One of the historical failings of the City of Hollister management was the tendency to get caught up in fictitious legends defining our problems. We have come a long way since those days and I want to intervene before we backslide, especially regarding the Hollister Fire Department and loss of the SAFER grant that funded 12 firefighters.
I am a supporter of public services that is why I’m backing Measure W, but I want problems solved and I am a value shopper for those services so I also look to be frugal. Funding 12 full-time firefighters that were never in the plan is not frugal and it’s not the issue, the rampaging costs and failure to integrate the reserves and volunteers are the issues.
According to my sources, SAFER grant manning was not in the mix when Hollister considered and negotiated the fire contract to support San Benito County. That was smart, no one can guarantee winning a grant and this grant was only for two years, anyway. It would have been foolish to rely on the SAFER grant for primary funding of a contract commitment. Winning the grant was fortunate, but as so often happens in the old joke, we woke up on third base and thought we had hit a triple.
People keep calling for Plan B due to the expiration of the grant, but we have been living Plan B, how about if we go back to Plan A, which was no SAFER grant? Step 1 is to pull out the original assumptions and check them against the facts. If things have changed significantly we must identify what and why. If we cannot support the original plan, we have to detail the corrections that must be made and who is responsible.
It appears that some parties want to cancel the county contract — at least that is what they say, it may only be an attempt to threaten the county into paying more. That only works financially if we also stop responding to county calls completely and reduce the Hollister Fire Department (HFD) staffing accordingly. Prior to the contract the HFD was responding to most county calls for free, now we are getting more than $1 million a year for providing that service. Are we really going to go back to responding for free and call it progress?
The overtime at the HFD has run amok, that is a Fire Department and city management problem. Last fiscal year, the overtime bill was $414,000 on an overtime budget of $100,000, a 4X budget-buster that could have hired four full-time basic firefighters.Â
The first quarter overtime bill last year was $89,000; this year’s first quarter overtime bill is already a whopping $173,000. HFD is on a schedule to spend $692,000 in overtime against a budgeted $300,000; another massive budget-buster. Either our plans do not reflect reality, we have lost control of our costs, or both.
The discussions have brought up many other issues that have to be resolved, especially:
- The HFD’s uncompensated support of the contracted ambulance service, sometimes putting entire rigs out of service.
- Uncompensated medical response when medical insurance and/or publicly-supported medical funding are in effect.
- Paying overtime, but failing to invest in priority training of reserves and volunteers who would have reduced overtime instead.
- Acceptance of reserve and volunteer firefighters by the full-time employees and management.
- Firefighters leaving HFD shortly after certification for better paying positions without reimbursing the city for the pro-rated cost of expensive training. We cannot afford to be a free training academy for the region.
- Finally, the competitive costs of other public fire protection service providers such as CalFIRE.
A serious look at alternate solutions is long overdue.