On Tuesday, after hearing pleas to re-open the downtown Brentwood station and improve fire service from residents and firefighters, the Brentwood City Council agreed to take up the issue.
Mayor Bob Taylor and Vice Mayor Joel Bryant both agreed it wasn’t acceptable for Brentwood to have just 1-fire station and were in favor of moving forward with a task force to see what assistance Brentwood could potentially provide.
Bryant said he will be recommending to the Council and to the fire board to immediately address this issue. He noted that he can’t agree more with our firefighters and the public, who see this as an immediate concern.
“I don’t think we can wait weeks to establish this, we need to establish this immediately,” said Bryant. “I understand part of this process has already begun. This is something we are not sitting back waiting to happen, we are making it happen because this effects every one of our families and us individually.”
The comments came after three public speakers highlighted public safety concerns.
Robert Ruddick, a firefighter and Brentwood resident, stated during public comments that Petaluma has a population of 57,000 which is similar to Brentwood who has 3 stations. Novato has 51,000 who have 5 fire stations. San Rafael has 58,000 people with 7 fire stations. Encinitas has 60,000 residents have 4 fire stations.
Ruddick pointed out that Brentwood now has just 1 station covering 56,000 people in Brentwood which is a decline in service. As a whole, the District has 3 engines covering 100,000 people and 250 square miles.
“I’d like to ask the Council to get this onto the agenda and start talking about it,” said Ruddick. “This is something as a city I’d like to see you take on. I know it’s been a long ongoing task in the past but now we have exhausted all of our means and I’d like to see the city take the hit on this to do its best to protect the citizens.”
Kelly Cole, spoke on the importance of fire service and urged the council to discuss the issue of fire service because response times were going to take longer. She also encouraged the council to find ways to get people trained in AED.
“Whatever it takes, we need to get it up in running. Every other community has a lot of fire service,” said Cole. “I do not want to have to pull my kid out of school and put him in another school district with fire stations.”
Gill Guerrero, vice president of Local 1230, stated that they had the opportunity to meet the city manager and is encouraged by the communication after the station closures.
“We only can do so much, we only have so much power and now we need your help as the fire district is in a state of emergency right now. We checked our calls, from 8:00 am to 4:00 pm, the District ran 9 calls where the District had three calls that requested multiple fire units. Just 1 engine couldn’t handle the call. A few times today, all the resources were in one area leaving the rest of the district empty. I just can’t express the importance enough on getting some of these stations re-opened,” said Guerrero. “We need to set some short term and long-term goals with the city, the county and Oakley to work together to get fire service back on the its feet.”
Guerrero also noted it’s not the fault of the cities or district, but Proposition 13 and something at the State Level that has to change.
“We don’t know if it will change at the State level, but we do know with the cities and county there can be some change,” said Guerrero. “There was a report to the fire chief that the fire board did not get to see until Monday night but it showed just how much Brentwood needs Station 54. The call volume and population of Brentwood is much greater than any other part in our district and 1 fire station in your city is dangerous.”
Guerrero then noted when Station 54 closed in December, he was moved to Knightsen and on a call to the Marsh Creek Apartments for a cardiac arrest call, we lost the lady by the time they got there. He also noted the same thing happened on a call to Bethel Island. He said the response times were too much.
“When people say they could die or may die, people have died,” said Guerrero. “We have had structure fire where we could keep it to room and condense, where you may loose a kitchen or garage or a bedroom but we are going to keep your house and save your property. Now we are not able to do that as it gets up into the attic and burns your house down because we lose a fire. “
He noted a recent call on Caddie Ct. in Brentwood in March where by the time resources got on scene, a fire that could have been limited to a single room destroyed the home.
“We really need the city to get involved with LAFCO and county administrator. We can only do so much,” expressed Guerrero. “We are going to need the cities to get involved with this.”
According to Bryant, the task force would comprise of city managers from both Brentwood and Oakley as well as the county, the Chief, Local 1230 leadership, the fire board who will come up with some immediate solutions that will give us a greater level of safety and response immediately and then work toward then the next steps on addressing it on a longer term basis.
Bryant also explained that everyone is now more responsible than ever for fire safety around their homes and encouraged residents to take the necessary precautions because fire service has been cut by 40 percent.
Mayor Bob Taylor asked Bryant to define his timeline of “immediately”.
“I think we need to jump on this like last night,” said Taylor.
Bryant responded “the meetings have already started so immediately is like two days ago and we are going to continue to put the task force together. There is not going to be any time for this to sit on the shelf, it’s already under process.
Mayor Taylor wanted to go on record and speak for the council.
“We do not take this lightly, this is us, this is our city and this is our families. So this is not something to take very lightly. I can assure you we are going to beat the bushes and we are going to do something. It’s not going to be wait and see and be lip service. It can’t happen. You cannot have 55,000 people and 1-fire station because if that’s the case we should all just buy a water hose,” said Taylor. “I can assure you we know how serious this is and we will follow through on this. You have my assurance on this.”
During the future agenda Items requests, councilman Gene Clare requested staff to find out the cost and feasibility of re-opening Station 54 in downtown Brentwood. Separately, he wanted to find out the feasibility of creating its own fire department since public safety was priority number 1 of the council.
Bryant explained that at best, based off the past, Brentwood could afford 2-fire stations but they need 5-stations to put out a house fire. He highlighted this could be researched in the task force. Clare then withdrew his request.
Bryant also highlighted that several difference service models could be researched that they have not discussed before such as roaming medical responders.
On May 11, the East Contra Costa Fire Protection District closed Station 54 in Brentwood and Station 94 in Knigthsen after the public rejected a Benefit Assessment.
It was reported that the district mailed out 38,529 ballots but just 9,495 ballots were returned which showed just 46.96 percent of the public supported paying to keep 2-stations opened while 53.04 percent rejected the idea.
7 comments
Like many cities in California, it is time for Brentwood to have it’s own Fire Department. Given that a large part of the population are Senior Citizens, this needs to be part of this approval program.
Dale,
Short answer; Brentwood cannot. Due to the fact that Brentwood is part of a “fire district” it cannot remove itself from the district per LAFCo law. LAFCo is the head agency that serves over every county to keep order to local governments. LAFCo is quasi judicial and has the final say. This has been explained to the city leaders and talked about on this very website. Therefore they have known for a while it is not an option. Aside from that there is no cost savings by cities having their own departments.
No offense but one of the largest obstacles in resolving this issue, is having to constantly go back and readdress comments like yours that have been asked and answered numberous times. It’s good that you are interested in finding a solution. You may wish to research the topic further, there is no shortage of information out there.
@In ‘da Know, your statement is misleading and basically UNTRUE! LAFCO’s function is to determine the jurisdiction between two or more agencies which want to provide overlapping services to an area. LAFCO becomes the arbitrator to determine which entity has jurisdiction. a The fact is, no governmental entity has approached LAFCO with a viable plan to provide services for the areas that no longer receive adequate protection after the closure of stations. You are, however, correct that this is not a easy process, and any entity wishing to replace ECCFD had better have a tightly secured financial plan in addition to a service plan, or they will not get LAFCO approval.
DD,
You would be 100% wrong on ALL of your ASSUMPTIONS.
If you doubt my words you can call the LAFCo executive officer, Lou Ann Texeria @ 335-1032 or local LAFCo commissioner, Mary Piepho @ 252-4500.
Why don’t we do an election at a time when people are paying attention. I believe if you put it back on it will pass. what alot of us see is our taxes are higher due to all the special assesments, along with energy and garbage water, sewer and cable going up. No one wants the increase. If you look around our communities it looks like the money gets spent inappropratley, we have killer parks, new downtowns, all these fancy facilities but fire safety never was put high on the list. Maybe we should vote in new leaders that concern theirselves with these core issues.
Teri,
The leaders are very concerned with public safety, it’s the voters who have rejected the proposals of service and higher taxes three times now. I think a large part of the rejection was due to several key factors; bad information being distributed by a few, tax fatigue, poor public outreach, low voter information, and distrust of the board.
You raise 2 valid points, regarding voting in new leaders and the vote itself When the district was formed the new board was advised to begin the process to have an elected board. It has now been ten years and they have continued to ignore the LAFCo directive. Perhaps that is why they struggle with public trust. Even LAFCo appears to have lost trust with them demonstrated in the outcome of their last MSR (Municipal Service Review). They are up again for a MSR and this time around will likely prove disastrous for the district.
If the fire district directors ever want to turn this around they need to start by restoring trust which begins with the 2 step process of creating an elected board first and then persuing a ballot measure which can be understood and possibly accepted by the voters of the district. This begins with a real education and outreach program delivered by anyone, other than the fire board itself.
Teri
Just why do people not respect the democratic way when they can’t get their own way? The district already pissed away a half million they didn’t have on begging for more money. After three times I think the people were listening pretty well. They spoke get over it. This failure of a district was doomed a long time ago. Stop the pain and close the doors. Life support needs to be turned off. The patient is terminal.Send it back to the county where it belongs.
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