just talked about in regards to the fire response. And I would love to see that if the JPA continues, that there be a community person on that committee. CHAIR: Those are things that we'll discuss at our next meeting. Then all the committee decide then what it is. Let's go ahead and wrap it up. Does anybody else want to talk about anything? The one suggestion I'd make for the consultant would be there were three or four things that were discussed here today and hopefully you took some notes on it as far as correcting parts of the report. For example, Dan's comments of "that's not the way it works," or something like that. There's about three of those, and hopefully we got those. I would say that those revisions need to be made, whether you do it through an addendum or whatever you're going to do. MEMORANDUM August 1, lt9~96 TO: ALAN TANDY, CITY MANAGER FROM: LELAND J. ANDERSEN, COMMUNITY SER~V~CCES I~ANAGER SUBJECT: PUBLIC ASSEMBLY FACILITIES - POSITION PAPER As the City heads toward the twenty-first Century, the need for additional public assembly facilities in Bakersfield is becoming increasingly evident. Due to the lack of comparable facilities in the Southern San Joaquin Valley, demand for use of the Convention Center has surpassed the available space. Requests for use of the Center, by both local and out of town groups, are being turned away at a growing rate. The need for added buildings supports development of an Arena having six to eight thousand seats and potentially a Conference Center of no less than thirty thousand square feet. These additional facilities would increase the opportunity to attract more visitors to the City, and increase the possibilities for our growing community to view and participate in a wider variety of events. New facilities represent an investment for future growth and development, both financially and culturally, throughout the City, with emphasis in downtown revitalization. The construction of new public assembly facilities represents the next phase in the expansion of buildings that enhance and promote the City. When the Civic Auditorium was completed in 1962, it served two purposes for a growing community, a place for entertainment and a location to house conventions. In 1988, the building was remodeled and renamed the "Bakersfield Convention Center", in hopes to attract more of the burgeoning convention and corporate meeting industry. Combined with the improvements to the facility, completion of the Holiday Inn Select hotel has enhanced the attractiveness of the City to planners of mid-sized conventions resulting in a four-fold increase in bookings. These gains continue into the future, with potential bookings in calendar year 1997 amounting to 122 days (one-third of the year) as the convention industry continues to respond favorably. The great response from the convention industry combined with "Bakersfield Fog" ice hockey season games and the wide variety of other event bookings that nearly fill the remaining dates, cause the Center to deny numerous rental requests. Although the 1988 remodel and expansion created some additional meeting and exhibit space, demand for use of the facility has completely surpassed date and space availability. Currently, the Center's staff turns away 75-100 events yearly due to lack of available space or conflicts arising from present logistical constraints. Additionally, the Convention & Visitors Bureau Alan Tandy August 1, 1996 Page 2 has hosted numerous site visitations by convention and meeting planners interested in bringing their events to the City, but cannot, due to lack of needed space. This demand substaniates the need for additional facilities and has resulted in lost opportunities for the Convention Center and more importantly, the community. New public assembly facilities would solve the space and logistical problems now faced by the Convention Center and would offer opportunities for a growing community. Simultaneous events taking place in separate buildings in a "complex" style layout could be produced each varying in type, size and scope. A sporting event (Ice Hockey, Basketball, etc.) could be held in a new Arena at the same time a Symphony concert is taking place in the Convention Center Concert Hall, while a convention meeting or banquet was underway in a new Conference Center. Each building would offer a separate type of __ event, and would expand recreational, cultural and informational opportunities at levels that were not previously possible. Additional facilities would provide added financial activity from increased travel and tourism created by larger groups visiting from outside the Bakersfield area, resulting in the creation of additional jobs in support industries. Increased civic pride and involvement would be attainable with greater focus placed on the development of mutual interests and enjoyment by the events presented (ie. sport team affiliation). Revitalization of downtown Bakersfield would be supported from increased activity by individuals attending events and their need for support services (food, lodging, banking, etc.) while in the area. Bringing these mutually beneficial opportunities to the community through the development of new public assembly facilities would further enhance the quality of life for all individuals in Bakersfield. These elements would work together in establishing the City as an all- around premier location in California to live and invest in the future. BAKERSFIELD PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT MEMORANDUM July 25, 1996 TO: Alan Tandy, City Manager FROM: Kevin Barnes, Solid Waste Division ~/ RE: UPDATE ON COUNTY FUNDING FOR RECYCLING PROGRAMS This news has a certain irony with respect to the current attempt by the County to save the City money on its fire services. We have just received a copy of a July 9, 1996 contract in which the County will pay Community Clean Sweep to operate four dropoff recycling centers in the metropolitan county area. Apparently Community Clean Sweep will hire a local hauler to do the work. The significance is that, per the City/County agreement for dropoff centers, the County will not have to pay the City for program operation if four County centers are opened. This is. okay since there will be more centers to share the load in the metro area. However, the irony is that the County will pay about triple the cost for their own centers compared to what they pay the City now per center. KB: smp S:\WPDATA\R_UPCNFD.MEM JUl 2 9 1996 BAKERSFIELD PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT MEMORANDUM DATE: AUGUST 1, 1996 TO: ALAN TANDY, CITY MANAGER FROM: RAUL M. ROJAS, PUBLIC woRKs DIRECTOR ~ / SUBJECT: STOCKDALE HIGHWAY/CALIFORNIA AVENUE INTERSECTION EXPANSION On July 23, 1996, we sent you a memo regarding potential delays which would effect construction of the subject intersection expansion (copy of memo is attached for your reference). As the attached memo indicates, the problem involved potential delays due to clearing of P.G.&E. facilities. Since the date of that writing, staff met with both the Contractor, Griffith Company, and P.G.&E. to discuss the problems and to develop solutions that could work for all parties involved. The meetings were he'ld on Thursday, July 25, 1996. Griffith Company indicated any delay would cause them problems and began to demand concessions be granted to them. The meeting with P.G.&E. on the other hand yielded some very positive results. They indicated they would have their facilities cleared by August 26, 1996. Based on the fact that Griffith Company was going to begin their work in the median area and not conflict with P.G.&E., the new clear date seemed reasonable. It should be noted that P.G.&E. responded quite well to our concerns (as they did on the Coffee Road project) and should be commended for their efforts. Therefore, I would not at this time recommend any changes to our franchise agreement as was proposed in the July 23, 1996 memo. Griffith Company is scheduled to begin construction on August 12, 1996 and have the . project completed by November 1, 1996. We will continue to keep you posted on the status of this project. cc Jack LaRochelle BAKERSFIELD PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT MEMORANDUM TO: Alan Tandy - City Manager FROM: ~.(~/Raui M. Rojas - Public Works Director DATE: II ~ngl .Iuly 23, 1996 SUBJECT: STOCKDALE HIGHWAY/CALIFORNIA A VENUE INTERSECTION EXPANSION We have just received some very upsetting news from PG&E. As you are aware, the above project has been on-going for several years from its initial point of inception, through right-of-way acquisition, design, bidding, and award to its current point of imminent construction. Since last November. we have been in contact with Utility Companies, including PG&E, outlining our project to them and making sure they were aware of the need to clear our street nght-of-way for this project. Initial plans were provided at a meeting in January of this year with a recluirement that the nght-of-way'be cleared by June 1st. Subsequent plans were provided at a meeting in Apnt, with an extension for the nght-of-way clearance to July 1st. A final set of plans were provided on June 3rd, W~th another final extension granted to August 1st. Another meeting was held at the site June 7th specifically with PG&E personnel to discuss their utility relocation. This morning, we had the preconstruction meeting for this project with Gdffith Company, and a PG&E representative who had evidently not had prior involvement with this project was in attendance. His initial comment was that PG&E had not yet completed obtaining an easement from the Shopping Center at the northwest comer of the intersection, and that after this easement was secured it would take PG&E 7 weeks to clear the right-of-way for construction. This came out of left field. As late as last week, the PG&E representative familiar with this project (Mark Maytubby, who happens to be on vacation this week) had told staff that no problems were anticipated meeting the August 1st deadline. By pushing this project back 7 weeks, it will be under construction through Thanksgiving and to the middle of December. Worse, as all of the work is to occur at night, it is highly unlikely that adequate temperatures for paving will be :)resent this late into the year. We have scheduled a meeting with PG&E and the contractor Thursday morning to further discuss this issue, but if there can be no improvement on their schedule, then this Department would recommend postponing this project to Spring to miss the Holiday season and to assure adequate paving temperatures. We may want to explore our franchise agreement and determine if there are · other remedies we might pursue, as PG&E's performance with this project is totally unacceptable. BAKERSFIELD CITY MANAGER'S OFFICE MEMORANDUM July 31, 1996 TO: Alan Tandy, City Manager ~/ FROM: John W. Stinso2~sistant City Mana SUBJECT: Retiree Insurance Changes Attached is a summary of the changes made by retirees as of July 1, 1996. It appears that the Medicare Risk plan was a viable alternative to those concerned with the cost increases in the Fee For Services plans and it provided additional cost savings for many in the California Care HMO as well. We will continue our successful efforts to provide information and counseling to retirees who are interested in their medical options. RETIREE OPEN ENROLLMENT RETIREE INSURANCE CHANGES EFFECTIVE JULY 1, 1996 GINGER RUBIN J u LY 24, 1996 FILE:Q/RETCHGJ71) 308 Total number of Retiree's 55 Retiree's made changes to their health insurance plans BLUE CROSS 23 Retiree's left the Blue Cross Fee for Service 11 Blue Cross singles changed 11 Blue Cross two party changed 1 Blue Cross family changed ENROLLMENT 1 Single enrolled in Blue Cross CALIFORNIACARE 32 Retiree's left the CaliforniaCam plans 4 two party's in the Over/Unders changed 11 singles in the Over 65 group changed 17 two party's in the Over 65 group changed ENROLLMENT 2 two party's enrolled in the Over/Under group 6 singles enrolled in the Over 65 group 1 family enrolled in the Over 65 group 11 singles enrolled in the Under 65 group 5 two party's enrolled in the Under 65 group MEDICARE RISK PLANS 57 Retiree and/or theirs spouses enrolled in the Medicare Risk plans 6 singles enrolled in Senior CalifomiaCam 2 two party's enrolled in Senior California Care 17 singles enrolled in Secure Hodzons 13 two party's enrolled in Secure Hodzons KERSFIELD Economic and Community Development Department MEMORANDUM July 29, 1996 TO: Alan Tandy, City Manager ~ Direct FROM: Jake Wager, Economic Development SUBJECT: Grant Application for Federal Funds for Lead-Based Paint Abatement Awareness of the hazards of lead-based paint have recently been heightened due to the identification of children locally who have been affected, as evidenced by recent news stories.' Coincidentally, Department staff is preparing a grant application for "Lead-Based Paint Hazard Control in Housing," a HUD-sponsored program. The purpOse of the program is to assist local governments (the City) in undertaking programs for the identification and control of lead-based paint hazards in eligible housing. Awards of $1 to $6 million will be made for three-year programs to perform risk assessments, conduct lead hazard control through abatement processes, carry out temporary relocation of affected families and individuals, support community awareness programs, as well as administrative activities. The department was informed of the nationally competitive grant by KCEOC staff who indicated that they had State-Certified Lead-Based Paint Abatement workers and were anxious to provide the service to the community, but did not have funding to carry out such a program. This HUD- sponsored grant program requires a local jurisdiction to be the eligible applicant, then act as a pass-through to sub-grantees (such as KCEOC). The application will describe an acceptable procurement process through which a sub-grantee will be chosen. We have prepared a grant for approximately $1,433,485 for a three-year period. A portion of those funds will remain with the City for administrative costs as well as direct project costs. A match equivalent to ten percent of the grant is required. KCEOC has identified over 50 percent of in-kind match from their existing programs. The remaining portion will come from existing Department staff time budgeted for rehab activities and will be prorated over the three-year program. We propose to have the Rehab Specialists certified as Lead-Based Paint Inspectors so that they can conduct the mandatory pre- and post-tests on units scheduled for abatement bylhe~sub_= grantee. This activity will be funded through the HUD grant. No additional staff will ~_' ~ ~,~ ~ ,~, :... ~ · ~ ", ~ ~E~,~,*- CITY ~J~A~,!,,~G~-,,~ $ OFFiC'7.' required. We estimate that the inspectors will spend approximately 15 percent of their time on this project. With the reduction of future general housing activity resulting from the budget process, existing staff will be able to assimilate the new activities into their work schedules. After about a one-year start-up period, the program will test and abate approximately 100 units over the remaining two years of the project. As with other federal grant applications, your signature is required on the transmittal letter, the Standard From 424, and accompanying certifications (attached). As a routine matter, the certifications have been reviewed by the City Attorney's office. tandy.mem/LBP/jf / ~.~ 'JOEL A. HEINRICHS County Administrative Center ~ County. Administrative Officer - -" Telephone (805) 861-2371 1115 Truxtun Avenue FAX (805) 325-3979 Bakersfield, CA 933014639 cOUNTY OF KERN ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICE July 30, 1996 Mr. Raul M. Rojas Public Works Director City of Bakersfield 1501 Truxtun Ave. Bakersfield, Ca. 93301 Dear Mr. Rojas: RE: CSA-71 SEWER FACILITIES The following is our response to your letter dated July 12, 1996 concerning a firm financial commitment from the County for CSA-71 sewer facilities. We see no need to amend the agreement in order to provide sewer service to only a portion of CSA-71 area at this particular time. You have and continue to provide sewer service to other areas within CSA-71 while not having a system which will provide service to the entire service area specified in the amended agreement. Since 1994 several alternative plans were evaluated and many more were discussed between our respective staff. In the final report your consultant, Brown and Caldwell evaluated three options: "A' "B" and "C.' Option "C" would have provided sewer service to the entire western portion of the County Service Area as well as to some existing City developments North of the River via a trunkline in Heath Road. Option "B' did not provide any sewer service to CSA-71; however, this option did provide for a trunkline aligrtment in Allen Road to provide service to City developments. The Allen Road alignment was the original aligaament considered feasible to provide sewer service to CSA-71 when the CSA-71 Agreement was drafted. A~ter your recommendation to City Council on November 8, 1995 to approve option "B" without service to County properties, the County presented a letter requesting that if the City Council adopted the Option "B" alternative, that the trunkline be increased in size to provide sewer service for the appropriate County areas which could logically be served by this line. The City Council at that time supported the County's request,-provided that the County pay their share. The cost for this trunkline is what County Staff has been requesting from City Staff. As you are aware, before the County can begin the process of setting up the necessary assessment districts we must be able to relate the anticipated cost to the property owners. The cost which you provided us with is $33.4 million, which is the difference from Option "B" and Option "C," not the increased trunkline cost requested. The County was under the impression that the City Council' had made their determination of which.option to pursue. If this is not the case, then Option "C" provides other benefits outside of CSA-71 which should be considered and we would be happy to discuss that with you. Mr. Raul M. Rojas CSA-?I Sewer Facilities July 30, 1996 Page 2 Since we have been unable to receive the cost estimate for the trunkline, we have made the following assumptions regarding the cost. Per your August 1995 report, the following costs were extracted: Buena Vista Trunkline $5.6 million and Allen Road Trunkline $2.5 million for a total cost of $8.1 million.. CSA-71 will contribute approximately 21% of the flow.in this trunkline system. When approximately $400,000 to extend the trunkline to Brimhall Road is added to the County's proportional share, the County's trunkline cost is estimated at $2 million. As we have previously indicated, we will pay this cost from cash on hand and assessment districts. Once you agree with the above estimate, the County will advance funds from a special reserve to offset assessment district cost for trunklines consistent with the agreement. Regarding the financing of the treatment plant capacity, the CSA-71 agreement indicates that the County will pay the appropriate connection fee at the time of connection. We further assume that you will not build subsequent phases until such time as previously constructed capacity is used up in the plant. We fail to see how this would have any impact on the City, since the treatment plant will be expanded in logical increments as warranted and the City will be reimbursed through connection fees. As indicated previously, the County is fully committed to implementing the CSA-71 agreement and expect to proceed in concert with the City consistent with that agreement. Please call with any questions. Sincerely, loel A. Heinrichs County Administrative Officer lH/CL/sk/csaTlr.ltr cc: Alan Tandy, City Manager City of Bakersfield Charles Lackey, Interim Director ' Engineering & Survey Services Community Oriented Policing Puts ssues Local Focus On Law Enforcement Key Benefit to Chester Annexation ................. ~0~ ..... When citizens of Bakersfield give rave reviews to the Property Tax 1% (based on a $50,000 assessed value) $500 $50~ COPPS program, they aren't referring to the popular TV series. Rather they're gdking about an innovative county Service Areas C.S.A. ~12.1 - School Crossbow Guards $8 0 approach to policing which i§ proving to be an effective deterrent to crime Community Oriented Policing and Refuse Collection $9.34/month$10.83/month Single-family residential Includes street Problem Solving. (Seniors are eligible for 50% reduction) - sweeping & green Answers For ~s a resident of Bakersfield, your neighborhood would waste collection benefit from the COPPS program as well. That means reg- ~nnu~d sewer sen, ice ular officers assigned to. patrol your area, to meet with (for those currently connected to sewer). $108 + $38 $108 yOU and your neighbors and develop strategies to handle ~ssessment District None None troublesome issues. 'D.A.R.E. Program No Cost No Cost Working, hand-in-hand with. other city bffices, local 'Neighborhood Watch No Cost No Cost officers build a rapport among local residents and work with you to help solve problems. In other neighborhoods, Sec<ty Alarm System None Application fee $30 Renewal Fee $15/y~ that has led to local clean-up programs, setting up a $_1o faLs~ alarmsin 12 months = $110/ea. neighborhood or business watch, organizing youth athlet- ics and education programs and lots more. You and your neighbors are the key ingredient. By let- ting us know how you feel, we would be able to better By joining with the City of Bakersfield through a address your needs and work together to make this a process known as annexation, you'll enjoy regular trash neighborhood we all are proud of. pick-up, street, sweeping and improved police protection and street maintenance. Ambulance rates would go down UnincorporatedWhyAnnexation MakesSense!~na there would be no extra charge for cross,ng guards. In short, it could Save Chester residents a lot.of money. Other changes would be up to you. If you want street Today, even though it is surrounded by Bakersfield, lights, you could have them. You and your neighbors, Chester is not a part of the City. Public services such as through local meetings and calls to our information hot- law enforcement, trash collection and ambulances are line (85-UNITE). will be the driving force behind any provided through Kern County. And while the County significant changes. does a good job at many But many things won't change. You'll still be able to Areasthings, it can sometimes be enioy your lifestyle, and maintain current land uses. The be difficult for them to City will pre-zone the area so that permitted uses will respond to Chester's needs remain unchanged. Best of all. your taxes wouldn't in a timely fashion, change a bit.  As an "island" in the midst ' So take a look at the facts and see for yourself. We of Bakersfield. Sheriff's think you'll find annexation is a little change that makes a  deputies who serve whole lot of sense. unincorporated areas of the county, often must travel a long way to get ':' to you. The same is tree BA~~~x~!ELD ':~ of road crews and other ' · needed services. It wastes time and money. ' - .... 6 summer 1996 A. Bakersfield's Police Department, rather .1~ How is this different than what the than the County Sheriff will serve your County currently offers? ~ . area. This means that a n~ighborhood cop will be a~;ailable 24 hours a day, seven o In theory, not much. But with the days a week providing quicker response entire county to cover, the' simple fact is -times and a better understanding of the that a limited county staff doesn't have needs .of your neighborhood, much time to deal with Chester's specific problems. With county code enforcement Q~. Faster response? How fast? for example, the best they can do is send out a series of.letters and eventually bill A, Our average response time is under for the violation. This process can take. four minutes, often faster for major several months. emergenoes. The City has more manpower dedicat- ed to code enforcement. With annexation, Q~ Just how.do you plan to get a better even more people be as~igued.. would handle on our needs? They'll handle both day-to-day issues like· __-- - ~ illegal dumping and zoning issues, as well A~, Through the City's COPPS program, as special situations Which may require annexGhester? Why are you trying to (Community Oriented Policing and an unsafe building to be.boarded Up or in Problem Solving) local officers build a the worst case, even torn down. First of all, we aren't about to annex rapport, among neighborhood residents You'll find that the city responds much any area that isn't interested in becoming and work with you to help solve problems, more quickly and handles situations apart of our fair City. At this point, all we that are important to you. In other neigh-, immediately. If push comes to shove, the are trying to do is to share our ideas with borhoods, that has led to local clean-up City has the leverage of a lien on the .you and help you understand the benefits, programs, setting up a neighborhood offending property to ensure that the It's up to you todecide if annexation watch, organizing youth athletics and edu- __ _ _ _ problem is·resolved. Where necess_ary, the -,~ cation programs fihd 10ts more. - - City can even have the-work done and bill The Chester area is one- of the loca- Y6u and your neighbors are the key the property owner. tions we are considering because it is a ingredient. By letting us know how you county "island" surrounded by. the City of feel, we can better address your needs ~ What impact, would this new code ' Bakersfteld. That makes de!ivery of ser- and work together to make this a neigh- enforcement have on me? vices very inefficient for both the-City and borhood we all are proud of. A the County. ~ e Assuming you abide by the current ~ You mentioned Code enforcement. County regulations, none. But for those - What,impact will the change have What does that mean? who have gotten away with less than the law requires, 'it would provide significant on me? A~ Working in partnership with the police, incentives to clean Up their act. The net For the most part, changes will be City inspectors can help approach many result is a nicer neighborhood, ~and most modest,, but important improved local problems from another angle. By likely, improved property values. response time on public safet~ calls, regu- attending neighborhood watch meetings lar trash pick-up and street sweeping and and listening to your concerns they can ~[~ Let's talk trash. How will garbage a more consistent effort'at code enforce- develop strategies to address problems service be affected by.annexation? merit. What won't change is current z0n- that aren't easily solved in other ways. ~ng or your personal lifestyle. For example, when dealing with a drug A,~ There will be a few changes in this house, it may not be easy to catch dealers area. Instead of receiving a monthly bill, As a City resident, will my.taxes go up? in the act. But the code enforcement team you'll find'an annual fee as a part'of your . may be able to issue citations for other property tax statement. With the City pro- No. As a matter of fact, they may even violations that effectively shut them down gram, homeowners would pay $130 per. go.down a little~ Elsewhere in this and removes the problem from the neigh- ~ear (Seniors are eligible for a 50% dis- newsletter, you'll find a chart listing the borhood, count) which includes regular street various components that go into your tax In other cases, it's simply a matter of sweeping and drop:off recycling services. bill and how they will be affected by reminding folks to be good neighbors'- Garbage service within the City is annexation. Compare your current rate to deal with weed problems or abandoned mandatory, so if you do not use a trash with those under City affiliation and I cars, property maintenance or'animal ' service, you would be paying about $10 think, you'll be pleasantly surprised! regulations. In such cases, a gentle per month for the convenience of curb- reminder is usually enough. But in serious side pickup. That's far less than you'd How will law enforcemeni change? cases, the City has the authority to take spend going to the dump ~fourseif. The tougher action, benefit is a cleaner, more attractive neigh- borhood for everyone. Encabezado: El al lde habla con franqueza E ~Como van a cambiar la aplicaci6n de las leyes? If you choose to join us, I pledge that the City R~, E1 departamento de policfa de Bakersfield, servini el irea de Chester, de la misma will keep the spirit and atmos, phere of Chester forma que el departamento del SHERRIF del condado 1o hate. Esto significa que tm alive.' As Citizens of Bakersfield, you'll retain the pot. ida estat~ disponible en su vecindario las 24 horas del dfa, siete dfas a ia semana~ best of the past while enjoying the benefits of a lo que significa que al momento de necesitar ~ste servicio, el mismo se le brindar~ en very bright future, el menor tiempo posibte. Tambi~n el hecho que habni un policia asignado al ~rea I look forward to having you join our City. nos permitir'/i conocer las necesidades de Ia comunidad y poder brindar tm servicio .~/7~ ~ m~Sbros efectivo,de ta comunidad.P°rque el servicio de poltcia estar:i en mayor contacto con los miem- P, gComo se propone Ud. obtener un mejor conocimiento de nuestras necesidades? Bob Price K,, Por medio del Programa liamado COPPS, (Programa de vigilancia orientado a la Mayor . $oluci6n de los probtemas de la comunidad) los oficiales de la localidad roman un reporlaje, entre los residentes de la comunidad, yen tm esfuerzo en corn(m, entre los ~ vecinos y los empleados de esta oficina, ayudan a resolver los problemas importantes para la comunidad. En otros vecindarios se hah establecido programas de ltmpieza, de vigilancia entre los vechldarios, organizaciones deportivas para los j6venes, pro- / nnsurmg,. ~ de educaci~n y mucho Smooth Transiti'on E ~nablemos sobre la recolecci6n de la basura. Como se ver~ afectado este por la anexi6n? As part of BakersfieM: Be A Part Of lt All, we not only want to informYou of the many benefits R, Extsten algunos cambios en el servicio. En primer lugar, en vez de pagar una cuota of annexation, but also ensure a smooth transi- mensual~ Ud. re/zibini un cargo anuaI, el que estar:i incluido en los impuestos de tion for the area should you decide to join the propiedad. Con et programa, los propietarios de casa pagar-,in $t30 pot afio (los ciu- City. Part of that transition is making sure that the dadanos mayores de 65 afios podr-kn obtener un descuemo de 50%) este servicio City zoning adopted for your area is similar to incluye el servido de barddo regular de las calles y la recolecci6n del reciclaje. your current county zoning. This process is . known as prezoning. Prezoning also provides an E ~Denos una mano? opportunity to "fix" zoning designations that don't - match the current usage of the proPerty. For R, A nuestra oficina le gustaffa conocer y compartir ideas con Ud. y su vedndario. Si example, ff your property is zoned commercial esta interesado en set antitri6n de un pequefio grupo en su casa, pot favor ll~nenos but its current and future uses are planned to be al mimero 85-UNITE. residential, the City will recommend a zone matching that. existing land use. By doing this, the City will have already worked out these technical Tambi~n nos puede ayudar brindando sus servidos para la distribuci6n en su vecin- land use issues. When and ff you decide to [oin dario de nuestro boleffn Borderline. o permiti&ndonos publicar sus ideas en la the City, this makes for a smooth transition into pr6xima publicad6n de nuestro boletfn. the City limits. This should allow you to concen- trate on the important issues such as working with City police and code enforcement on crime reduction, prevention and improved property. maintenance. The sum total'of City programs and improve- Give Us A Hand! ments is better property values anda more enjoy- able neighborhood environment. The important The City woUld like to share its ideas with you and your neighbors. If you would be interested in host- thing to.remember is that you-have ultimate con- mga small group in your home, please give us a call at 85-UNITE. trol over the future of your neighborhood: If you We'll make all.the arrangements, invite your neighbors and provide experts from the City to answer all have any questions or concerns please call. your questions. What's more, we'll even bring the cookies! 85-UNITE. You can also help by volunteering to pass out copies of the Borderline in your neighborhood, or by letting us highlight your thoughts on annexation in a future edition of the newsletter. Whatever your interest or opinion, don't stand just at the sidelines, speak up! We're listening! Call 85-UNITE (858-6483) today! PAID . Pe~t So. 883 Bakersfield, ~ 1501 TmOn Avenue B~ersfie!d. ~ 93301 8o5m52~I~ F~ 805/324-1850 ' City Offers Many Programs . 'Anti-Graffit, Program which helps residents and . · businesses get a handle on this unsightly vandalism by TO []]]p]~OV(~ Lots, riO]tieS making paint and some materials available, free of AH,] BHSifleSSeS charge. · A Home Rehabilitation Program which offers 10w cost As a resident of Bakersfield, you'd be eligible to partici- loans to homeowners and landlords wishing to fix Wp .... pate in many programs which can help you buy a home, their properties. Funds are also available to help make l- expand your business property or fix up your property, properties more accessible to the handicapped. ~anong the man~p, rograms available are: WI'itc [Js! For more information on any of these programs give · The First Time Homebuyers Mortgage ~sistance us a call at 85-UNITE! ' Want to share your Program which can substantially lower the required opinions? Have an idea down payment and closing costs required to buy a for an ~ssue you'd like to home. see addressed by Borderline? · The Mortgage Credit Certificate Program offers another Drop us a line. alternative forfirst time buyers through special tax Our address is: credits which can increase your available income and help you qualify for the home you want. Borderline 1501 Truxtun Avenue · A Small Business ~sistance Program which offers Bakersfield. CA 93301 entrepreneurs the help they need to succeed including expert advice, SBA and conventional loan assistance, Vee look forward tO plus a wealth of other resources. hearing from you! · Special Business Incentives for Job Creation allow businesses to earn up to $2,000 per job created plus : added state and federal tax benefits. DEVELOPMENT SERVICES NOTES AUGUST 1, 1996 1. The Board of SupervisOrs (7/29/96) adopted the Rosedale Ranch Plan with 47,000 - 65,712 residents, 13.5 million sq.ft, of industrial and commercial development on 6,536 acres in spite of our recommendation that they require appropriate solid waste and sewage disposal, water supply and circulation system. We called into question the need for this extensive conversion of agricultural lands and needless sprawl. 2. Kern COG is evaluating four consultant's proposals to study the relocation of the Amtrac station. I've padicipated in the review. This Caltrans funded study was proposed to cost between $134,000 and $210,000. If Caltrans completes its funding agreement soon, the Kern COG board might award the contract at its September 5, 1996, meeting. 3. Information about the Metropolitan Bakersfield Transportation Investment Strategy (Kern COG) and the Intercity High Speed Rail is now being sent to me per your direction. 4. I plan on attending the Intercity High Speed Rail Commission meeting on August 5, 1996, in Oakland. Among the agenda items are: 1) Approval of the Final Reports for Corridor Evaluation and Environmental Comstraints Analysis. 2) Economic Cost/Benefit Analysis. 3) Economic Impact Report and Mode Cost Comparison. 4) High Speed Rail Draft Summary Report and 20-year Action Plan. 5. Kern COG has informed us that money will be available after October 1, 1996, to fund the environmental review of the south beltway freeway. .. 6. With adoption of the McAlister Ranch and Western Rosedale plans, the County moved the west beltway more westerly. Part of our upcoming general plan review of Castle & Cooke's property west of Buena Vista Road will involve reestablishing continuity in the alignment which would then fall almost completely in the county except where it crosses the river. 7. On Wednesday, July 24, the Habitat Conservation Plan Trust Group authorized purchase of 126.0 acres in the city south and westerly of Hart Park. It is connected to the undeveloped portion of Hart park south of Alfred-Harrell.:.~,~,~,?, Highway. This should satisfy some who have been encouraging us to preserve habitat in the city and near the river. AUI~ - ~31TY ~.~iANAGER'~'OFFIC~ 8. Chuck Tolfree's term as the advisory public member is expiring. Notice has been published inviting interested persons to submit applications to the City Clerk's offiCe for City Council consideration. The deadline for applications is August 1, 1996. 9. The Kern River Bike Path won first place in the, category of Outstanding Planning from the California Central Section Chapter of the American Planning' Association. 10. While reviewing some code enforcement activities last week, I was given another example of why we are interested in Environmental Health Services authority to deal with problems in the city. About July 15, 1996, Child Protective Services contacted the County Environmental Health Services office about an unsanitary and unhealthy living situation in the city. CPS was referred to the City Code Enforcement section. Bob Garcia took the call and immediately responded to the home where he found an overwhelming amount of filth and vermin but only a minor plumbing problem. He and his supervisor agreed that from a common sense perspective the home environment was a health hazard to the children and adults living there and an Environmental Health Specialist should make the determination for the Health Officer so he or the Building Official could pursue vacation of the home and abatement of the health hazard. It took several days to coordinate an inspection by EHS on.July 24 (1-1/2 weeks after initial contact). Only by Bob's insistence did the environmental health specialist declare the premises unsanitary and unhealthy and give the resident 48 hours to make the place suitable for habitation. The next day Bob was informed by an EHS supervisor that any further enforcement was the city's responsibility. 11. Next week I expect completion of Tast 2 of the feasiblity study on City Environmental Health Services to lay out the work load, staffing requirements and cost. 12. Remodel to move Code Enforcement to the second floor is going well. p:dsn8-1 ~ Environmentally Safe Equipment Compan 375 N ~A~ ~1 · ~ ~91702 · 81~334-3~6 m F~ 81~969~0 July 11, 1996 City of Bakersfield DepL of Building and Safety Aztn.' Eric Poore 1501 Truxtun Ave. , Bakersfield, Ca 93301 RE: Dust Collection System/Guy Chaddock Dear Sir. I would tike to take this opportunity to thank you and Steve Ewing for the your City of Bakersfield displayed in assisting us in obtainin9 the permits required for the Du~t Collection System installed at the Guy Chaddock Facility. it is refreshing to see a city work tirelessly with contractors through to completion. We hope to have more projects in your city and look forward to working with :you in future. Sincerely, B A K E R S F I E L D PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT MEMORANDUM July 22, 1996 TO: Alan Tandy, City Manager FROM: Damell W. Haynes, Assistant to the Public Works Director THROUGH: Raul M. Rojas, Public Works Director SUBJECT: CIP STATUS REPORT - JULY 1996 Attached is the new version of the CIP status report. The intent of this version is to better inform the users of the various milestones a capital project goes through. The CIP status report is comprised of the following sections: 1. Status of all 1994-95 and 1995-96 CIP projects (Design Engineering). 2. Status of all 1994-95 and 1995-96 Traffic Signal CIP projects. 3'. Construction Inspection Project Status Report 4. Financial Summary of 1995-96 CIP projects. 5. Financial Summary of 1994-95 CIP Carryover projects. 6. Notice of Completion Report Monthly Report. 7. Plans and Specifications Approved Monthly Report. If you have any questions or suggestions for improving this report, feel free to contact me. cc: G. Waiters T. Slater D. Teubner BAKERSFIELD PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT MEMORANDUM DATE: JULY 25, 1996 TO: DARNELL HAYNES, ASSISTANT TOT HE PUBLIC WORKS DIRECTOR FROM: ff~CQL~S R. LAROCHELLE, ENGINEERING SERVICES MANAGER SUBJECT: 1995-96 CIP STATUS 'Attached is the schedule of 1995-96 CIP projects. The recently updated schedule was augmented to clearly show those projects which were added mid-year. These are identified as shaded project titles. We are pleased to present this status report that indicates all projects are on schedule. We are continuing to place emphasis on completing carry-oVer projects. Following is the status of those projects which have been carried over. STATUS OF PRIOR YEAR PRQ,IECTS (In-House) 1. White Lane Improvements-Wible Road to South H Street Project is complete. 2. Hughes/Pacheco Sewer Project Project is complete. 3. Coffee Road Widening-Brimhall Road to Rosedale Hwy Project is complete. 4. Resurfacing Major Streets-Citywide Project is complete. 5. Bridge RePlacement-Manor Street at Carrier Canal Project awarded 4-17-96. Construction to begin after September 1, 1996 due to conflict with swallow nesting. 6. Landscaped Medians-Rosedale Highway ~ Fwy 99 Interchange Project currently under construction. STATUS OF PRIOR YEAR PROJECTS (Consultant) 1. Tevis Park Development Project currently under construction. 2. Woodwaste/Greenwaste Facility Project currently under construction. STATUS OF PRIOR YEAR PROJECTS (Consultant. continued) 3. Coffee Road Grade Separation Project awarded June 12, 1996. 4. Police Building Addition Project currently under construction. 5. Bridge Replacement-China Grade Loop at Beardsley Canal Project awarded 4-17-96. Construction to begin at~er September 1, 1996 due to conflict with swallow nesting. 6. Fire Station 13 Construction Project currently under construction. 7. Canal Bridge Widening at Arvin Edison Canal (5 locations} Project Currently under construction. 8. Canal Culvert Widening-Panama Lane ~ Farmer's Canal Project is complete. 9. Median Construction-Various Locations Project currently under construction. 10. Diesel Exhaust Removal System-Various Fire Station Locations Project is complete. BAKERSFIELD TRAFFIC ENGINEERING MEMORANDUM To: DARNELL HAYNES, ASSISTANT TO THE PUBLIC WORKS DIRECTOR From: STEPHEN L. WALKER, TRAFFIC ENGINEER Date: July 15, 1996 Subject: 1995-96 CIP MONTHLY STATUS - YEAR END SUMMARY Attached are two variations of the 1995-96 CIP schedule. The first shows all projects by order of design schedule within the fiscal year. The second is grouped by project engineer with each engineer's schedule in order of design schedule. Following are projects of special interest: CURRENT YEAR PROJECTS PROJECTS BEHIND SCHEDULE 1. Signing and Marking Bike Lanes - Various Streets. Scheduled for approval of Ps&E in February. Completion of the higher priority new signal projects took precedence over this project. Final design is complete and under plan check with corrections underway. There have been over 50 lane m/les of bike lanes involved in the design and we have had two designers devoted to completing the design. We have requested State authorization to advertise and have been informed this will require approval by the California Transportation Commission. We in the process of obtaining this approval. The project is being carried forward into FY 1996/97. 2. Phase 2 & 3, Signal Interconnect on Various Streets. The design is essentially complete on Phase 2 with final construction plans currently under review. Scope and schedule have been revised based upon newly awarded consultant contract for development of "Communications Master Plan". The master plan is scheduled for completion in. August 1996. Based upon work to date the phase 2 project is expected to be advertised in July along with one segment of Phase 3. The remainder is being re-programmed in the Federal TIP for FY 1996/97 and 1997/98. PROJECTS ON SCHEDULE All other projects are on schedule or complete. PROJECTS BEING DESIGNED BY CONSULTANTS 1. Signal, New - Christmas Tree Lane at Mt Vernon Avenue - Awarded January 24. 2. Signal, New - Camino Media at Old River Road - Awarded March 20. 3. Signal, New - Howell Drive at Old River Road - Awarded April 3. 4. Signal, Operations - Traffic Operations Center Design - Expected to be complete for advertisement in August SLW:BJD:bd s:\lotus\sched\cip9607.mem ' REPORT DATE: 07/16/96 1995-96 CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM SCHEDULE (TRAFFIC ENGINEERING DIVISION) 1995 1996 nal, New - Monitor Street at Paoheco Road TABLIT 1196 New - 19th Street at L Street TABLIT AWARDED 1124196 rade - Brundage Lane at Cottonwood Road TABLIT AWARDED 4/17/96 New - Christmas Tree Lane at Mt Vernon Avenue DEETER/CONSULT 1124196 New - Camino Media at Old River Road DEETER/OONSULT AWARDED 3120196 Channelization~ Marking- Bike Lane Installation on Various DEETERfT'ABLIT FINAL PLAN CHECK & REVISION UNDERWAY(45 PLAN SHEETS) New - Flashin St~acon on Buena Vista Road at Panama Lane GILLBURG AWARDED 1/23/96 nal, New - Howell Drive at Old River Road DEETEI ~DED 4/3/96 nal, New - Hageman Road at Centennial High School Entrance GILLBURG AWARDED 5/8/96 , - Traffic Operations Center, Phase I Construction UNDERWOOD EXPECTED FOR ADVERTISEMENT IN AUGUST Signal, Interconnect - TOC Arterial Infrastructure Conduit,Ph. 2 - 5 Locations (Coffee~ Stockdale - Truxtun; Vino. CaMm - New Stine; Stine/New Stine, White - Stockdale; UNDERWOOD FINAL PLANS uNDER PLAN CHECK, ADVERTISEMENT TO FOLLOW ,~.,Jg~ll~, Gosford- Ca~fornia; WhEe, Wilson- Wible) Ph. 3- I Location ~, California - Truxtun Signal, Interconnect - TOC Artedal Infrastructure Conduit, Ph. 3 - 4 Locations &Misc Branch Kroll - White; ~tr_e~, Brundage - Truxtun; L~;;)~,~_e~, Truxtun - W. Columbus; iILLBURG 3EING REBUDGETED I~N FEDERAL FY 96197 & 97198 Beale -"N" St) Channelization, Si nin& Markin - Seed Control Features, Oleandar Area UNDERWOOD ONGOING AS NEEDED FOR OPERATIONAL PURPOSES Modification - Install Emer e__Lg~Q~ Vehicle Preemption Devices UNDERWOOD TO BE INSTALLED BY CITY FORCES Traffic Control Modifications - Various Locations UNDERWOOD ONGOING AS NEEDED FOR OPERATIONAL PURPOSES Scheduled P. S. & E. ~ Scheduled Award of Contract ~ Plans Approved ~ Contract Awarded ~ The shading shows the planned month. The date is the actual date that the P.$.&F~. was approved or the construction contract was awarded. : S:\LOTUS\SCHED~96JUL96.WK4 11:01 AM DATE: 07/16/96 1995-96 CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT PR',OGRAM SCHEDULE (TRAFFIC ENGINEERING DIVISION) REPORT New - Christmas Tree Lane at Mt Vernon Avenue )ER AWARDED 1/24/96 inal, New - Howell Drive at Old River Road AWARDED 4/3/96 ~nal, New- Camino Media at Old River Road 3ER AWARDED 3/20/96 Chann~ & Marking - Bike Lane Installation on Various Streets DEETER/TABLIT FINAL PLAN CHECK & REVISION UNDERWAY(45 PLAN SHEETS) nal, New- Hageman Road at Centennial High School Entrance GILLBURG New - Flashi~ ) Beacon on Buena Vista Road at Panama Lane GILLBURG AWARDED 1/23/96: Signal, Interconnect - TOC Arterial Infrastructure Conduit, Ph. 3 - 4 Locations & Mist Branch GILLBURG / BEING REBUDGETED IN FEDERAL FY 96/97 & 97/98 Kroll - White; "H" Street, Brundage - Truxtun; "{3" Street, Truxtun - W. Columbus; TABLIT Beale - "N" nal, New- Monitor Street at Pacheco Road TABLIT 2/21/96, New - 1 9th Street at L Street TABLIT 1/24/96~ fade - Brundage Lane at Cottonwood Road TABLIT 4/17/96i Iffic Operations Center, Phase I Construction UNDERWOOD PS&E EXPECTED FOR ADVERTISEMENT IN AUGUST Signal, Interconnect - TOC Arterial Infrastructure Conduit,Ph. 2 - 5 Locations (.Coffee, Stockdale - Truxtun; Ming, Castro - New Stine; Stine/New Stine~ White - Stockdale; Stockdale, Gosford - UNDERWOOD FINAL PLANS UNDER PLAN CHECK, ADVERTISEMENT TO FOLLOW California; White~ Wilson- Wible) Ph. 3- I Location Mohawk, California- Truxtun Channelization, Signing & Marking - Speed Control Features, Oleandar Area UNDERWOOD ONGOING AS NEEDED FOR OPERATIONAL PURPOSES nal, Modification - Install Emergency Vehicle Preemption Devices UNDERWOOD BE INSTALLED BY CITY FORCES Traffic Control Modifications - Various Locations UNDERWOOD 3NGOING AS NEEDED FOR OPERATIONAL PURPOSES Scheduled P. $. & E. ~ Scheduled Award of Contract ~ Plans Approved ~ Contract Awarded ~ The shading shows the planned month. The date is the actual date that the P.S.&F.. was approved or the construction contract was awarded. S:\LOTUS~SCHED\960796D.WK4 10:46 AM CONSTRUCTION INSPECTION PROJECT STATUS CAPITAL IMPROVEMENTS 07102/g6 ' ' i · START EST. COMP % igTH STREET @ 'L' STREET ! TRAFFIC SIGNAL A-C ELECTRIC . 07/08/96 08/23/96 0% BAILEY'S SEWER LIFT STATION I MODIFICATION i TYNING BROTHERS, INC. : · 0% : BUENA VISTA @ PANAMA LANE FLASHING BEACON GLOBAL INTERNATIONAL iCALIFORNIA AVE. - EASTON TO OAK ROADWAY RECONSTRUCT GRANITE CONST. GRINDSTAFF i 07108195 4130/96 100% ~ CALLOWAY DR.- STOCKDALE TO BRIMHALL BRIDGE & ROADWAY i GRANITE CONST. ! CALL O5/30/95 07/29/96 84% ! CHINA GRADE LOOP @ BEARDSLEY CANAL BRIDGE REPLACEMENT t BANSHEE CONSTRUCTION HUMMEL 0% I CITY A~-[ORNEY'S OFFICE i REMODEL i LADCO CONST. CITY HALL COUNCIL CHAMBERS J RESTROOM REMODEL LADCO CONST. I CITY HALL ENTRANCES I ADA RAMPS PIPER & DEVRIES ~0-~~ RAILROAD BI~IDGE OVERCROSSING GRANITE CONST. 07/15/96 05/02/97 "DEVELOPMENT SERVICES BLDG. FENCING AND SIDE GATE MARR & BOESE ENG. . EAST BRUNDAGE LANE @ LAKEVlEW AVENUE SIGNAL MODIFICATION AC. ELECTRIC 0% ;FIRE STATION #13 NEW STATION HOUSE WALLACE & SMITH ~ PIERCE 02/02/96 12/19196 80% GARNSEY AVE & SAN MARINO DR. CURB & GUTTER PACIFIC RESOURCES ! HACKNEY 05/01196 07/31196 70% GREENWASTE RECYCLE CENTER . EXPANSION GILLIAM & SONS PATTESON 07/08/96 = 08/19/96 0% ' HAGEMAN ROAD @ CENTENNIAL H.S. i TRAFFIC SIGNAL LOOP ELECTRIC : HOSKJNG TRUNK SEWER ;. WlBLE ROAD EXTENSION ~ B & R MECHANICAL CRAIG 06/10/96 07/22/96 21% KERN ISLAND CANAL ' SEWER REHABILITATION W.M. LYLES MANOR STREET @ CARRIER CANAL i BRIDGE REPLACEMENT . GRANITE CONSTRUCTION ~ HUMMEL 0% MING AVE. - CASTRO LN TO S CHESTER i SEWER REHABILITATION : TURMAN CONST. MONITOR STREET l FAIRFAX ROAD ~! LIFT STATION MODIFICATIONS i GRIFFITH COMPANY BOLANOS 11101/95 07103/96 98% MT. VERNON AVE. @ CHRISTMAS TREE LN. ! TRAFFIC SIGNAL i A-C ELECTRIC 0% ~ I ~OLD RIVER RD. @ CAMINO MEDIA . TRAFFIC SIGNAL ' DELTA ENGINEERING ! FICK ~ 07108196 08/23/96 0% OLD RIVER @ HOWELL ! TRAFFIC SIGNAL DELTA ENGINEERING PACHECO RD. @ MONITOR ST. TRAFFIC SIGNAL LOop ELECTRIC : 07/08/96 08/23/96 O~ PANAM/L STINE. AKERS, WI[II_E, SO. 'H' ST. BRIDGE WIDENING GRANITE CONSTRUCTION ~ MOORE 07/08]96 .. 04/25197 0~. CONSTRUCTION INSPECTION PROJECT STATUS CAPITAL IMPROVEMENTS 07102/06 i ' START EST. COMP i PROJECTS i TYPE , CONTRACTOR INSPECTOR DATE DATE COMP PANAMA LANE - GOSFORD TO STINE , WIDENING ROADWAY i GRIFFITH COMPANY : PATfllOT'8 PARK :. SUMP IMPROVEMENTS BROWN & FOWLER RANCHERIA ROAD BRIDGE i PAINTING i MERZI PAINTING i CHOATE 09108/96 10106/96 i STOCKDALE HWY. @ CALIFORNIA AVE. t WIDENING INTERSECTION GRIFFITH COMPANY . 07122/96 10/30/96 ~ SUNOALE DRAINAGE IMPROVEMENTS i PUMP STN. IMPROVEMENTS : KERN BACKHOE ~ ROBISON 07106/96 o911 o/96 - TERRACE WAY - PHASE ~ STORM DRAIN 1 PACIFIC RESOURCES i GILLIAM ' i TEVlS RANCH PARK PARK SITE & SONS. [NC. FICK ' O3/25196 07101196 ; 47% ' TRUXTUN AVENUE MODIFY PUMP STATION ~SCADEX CORP. ROBISON 05/20/96 06/'!7/96 i 100% , VARIOUS 8TflEETS CHiP SEAL ~ CUflTI8 D. POST INC. ' I VARIOUS STREETS RECONSTRUCT SIDEWALK j GRANITE CO NSTRUCTION ', ,' : : VARIOUS STREETS ; RESURFACtNG i GRANITE CONSTRUCTION MAHAFFEY 04J01/96 07/03196 95%! ~ RESURFAClNG i GRIFFITH ~MpANY MAHAFFI--'a( 07/06196 0~1 ?/ffil 0%. VARIOUS STREETS ! ~VAfllOUS STREETS "RESURFACING - STP GRIFFITH COMPANY VARIOUS STREETS NORTHEAST RESURFAClNG GRAHAM CONTRACTORS FICK O5/30/96 06/26/96 WASTE~ATER TREATMENI PI_~NT #3 ADMIN. BLDG. fiXPANSION JTS CONST. WESTCHESTER AREA ; SEWER REHABILITATION INsITUFORM SOUTHWEST ;ALLEN O7/01/96 06/26/96 O% WHITE LANE - BUENA VISTA TO MIN. VISTA ~ MEDIAN LANDSCAPING GRIFFITH COMPANY iFICK O6/17/96 08/26/96 27% WHITE LANE - REAL ROAD TO SO. "H" STORM DRAIN & MEDIANS GRANITE CONSTRUCTION : ALLEN i O4/01/96 07116/96 99% I i . CONSTRUCTION INSPECTION PROJECT STATUS SUBDIVISION 06128196 i 'P.M. OR ......................... ~EVELOPER/ ...... .'i '°/° TRACT #'$ .................. LOCATION .CONTRACTOR ........ I N SPE_C.,T._O_R,. COMP~ _P..M.."_i. 005~ .... COFFEE RD. & OUVE DR. "' LESH 100% !PM 10173 COFFEE RD. & HAGEMAN RD. LESH 50% ..... :: oLD-R ' c,s & cooK LESH [TR 5018-D HAGEMAN RD, & FRUITVALE DEVILLE HOMES LESH 95% TR 5245-C .......S/O BRIMHALL ~:) MONDAVI ............. CASTLE & COOKE LESH 85% ~.TR..5290. GRAND LAKES & CHAMBER CASTLE & COOKE LESH 15% 'TR 5386-C S/O BRIMHALL - E/O CALLOWAY LESH 50% -~R 5418 CALLOWAY & NORIEGA KLYE CARTER LESH ~o/~ !TR 5425 GRANDLAKES - N/O MING AVE. CASTLE & COOKE LESH 35% i TR 5432-3 STINE & BERKSHIRE ............ CHAMBERS FUND 'P'i~'RcE 15% !TR 5433 AKERS - N/O BERKSHIRE ENNI$ DEVELOPMENT PIERCE 25% TR 5441 -D NORIEGA RD. & JEWEI'rA AVE. HINESLEY LESH 90% TR 5528-3 S/O PANAMA - E/O AKERS DELFINO DEV. PIERCE 99% i TR 5528-4&5 '~O PANAMA E}O AKERS DELFINO DEV. PIERCE 15% TR 5544-D BRIMHALL ROAD & VERDUGO LANE ...... "' ......... E & COOKE LESH .. 50% :T.._R_.5_..56.5T._3 .... ___~'~i~1-'~_ I~~~)LD I~'AR~'"'~. "" U~-~.S.'HOMES .......... I..~1~'~ 35% IR 5597 JEWETTA - N/O BRIMHAL. L .......... CARRIAGE HOMES LI~I~ ' 100% !TR 5611 - 2 CALLOWAY DR, (~ NORRIS RD. KYLE CARTER 'i.~E'~ .TR 5646-2 FAIRFAX RD (~ VALLEYVIEW DR .. ~.D.J. CORPoRATIoN "'piERcE'"": 50% ITR 5648-A WIBLE RD. & McKEE RD. ~'~i~ 'BUILDERS ' 'i=;iERcE ....... 99% _~R 5673 'H-~hRi~ ..... & RELIANCE CASTLE & COOKE 'PIERCE 20Olo ,.ITR 5679"1 GOSFORD @ SO, LAURELGLEN KYLE CARTER 'PIER(~i~ 100% i TR 5679-2&3 GOSFORD @ SO, LAUREL.G...LE__~_N ....... KYLE CA..B_T. ER PIERCE .. 30% = .... N/O HARRIS - W/O STINE EPCO ..... ¢'i~RCE ...... 250/., [TR 5716-4 M__A_IN PLAZA - N/O GRANITE FALLS DEWALT LESH 99% 5719-1 PATTON, S/O "AGEMAN RD. PROBUILT .... LE_S..H 100% !.TR ~¢~8---~ ~l~E-~r"~ & HAGEMAN .......... DEWALT " LEsH' ' 20% ~ ....... BRIMHALL & CALLOWAY DRIVE CASTLE & COOKE LESH 99% [TR 5799~ H_?GE____~N____R.D.- E/._O. FR_ULT~/.A_LE ............ DEV_I.L. LE H..O. MES ......... .LESH .......... 95% .~TR. 5809-A UNION AVE, @ PA ..N~___M.A LN, . ....... WATTENBARGER PIERCE BAKERSFIELD PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT MEMORANDUM TO: Alan Tandy, City Manager FROM: Darnell Haynes, Assistant to the Public Works Director THROUGH: Raul M. Rojas, Public Works Director DATE: July 29, 1996 SUBJECT: FINANCIAL SUMMARY OF CIP PROJECTS This month's Capital Improvement Status Report will not include a financial summary. We are currently in the process of finalizing our fiscal year 95-96 carryover amounts by project. Until the books are closed for fiscal year 95-96, the final numbers will not be available. For fiscal year 96-97 there has been no significant activity occurring on Capital Projects at this point. For next month's Capital Improvement Status Report we will include a current financial summary of Capital Projects. If you have any questions about the financial status of specific projects, feel free to contact me at extension 3572. B A'K E R S F I E L' D PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT MEMORANDUM July 22, 1996 TO: Alan Tandy, City Manager , FROM: Darnell W. Haynes, Assistant to the Public Works Director THROUGH: Raul M. Rojas, Public Works Director SUBJECT: 1995-96 CIP STATUS - NOTICE OF COMPLETION Since the last monthly CIP stares report on June 24, 1996, Seven Notices of Completion were accepted for the following projects: AGREEMENT 'CONTRACTOR PROJECT I)ATE OF ACCEPTANCE 95-205 Castle & Cooke Improvement Agreement 7-8-96 for Tract No. 5292 96-134 Carriage Homes Improvement Agreement 7-8-96 /hr maintenance of subdivision work completed prior to approval of Tract 5597 93-173 Centex Real Estate Corp. Landscape Improvement 7-8-96 Agreement 96-18 U.S. Home Corp. Improvement Agreement 6-28-96 Tract 5477 95-300 Gfiffith Co. Agreement for 6-28-96 construction of Coffee Rd. and Brimhall Rd. widening 95-175 Granite Construction Chester Ave. Underpass 6-28-96 Bridges Siesmic Retrofit 96-20 Boys & Girls Club'of $16,000 of CDBG funds 6-28-96 Bakersfield for Construction of a Community Center project at 801 Niles St. · cc: G. Waiters T. Slater D. Teubner BAKERSFIELD PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT MEMORANDUM TO: Alan Tandy, City Manager FROM: Darnell W. Haynes, Assistant to the Public Works Director THROUGH: Raul M. Rojas, Public Works Director SUBJECT: CIP STATUS REPORT - APRIL 1996 PLANS AND SPECIFICATIONS APPROVED Since the last monthly CIP status report on June 24, 1996, no plans and specifications were approved. cc: G. Waiters T. Slater D. Tuebner WATCHTOWER BIBLE AND TRACT SOCIETY OF NEW YORK, INC. WATCHTOWER CONVENTION Mr. Alan Tandy Bakersfield City Hall 1501 Truxtun Ave. Bakersfield; Ca. 93301 July 28, 1996 Dear Mr. Tandy, It is my responsibility as Watchtower Convention Overseer to care for many details related to the yearly convention arrangements of Jehovah's '~r~tnesses. An efficient and smooth operation makes my job much easier and a blessing to the delegates that have traveled at consMerable expense to attend. So at the conclusion of the second of six "MessenHrs of Godly Peace" District Conventions here at the Bakersfield Convention Center I am veery happy with the response of the nearly 10,000 delegates. Overwhelmingly the comments have been positive. Repeatedly remarks have been heard related to the attractiveness of the downtown area, the fine condition of the convention center and the outstanding service received from the local hotels and motels. This has helped make our first convention in Bakersfield in twenty-four years a sucress. Additionally, the cooperation from your dry staff has been superb. The convention center has proved to be a venue well suited to the needs Jehovah's Witnesses. Many dries have come to welcome our yearly conventions, not just because of the obvious boost to the economy, but because of the' character of the Witness delegate. Jehovah's Witnesses' reputation for high moral standards is coupled with a lifestyle that is very different from most conventioneers. Our mannerly behavior often has a positive influence on others. As you may be aware, we will be at the convention center each of the next four weekend~ The next two will be English speaking the last two Spanish speaking. If it could be. arranged, Hi would-welcome an oppommity to provide you with a brief tour of the convention center so that I .may show you how the arena has been arranged for our convention. This includes an attgmented sound system that was provided by our world hca' .cktUarters in New York. A local member of my staff will be available to arrange a time that may be convenient for you over one of the upcoming weekends for us to meet. If your schedule is too difficult, then maybe another time. Please thank your staff at the convention center for their efforts in our behalf. We hope to be able to enjoy yom fadlity at future dates. Sincerely, . Robert Parsons Watchtower Convention Overseer 2644 East Holland Fresno, Ca. 93726 MEMORANDUM August 1, 1996 To: 'Honorable Mayor Price and Council Members From: S.E. Brummer, Chief of Police Subject: Response to WF0008720 - Speeding on Panorama Drive On 7/10/96, Council Member Smith expressed concern regarding speeding on Panorama Drive. The attached Memorandum describes the Police Department's response and results of area enforcement. SEB:WPH:plp  BAKERSFIELD POLICE MEMORANDUM August 1, 1996 To: Chief S. Brummer From: Sergeant Bill Henry, #392, Administration Subject: HTE Council Referral - Speeding on Panorama Drive On 7/22/96, we received a City Council referral regarding speeding on Panarama Drive. The referral was given to Lieutenant Moore, Traffic Division, with the following results. On 7/25/96, Traffic Officers were assigned to Panorama Drive from the 800 block east to Fairfax Road, and during this time issued five citations for speed. Assigned to the same area on 7/26/96, a total of twenty-three citations for speed were issued. On 7/30/96, Traffic Officers assigned from the 800 block of Panorama Drive through the 4900 block, issued thirteen citations for speeding. The Traffic Division will continue to monitor the speed on Panorama Drive. Resp~tted, Serg¢__~ Bill en Administrati{~ r~ BH:plp MEMORANDUM July 31, 1996 TO: ALAN TANDY, CITY MANAGER FROM: JACK HARDISTY, DEVELOPMENT SERVICES MAN~~ SUBJECT: CITY COUNCIL REFERRAL #9784 TRAFFIC/ROSEDALE AREA This a response to the referral dated July 24, 1996, regarding the Rosedale Ranch Amendment to the Western Rosedale Specific Plan. On March 29, 1996, City staff responded to a County referral for the environmental document for the project. Attached is a copy of the city's response on the item. Generally, we objected to approval of the project without adequate service,s and facilities to support such an extensive urban development. MO Attachment m\mcc7-30 Development Services Department Jack Hardisty, Director Dennis C. Fidler Stanley C. Grady - Building Director March 29, 1996 Planning Director (805) 326-3720 Fax (805) 325-0266 (805) 326-3733 Fax (805) 327-0646 Glenn A. Barnhill Special Projects Division Chief Kern County Planning Department 2700 "M" Street, Suite 100 Bakersfield, CA 93301 RE: Comments on Draft EIR for the Rosedale Ranch Amendment to the Western Rosedale Specific Plan (GPA Case No. 41, Map No. 101). Dear Mr. BarnhilI: The City of Bakersfield has substantial concerns regarding the numerous unavoidable significant environmental impacts identified in the recently released Draft EIR for the Rosedale Ranch Specific Plan. The significant impacts resulting from project approval and implementation comprise, air quality, land use, population/housing and public services and utilities. Our concerns specifically revolve around the massive size and scale of the proposed mixed use development, a proposal that has been brought forth only .18 months after adoption of the area-wide Western Rosedale Specific Plan by the County. The City conveyed to the County significant, unanswered concerns regarding the urbanization of the northwest metropolitan area prior to adoption of the Western Rosedale Plan. We believe that the Rosedale Ranch amendment proposal is totally out of scale with the existing adopted Western Rosedale Specific Plan, and the existing rural, agricultural character of the surrounding area. These concerns are intensified in view of the lack of existing domestic water and sewer services infrastructure in the vicinity, as well as the substantial projected traffic circulation impacts on a rural roadway system. Following are the comments offered by the City departments that would be affected by the manifold aspects of this large scale urban deVelopment project: Planning Department: Section 4.4 of the Draft EIR, under the subsection describing the existing Western Rosedale Specific Plan (pp. 4-79 and 4-80) contains a statement that appears to be conclusionary in nature. The statement asserts that the Rosedale Ranch project is Consistent with the applicable goals and policies of the Western Rosedale Specific Plan, City of Bakersfield · 1 715 Chester Avenue · Bakersfield, California · 93301 Glenn A. Barnhill March 29, 1996 Page2 ' and that no impact is expected t° result from the proposed amendment to the existing Specific Plan. The previous two paragraphs, however, state that the proposed amendment would increase the existing residential development potential within the project boundaries from 326 units to more than 20,000 dwellings, in addition to the introduction .of nearly 13.5 million square' feet of unspecified commercial and industrial uses within the same project! The following portion of the Impacts Analysis section (Section 4.5) projects an ultimate buildout population of 65,712 residents within the Rosedale Ranch amendment area. This figure exceeds the total projected population for the entire surrounding Western Rosedale Specific Plan area (45,587 per the Modified Low Density Infill Alternative) by 44 per cent! Furthermore, the following statement on p. 4-80 (Zoning Ordinance) that the Rosedale Ranch project will not impact the existing agricultural zoning of the entire 6,536 acre project site, since no zoning changes are presently proposed, is not supportable in the context of this single development proposal that will have such a drastic impact on the character of an area-wide specific plan adopted by the County only 18 months ago! We note that the Rosedale Ranch Specific Plan incorporates a proposal to amend the existing policy contained in the Western Rosedale Plan that states that proposals for converting agricultural lands presently subject to a Williamson Act contract to urban or rural residential uses are inconsistent with the Plan, unless such contract has been non- renewed and has two years or less remaining until its expiration (Section.4.4.2, p. 4-77). Our department believes that including such a wholesale policy amendment, which would only serve to encourage a proliferation of future proposals for the premature conversion of agricultural resource lands, is inappropriate within the context of the present development' proposal. Future development proposals of a similar scale and character should each be reviewed on a case-by-case basis, and not be encouraged based on the action taken on the present proposal. We cite two examples of impacts listed for Public Services/Utilities to emphasize the significant long term impacts of the Rosedale Ranch amendment, for which no feasible mitigations have either been identified or are available. First, on p. 4-199 (Solid Waste) there is a statement that the Rosedale Ranch project will contribute approximately 27 per cent of the annual volume of Waste accepted by the Bena Landfill, which has a projected service life of 50 to 60 years. It does not need mention that development of a project of the scale of Rosedale Ranch will significantly shorten the life span of this essential regional facility. Yet the Draft EIR contains no meaningful discussion of or exploration of alternative sites or mitigation programs, other than a cursory mention of the existing Shafter-Wasco landfill and the possible ultimate use of the distant Lost Hills landfill. Glenn A. Barnhill March 29, 1996 Page 3 · The second example of an insufficient analysis of a public services impact is for public transit needs. The Draft EIR's assertion that the public transportation needs of this project as well as other future development in the vicinity will be "mitigated to a level of insignificance" (p. 4-214) is unsupportable, even in the light of the mitigation measures proposed (on p. 4-211). The public transit measures identified state only' that the "developers may be required to request annexation" into the transit district service boundaries. Mitigation is only mitigation if it is imposed. The additional Proposed mitigations provide for the location and design of bus turnouts and construction of related facilities and accessways, but do not address the long term financing requirements or viable staging of transit route extensions into the project area. Finally, we offer our comments on the CEQA-mandated analysis of viable project alternatives (Section 6). Of the four alternatives discussed, the only viable on-site development scheme addressed is Alternate 4 - Modified Density/Intensity. According to the description on p. 6-23, this alternative provides for the same land use designations as the project proposal with a 25 per cent reduction in residential units, but no reduction in the intensity of the proposed industrial and commercial uses. From both a qualitative and practical standpoint, we find this alternative deficient. First, if there is a substantive reduction in overall residential densities and therefore in the ultimate project-wide population, would it not also be appropriate to assess a proportional reduction in commercial and industrial intensities? A reduced project population would have a corresponding reduction in demand for retail goods and services, as well as the need for employment by nearby industrial concerns. Or would the equivalent amount of commercial and industrial development exert a stronger influence outside the project area, thereby exacerbating traffic circulation, public services and a myriad of other impacts upon surrounding areas? Second, this alternative does not propose any reduction in areas of the proposed urbanized land use categories, compared with the project proposal. How would a reduced residential development intensity within the affected categories be realistically maintained over the life span of project development? No mention is made of reduced density zoning classifications, or the implementation of a residential unit development cap throughout the project buildout period. And most importantly, the modified density alternative does not allow for the preservation of any agricultural land or petroleum resource areas. This omission appears to contradict the statement on p. 6-26 analyzing this alternative, which contends that this scheme would reduce the loss of prime agricultural land, and reduce the potential for impacts due to removal of petroleum production facilities. The project EIR must include an analysis of an on-site development alternative that incorporates the retention of a portion of the existing resource based land use designations, in order to Glenn A. Barnhill March 29, 1996 Page 4 comPly with intent of the CEQA mandate for the exploration of a range of meaningful alternatives to the project development proposal. Water Resources Department: In light of the requirements set by SB 901, this proposed development lacks a balanced water supply to support the proposed development. Extensive agricultural use on the land and the use of groundwater wells to support crops has overdrafted the area's water supply. This fact is brought out in the Draft EnVironmental Impact Report. The City of Bakersfield Water' Resources Department, through the North Kern Water Storage District, has made surface water available to the Rosedale Ranch area since 1977. These surface water supplies were available in most average and above average water years when "Miscellaneous Water"' was available. Even with these surface water supplies, eXtensive use of groundwater for agricultural purposes overdrafted the area's groundwater supply. The Draft EIR alludes to the use of groundwater as a water supply. Our principal concern is continued groundwater overdraft of the basin in unincorporated areas of the county. 'The EIR should demonstrate that a balanced water supply is provided for upon urbanization. It would be detrimental to the project and the surrounding lands if "will serve" letters were issued for development by purveyors who do not bring in a surface water supply and balance out their consumptive use. The draft EIR alludes that Vaughn Mutual Water Company and/or the California Water Service Company would be willing to serve the proposed development. Since the vast majority of the proposed development falls outside the Improvement District No. 4 boundaries, neither purveyor has been able to secure adequate long-term water supplies to balance the groundwater basins use. The California Water Service Company letter in section 3 states, "that the Kern County Water Agency approve a plan authorizing export of project Water for the proposed development." It is unclear where the source of project water being alluded to will come from. We must assume that it is coming from Improvement District No. 4 of the KCWA. If this is the case, the City of Bakersfield will object to the export of any water from ID #4 or any expansion of current ID #4 boUndaries. Any such action would be to the detriment of the existing district. The draft EIR mentions that there are currently 38 agricultural wells in the propose~l development area. In all likelihood, these wells were constructed as "composite" wells, meaning the confined and unconfined aquifers were drilled with no seal separating the two zones. The draft EIR points out the fact that historical activities in the area contaminated the groundwater with pesticides 1, 2-Dibromomethance (EDB) and 1, 2- Dibromo-3 Chloropropane (DBCP). Nitrates and the presence of hydrogen sulphide are also a common groundWater contaminant known in the area. In all likelihood, because Glenn A. Barnhill March 29, 1996 Page 5 of the~ strong possibility of groundwater contamination in the area, an outside water source may be necessary to supply the proposed development. Page 4-177: As mentioned in this draft report, "the demand for groundwater exceeds supplies in Kern County." This holds true for all areas except within the City of Bakersfield. The City owns certain water rights on the Kern River and has instituted groundwater programs to assure adequate supplies are available for use within the City limits. Page 4-179: 'Vaughn Mutual Wate~ Company is the only domestic water purveyor with an established service area within the project site." This statement is misleading in that there is no domestic water service provided to the project site at this time. The Vaughn Mutual Water Company service boundary was set by their board of directors and was self serving to cover any future expansion and was done so without the landowner's request or knowledge. Page 4-208: '... developer shall prepare a Water Resource Availability, Utilization and Development Plan." '... provide for a balance water supply." This statement is contrary to other statements within the document that indicates the groundwater overdraft (page 4-212) will "remain unavoidable adverse impacts." Please contact this department should you have any questions on these comments. Thank you for affording the City of Bakersfield an opportunity to comment on the Draft EIR for the Rosedale Ranch project. Di!ector MJM:pjt l\lgb.rr City of Bakersfield *REPRINT* WORK REQUEST PAGE 1 REQ/JOB: WF0009784 / 001 PROJECT: DATE PRINTED: 8J01J96 REQUEST DATE: 7/24/96 CREW: SCHEDULE DATES START: 7~24~96 LOCATION: COMPLETION: 8/05/96 GEN. LOC: WARD4 FACILITY NODES FROM: FACILITY ID: TO: REF NBR: COUNCIb REQ DEPT:. CITY COUNCIL REFERRAL PRIORITY: HIGH REQUESTOR: REFERRAL - MCDERMOTT ORIGIN: CITY COUNCIL REFERRAL WORK TYPE: REFERRAL DESCRIPTION: TRAFFIC/ROSEDALE AREA REQUEST COMMENTS ***REFERRAL TO DEVELOPMENT SVCS - PLANNING*** MCDERMOTT REQUESTED STAFF COMMUNICATE, TO THE COUNTY, THE IMPACT OF ADDITIONAL TRAFFIC IN THE WESTERN ROSEDALE AREA. JOB ORDER DESCRIPTION: TRAFFIC/ROSEDALE AREA Category: DEVELOPMENT SERVICES TASK: RESPONSE TO REFERRAL ASSIGNED DEPARTMENT: DEVELOPMENT SERVICES START DATE / / COMPLETION DATE / / BAKERSFIELD PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT MEMORANDUM TO: Alan Tandy, City Manager FROM: Raul Rojas, Public Works Director~~/~ DATE: August 2, 1996 SUBJECT: UPDATE - SPRUCE STREET ALLEY (Ward 2) Councilmember Patficia J. DeMond has requested an update regarding the traffic signs in the Spruce Street alley. Traffic Engineer Steve Walker has reviewed the alley situation identified by Mr. Kurtis, a constituent, who requested additional alley speed limit signs and "NO PARKING IN ALLEY" signs near apartments on the north side. A work order has been initiated to install "no'parking" signs and two additional speed limit signs. These should be installed by the General Services Division in the next week to ten days. BAKERSFIELD PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT MEMORANDUM TO: Alan Tandy, City Manager FROM: Raul Rojas, Public Works Director DATE: AUgust 1, 1996 SUBJECT: SPEED LIMIT ON WHITE LANE Council Referral Record # WFO009 780/001 Councilmember Jacquie Sullivan requested Public Works staff provide her with the options that are available regarding the speed limit and traffic controls along White Lane. Traffic Engineering staff will be performing a new Engineering and Traffic Survey for White Lane in the area of Akers Road. This survey method is required by the State of California Vehicle Code to establish or justify a speed limit of less than 55 miles per hour .on a major street. In addition to a sampling of the speed on the street, a review of accidents caused by speeding is performed. Also investigated are road conditions that may not be readily apparent to a motorist, such as hidden driveways or intersections. This survey is required y State law every 5 years. The last survey was done less than two years ago. In addition to a new speed study, additional traffic controls such as medians will also be considered. Currently, the intersection of Akers Road and White Lane is controlled by a traffic signal complete with full pedestrian crossing controls. During the school year, a full time adult school crossing guard is provided by the City to assist children in crossing the street. If the Council chooses to set a speed limit of other than that determined by the State method, the speed limit will be an unenforceable "speed trap" and all tickets "thrown out" by the Court. The Court, in the past, has also indicated that if some speed limits are not set as required by California State law, all speed limits become suspect and may be considered invalid by the Court. All speed limits set by the City would then be unenforceable by radar and considered a "speed trap." AUG 21996 M.qc.,~AGF-R $ OFF~C2:' ~ ~' City of Bakersfield *REPRINT~ WORK REQUEST PAGE 1 /JOB: WF0009780 / 001 PROJECT: DATE PRINTED: REQUEST DATE: t 7/24/96 · ~EW: SCHEDULE DATES ......... START: //24/96 LOCATION: COMPLETION: 8/05/96 GEN. LOC: WARD6 FACILITY NODES FROM: FACILITY ID: TO: REF NBR: COUNCIL REQ DEPT: CITY COUNCIL REFERRAL PRIORITY: HIGH REQUESTOR: REFERRAL - SULLIVAN ORIGIN: CITY COUNCIL REFERRAL WORK TYPE: REFERRAL DESCRIPTION: SPEED LIMIT ON WHITE LANE REQUEST COMMENTS ***REFERRAL TO PUBLIC WORKS*** SULLIVAN REQUESTED STAFF PROVIDE HER WITH THE OPTIONS THAT ARE AVAILABLE REGARDING THE SPEED LIMIT AND TRAFFIC CONTROLS ALONG WHITE LANE. JOB ORDER DESCRIPTION: SPEED LIMIT ON WHITE LANE Category: PUBLIC WORKS TASK: RESPONSE TO REFERRAL ASSIGNED DEPARTMENT: PUBLIC WORKS START DATE / / COMPLETION DATE / / BAKERSFIELD PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT MEMORANDUM TO: Alan Tandy, City Manager FROM: Raui Rojas, Public Works Director DATE: August 2, 1996 SUBJECT: TRAFFIC CONTROLS/OLD RIVER BRIDGE/PALM/CALLOWAY Council Referral Record # WFO009 768 / 001 Councilmember Kevin McDermott has requested Public Works staff'to address the traffic issues with regard to the paving at Old River Road Bridge and the possibility of traffic controls at Palm and Calloway Drive. Representatives from the Kern County Roads Department met with the Public Works staff regarding a future road configuration of Calloway Road lanes and discussed what they can do in the immediate future to handle the traffic volume. Possibilities include widening at the Rosedale Highway intersection and expanding, within the existing right of way, the paved area between Rosedale Highway and the City limits. Engineering Services is working with the County staff on this problem. The Traffic Engineer contacted the County Traffic Engineer regarding the possible need for traffic controls at Palm and Calloway, a County intersection just north of the City limits. The County Traffic Engineer will be studying the intersection for possible addition of stop signs to make it a 4-way stop. Warrants for a traffic signal are also to be analyzed. The County will advise the City's Traffic Engineer of the study results, when available in the next few weeks. REF9768.001 :1 City of Bakersfield *REPRINT* REQUEST DATE: ! 7/24/96f SCHEDULE DATES ...... START: ;/24/96 LOCATION: COMPLETION: 8/05/96 FACILITY NODES GEN. LOC: WARD4 FROM: FACILITY ID: TO: REF NBR: COUNCIb REQ DEPT: CITY COUNCIL REFERRAL PRIORITY: HIGH REQUESTOR: REFERRAL - MCDERMOTT ORIGIN: CITY COUNCIL REFERRAL WORK TYPE: REFERRAL DESCRIPTION: TRAFFIC CONTROLS/OLD RIVER BRIDGE/PALM/CALLOWAY REQUEST COMMENTS ***REFERRAL TO PUBLIC WORKS - TRAFFIC*** MCDERMOTT REQUESTED STAFF ADDRESS THE TRAFFIC ISSUES WITH REGARD TO THE PAVING AT OLD RIVER RD BRIDGE AND THE POSSIBILITY OF TRAFFIC CONTROLS AT PALM AND CALLOWAY. JOB ORDER DESCRIPTION: TRAFFIC CONTROLS/OLD RIVER BRIDGE/PALM/CALLOWAY Category: PUBLIC WORKS TASK: RESPONSE TO REFERRAL ASSIGNED DEPARTMENT: PUBLIC WORKS START DATE / / COMPLETION DATE /~/__ BAKERSFIELD TO: Alan Tandy, City Manager // FROM: Raul Rojas, Public Works Director/~"'d,b,/~,/'/ DATE: August 2, 1996 SUBJECT: TRAFFIC OPERATIONS CENTER (TOC) PROGRAM Council Re[erral Record # WFO009 775 '/001 (Ward 5) Public Works staff was requested to provide information regarding the City plans for the Traffic Operations Center (TOC) program, specifically signal sequence. The Traffic Operations Center (TOC) program is a combination of projects that include installation of' conduit and wire in the major streets of'the City to interconnect all the traffic signals under the control of the City. Connection to adjacent County and State signals will also take place allowing communication with, but not control of, the non-City signals. This part of the TOC is being installed now and over the next two years with Federal Congestion Mitigation Air Quality (CMAQ) funds and about 11 percent local match in the form of Gas Tax. The other major component of the TOC is the control center itself. All the signals connected by conduit are then connected to the control center. From this central location in City Hall, all signals will be monitored, timing updated and operations modified as needed. Trips to the individual signal site are greatly reduced since most timing functions can be performed from the TOC. Incident management functions are available to re-route traffic as needed around accidents or major construction sites. The control center is also funded by Federal CMAQ funds. With respect to signal sequence and coordination of traffic signals, the TOC and communicatio, n to all traffic signals facilitates the maintenance of signal coordination and implementation of ne~ programming as traffic patterns change from year to year. When completed and fully functional, the TOC will allow the Traffic Engineering staff to pro-actively make improvements to signal timing yearly instead of every 3 to 5 years or in reaction to other problems. AUG - City of Bakersfield *REPRINT* WORK REQUEST PAGE 1 REQUEST DATE: ~7/24/96/ ~W SCHEDULE DATES START: 7/24/96 8/05/96 LOCATION: COMPLETION: FACILITY NODES GEN. LOC: WARD5 FROM: FACILITY ID: TO: REF NBR: COUNCIL REQ DEPT: CITY COUNCIL REFERRAL PRIORITY: HIGH ORIGIN: CITY COUNCIL REFERRAL REQUESTOR: REFERRAL - ROWLES WORK TYPE: REFERRAL DESCRIPTION: T.O.C. PROGRAM REQUEST COMMENTS ***REFERRAL TO PUBLIC WORKS*** ROWLES REQUESTED STAFF PROVIDE INFORMATION REGARDING WHAT THE CITY PLANS FOR THE T.O.C. PROGRAM, SPECIFICALLY SIGNAL SEQUENCE, TO HIM. JOB ORDER DESCRIPTION: T.O.C. PROGRAM Category: PUBLIC WORKS TASK: RESPONSE TO REFERRAL ASSIGNED DEPARTMENT: PUBLIC WORKS START DATE / / COMPLETION DATE #c/~ \~~. M E M, O R A N D U M TO: ALAN TANDY, CITY MANAGER A~ FROM: FRANK FABBRI, PARKS SUPERINTENDENT SUBJECT: COUNCIL REFERRAL WF0008273 (ROWLES-WARD 5) DATE: JULY 25, 1996 On June 26, 1996 Councilmember Rowles referred the issue of additional turf at Yokuts Park, between the runnin9 trail and the Kern River, to the Community Services Council Committee. The Committee met on July 9th, and toured the site with a representative of the Kern River Foundation and City staff members on July 22nd. The Committee met again on July 23rd and voted in favor of extendin~ the turf to the north of the existin~ runnin~ path. The Kern River Group supp6rted their decision. An oral Committee report was ~iven to the full Council by Councilmember Carson at the July 24th meetin9. All Council member supported the Committee's recommendation. This will add approximately two (2) acres of turf to the park. Due to the high use of the facility durin~ the summer months and the need to design the irri~ation system, we have scheduled the work to be~in in the fall with a completion date of next summer. REFERRAL COMPLETED. NO FURTHER ACTION REQUIRED. cc: Lee Andersen,. Community Services Manager File: wf8273 /~U6 - 2t996 [ i , ~4RY MEMORANDUM AUGUST 1, 1996 TO: ALAN TANDY, CITY MANAGER FROM: LELAND J. ANDERSEN, COMMUNITY SERVICES MANAGER SUBJECT: KERN COUNTY NETWORK FOR CHILDREN - CHILDREN'S SUMMIT With regard to the attached, we are currently working with County staff on finding a date for the event. ,County staff responsible for the event have been difficult to reach since we began trying to contact them on July 15. However, we did meet with them today, and information was provided with regard to event planning and related costs. They would like to hold the event on a Friday in late March 1997. Unfortunately, the Convention Center is booked solid during that time period. We have tentatively booked the event in on Friday, March 14. Other dates are open, however, the scope of the event which includes a general session, breakout meetings and lunch for 700-800 people limits potential bookings. Additionally, the make-up of the event may change in the coming weeks after the organizing committee meets. We will continue to work closely with this organization whenever and wherever possible to ensure their needs are met. If you have any questions or need further information, please contact me at your convenience. krc MLA.16 FRI" 11:44 OITY I*I~N~GER'S OFFICE Ft~X'NO, 805 324 1850 P, 03 KERN COUNTY NETWORK fOr CHILDREN 5pon~o~ o~ the ~ern Coun~ .Child~n ~ ~ummit June 24, 1996 Honorable Mayor Bob Pri~e & Bakemfield Ci~ Council Membem Dear Mayor PHce; The Kern County Network ~or Children was established in .1992 by the Kern County Board or'Supervisors to increase collaboration among service providers, build and strengthen public/private partnerships, and advance public policy to improve the condition of Kern County children and families. Our board is comprised of forty-two trustees who are the chief executive offioers and key representatives for county departments, Kern cities, lethal ' business, Schools, communities, and a number of associations, As a result 6f our many accomplishments, we have been awarded a California State Association of Gounties Challenge Award and a Kern Council of Government's Local Regional Award for Government Innovation. Our projects and activities are meted in our belief that strong communities are the key to building and sustaining healthy families. In 1993 We sponsored the. First Annual Children's Summit, supported entirely by private donations and inkind contributions. For the first time in Kern County, more than 400 service providers, educators, policy makers, community members, and youth gathered tO examine the condition of children and families, identify and explore areas for collaboration, and develop strategies for change. 1996's Children's Summit focused on public/private partnerships for change and included 680 registrants. The theme and focus for each ~lummit changes annually, and participant evaluations continue to overwhelmingly demonstrate the value of this event. Plans are currently underway for the 5th Annual Children's Summit, tentatively scheduled for Mamh of 1997. Although a theme has yet to be selected, the focus will either be substance abuse, child abuse, or youth violence and our community. The morning session will include a nationally renown keynote speaker who has particular expertise on.. the topic. The afternoon se~ion will inoludo a number of mini-seminars for participants to choose from that will be relevant to tho topic and Include strategies for effective' community mobilizatio, n. A Partnership of Local Government, 5cboe[s, Private Industry and Commu~ltles Working on ~ehal£ofChilrlren ' FRI 11:44 CITY I'IRNAOER's OFFICE FAX NO. 805 324 1850 P, 04 O~v,n ~our oommitm~nt to ~mprov~ our oommuni~, and ~ha~ ~m~ o~ o~ fiv~ K~m Ooun~ ~hildmn m~ido ~ith~n m,~mpolltan-~k~r~fl,ld, w, would liko ~o inv~ th~ Ci~ o~ Bakor~fi~ld ~0 eo~,p~nsor ~ 1 ~07 Childmn'~ Summa, Our hope is that your pa~nership will enable us to coll~tively facilitate our shared goals as well es facilitate the use of the Bakersfield Convention Center. Your in-kind eontrib~ion ~ many of the associated fees would enable us to increase the number of people who can offend the Summit, keep the ail-day registration fee affordable (historically $20) for pa~icipant8, and continue to pm~de a number of scholamhips for parents and eommun~ membem who could not othe~ise affo~ to pa~icipete. In tatum, the Kern Coun~ Ne~ork for Children would maintain all o~er msponslbllities, ranging from fund-raising t° media coverage. A~ached for your reference, please find a copy of our brochure ~d 1996 TmStee Handbook which describe our organization and projects in detail. Copies of final mpoda from each of our previous Sum~its are available, should you be interested. We would be happy to make a focal presentation regarding our request at a futura Ci~ Council meeting, Please do not hesitate to ~ntact me at (805) 863-6608 if you would like additional information. I look fo~a~ to your response. Sincerely, Kern Ooun~ Network for Children 1300 17th Street Bakersfield, Calif°rnia 93301