ECCFPD Provides Little Update As They Continue to Investigate Benefit Assessment Errors

During its September 8 Board Meeting, the East Contra Costa Fire Protection District provided an update on its Benefit Assessment after rescinding the ballots at its Sept.2 meeting.

Few questions were answered regarding the error as the District continues to investigate after an error in calculation was discovered on 10,000 of nearly 44,000 ballots mailed out. The District at its Sept. 2 meeting put the blame on CONFIRE, however, a Sept. 8 letter from Chief Jeff Carman disputed the claim and said CONFIRE took no responsibility in the error.

On Monday, Chief Hugh Henderson stated that a postcard will be mailed out to all voters explaining the situation while a phone line has been set up for people to call and ask questions.

Here is the text of the postcard:

On Sept. 2, 2014, the Board of Directors voted to recalculate the East County Fire Response and Prevention Assessment benefit assessments and reissue ballots after discovering an error resulting from incomplete data. The Districts primary concern is to ensure that all property is assessed correctly and additional audit procedures will be utilized to review the data.

Please discard the white ballot which you have received. A revised ballot will be mailed to each property owner in the coming months. The revised ballot package will be green.

If you need additional information, please call (888) 854-3190.

As of Monday night, Henderson stated that 6,000 ballots have been returned and are unopened. They are currently being held by TrueBallot and appears unlikely they will be opened. The District expected a return of about 15,000 ballots per their consultant.

Henderson explained that the District is currently working with NBS to update the data and estimates that after the Board approves Fiscal Year Budget 2014-15 during a special meeting in two-weeks on Sept. 22. correct data will be added to the budget which will show an increase in property tax revenue across the benefit assessment.

As far as timeline for getting benefit assessment back out before property owners, the District has established 3-timelines which a preference is being pushed to make being Oct. 6 become the new starting point.

• Bringing back on the Oct. 6 to call for balloting on Oct. 31 and holding public hearing and tabulation on Dec. 15 at a special board meeting.
• Calling for Balloting on Nov. 10 and ballots mailed Nov. 28 and holding public hearing on Jan. 5, 2015.
• A contingent date further could mean calling for balloting going out Feb. 16 and mailing March 13 with public hearing April 27.

The District did not provide the total cost thus far for the Benefit Assessment and have not provided a new cost for the future Benefit Assessment, however, the chief did say staff and legal are negotiating with their contractor over the cost of re-printing, mailing, and updating engineers report with new data.

Director Randy Pope, asked about the returned ballots and legal restrictions in looking at them.

According to legal, they suggest there is a risk in opening the ballot but there is no clear direction in the State Law. Legal also stated that the Board does not have to take a position on the ballots other than let them sit there unopened.

Director Steve Smith wanted to clarify that by proposing a vote at the October 6 meeting, if the chief had a “very high confidence” that the data will be in and corrected and re-validated.

Henderson responded that they continue to work on updating the data while ensuring when its brought back that its correct data.

“We continue to work on getting the additional information so its in the proper format to use for their database for the benefit assessment points. We have worked on this non-stop since its come out,” said Henderson. “With the Board meeting in 2-weeks, I’ll have a better picture of which timeline to present to you.”

During public comments, Alex Aliferis, executive director of the Contra Costa Taxpayers Association, asked the Board to rescind its decision to move forward with the Benefit Assessment. He stated in the past, the previous board decided not to go forward due to legal issues.

Discovery Bay resident Bob Mankin corrected Mr. Aliferis stating the decision he was referring to had to do with the Board picking a figure the public would pay, then working backwards to make the numbers work—he accused CoCo Tax of using a single point in a lengthy decision which does not apply to the current benefit assessment because they used the Engineers Report to find the number, not the other way around as in the past.

“I would caution this was going to be a 6-8 week recovery, now it’s suddenly turned into 4-weeks. That is kind of scary to me,” said Mankin. “You have lost a little bit of credibility with the public; you have to recapture some of that. You have to be transparent and accuracy’s important. You have to address both of those and see some sort of statement and process put forward that shows 100% accurate data and showing the public you are deserving of their reconsideration.”

Mankin called the idea of opening up ballots “one of the silliest things” he had heard Monday night.

“You are going to open up ballots of people who voted on an assessment figure that is not accurate. If you want to lose some more trust, go right ahead. Otherwise, I’d recommend you shred them or hold them for the two-year period and dispose of them.”

Vince Wells, President of Local 1230, stated he agreed with the comment about shredding the ballots and that he did not think it was something they needed to see, but his concerns were focused on the sharing of information.

“My expectations were that we would hear more information about the data and looking at the timeline to correct the problem, we should hear more about what the problem is and so that was what our expectations were tonight,” said Wells. “Where we made the mistake, because what the public needs to hear is that you identified the problem and where you are going to go to get the solution to the problem and update the information to present to the engineer and get a new report. It seems like there has been enough time to know what happened.”

Director Smith stated that he felt that staff needs to be reassured that the data correction process is well at hand and we in the public need to be reassured.

“I’d prefer to hear more of an explanation of that and what is being done. I feel like this Board through its ad-hoc committee process should be more involved in the search for what happened and leave staff free to focus on the immediate process. There has been a lot of high feelings about what happened. This basically is a data systems failure,” said Smith. “In my experience when something out of the blue like this happens, there is not one bright point of failure, there are a lot of system weight points, that when the system is put on more weight, it begins to fail and a cascade of failure in the final results. I’d much rather focus on the exact facts of the situation and what we can do in concert with sister fire services and county to help prevent this kind of thing in the future. As I see it, accurate data is becoming more and more vital as the Government tries to do more with less. We all have an interest in the fix. Nothing is going to be solved by an orgy of finger pointing. I think a lot of small problems led to this big problem”

Smith explained the origin of hydrants comes from the Water Districts and there are 4-major water districts in the District and a wrath of small districts within this District. The road data, there was not clarity in the data.

Director Joe Young stated that the problem needs to be solved on a countywide basis and the process they need to go through with the benefit assessment doesn’t necessarily mean they have to solve all the issues on the database as a whole, it merely requires we understand the limits we have and make corrections.

Director Greg Cooper says he is frustrated with the process and agrees that we need to figure out what happened but do not want this to cloud the Benefit Assessment. He stated he was in favor of an ad-hoc committee meeting with the county to discuss what happened.

“The public is owed an explanation but we also need to prevent this from happening in the future,” said Cooper.

Director Ron Johansen stated that an ad-hoc committee is the best way to go because they need find answers.

“We need to find out what happened, how it happened, why it happened to prevent this from happening again in the future. I think the public expects that of us and we need to be able to answer those questions from the public because those questions will come and they already are. The more the public learns about what happened, the more those questions will come our way,” said Johansen. “But more importantly, I am more concerned about timelines being mentioned.”

Johansen wanted to ensure the data was accurate versus a fast timeline. He said not one parcel should be inaccurate because if one parcel is inaccurate the District did not do its job.

“The public expects that now especially after what happened,” said Johansen. “We are being tested now and we need to rise that whatever we bring to the public in the future and the decisions this board makes is that the truth stands out and everything is corrected completely.”

Director Pope said that due to inaccurate data, the safety of firefighters should also be a concern as they now have inaccurate data on location of hydrants and addresses saying it could delay the delivery of service.

He explained how important being able to provide firefighters with accurate data for their safety should be the number one priority because inaccurate data could jeopardize the safety of the public which they are supposed to protect.

“Regarding timelines, you first need to ensure the data is correct, then talk about timelines,” said Pope.

Board President Joel Bryant did not agree with the Contra Costa Taxpayers Association and did not see a comparison between the previous Boards decision not to move forward compared to this boards

“The reason we started this was to keep our families safe. If there was a way to keep our fire stations open and firefighters on the job then we would have done that. Having not been on the board during the last generation of a ballot measure, to compare this effort to that effort is like comparing apples to carpenters, it isn’t the same thing what-so-ever so I am very comfortable with our efforts,” said Bryant.  “The public deserves and expects and should expect eventually answers to how this happened and how we can prevent it in the future.”

Bryant said that if the process takes longer than 4-weeks, it takes longer than 4-weeks but it did the District no good to come back with more incomplete data.

Director Smith said he had hoped to have more information about the process of validation of current data and stated that they want more information provided to the public about what is being done to correct the data errors.

“It’s important for us to have confidence, for the public to have confidence in what is being done to correct the data,” explained Smith. “We need to come up with a clean benefit assessment calculation.”

He urged for staff to share the correction methodologies and process to correcting the data in the next two weeks.

Chief Henderson said they will bring back more information at the next meeting and a timeline of where the District is at.

“When we bring this back to you, we want to make sure we have correct data,” said explained Henderson. “I know there are directors who are disappointed we do not have more information here tonight. One reason there is not a staff report is because we worked on this until 5:00 pm tonight to bring you the most current data and where we are at.”

Bryant thanked the Chief and staff as well as other districts in working to find a resolution to ensure data is accurate.

Pope requested that at the next meeting, staff include the cost already spent and estimated cost we will spend.

Director Robert Kenney stated that the public would rather us focus on getting the benefit assessment done than finding who did what or making more reports by giving the staff more work to do. This is about getting our stations re-opened.

Editors note:

At the end of the meeting, Director Steve Smith discussed staff moral and said a presentation is in order and they must set an example. He said pulled himself from the Board and provided comments as a citizen and presented the Chief with a gift for his efforts in the form of a poster.