By Rowena Coetsee
The Contra Costa Times
OAKLEY, Calif. — Despite appeals and even demands from residents to reconsider, directors of far East Contra Costa’s fire district this week decided to close two stations.
The East Contra Costa Fire District board voted 6-2 in favor of a 2010-11 spending plan that calls for Byron’s fire station and one of the two in Discovery Bay to close as of 8 a.m. July 16. Residents in the overflow crowd at Oakley City Hall pleaded with directors to keep the stations open at least while they explored ways to generate more revenue.
East Contra Costa Fire District, which serves approximately 105,000 people from Brentwood and Oakley to Bethel Island and Byron, is projecting $11 million in expenses in the fiscal year starting July 1 but just over $8 million in income.
The agency has been squeezed by a precipitous drop in property tax revenue over the past two years. Even with the $1.3 million in cuts that the 2010-11 budget represents, it still will run out of money in three years.
By the end of 2012-13, the district expects to have gone through all its reserves.
“We are in a survival mode, not a maintenance mode,” director Chris Becnel said.
The agency will save an estimated $70,000 in operating costs by closing the stations, and will redistribute the firefighters there among the remaining six stations it operates.
The result will be that four sites will have three firefighters on duty around the clock the number that most Contra Costa County fire departments have instead of just two in Oakley and Brentwood.
The industry standard is four personnel per engine.
The beefed-up coverage will be at the remaining Discovery Bay station and Brentwood’s other station.
Nonetheless, the board’s decision has some residents worrying about the danger that longer response times pose to lives and property, particularly in sparsely populated areas, along Vasco Road, or on the Delta where there’s at least a handful of boating accidents during the summer months.
The average time it takes an engine to arrive on scene in the Byron area will increase from 7½ minutes to 12 to 14 minutes, according to the agency; the 6½-minute response time from Discovery Bay’s downtown station now will be nine to 11 minutes.
“All your constituents are out there in the waterways,” Discovery Bay resident Walter McVittie said.
He echoed others’ reminders to board members that they were appointed to represent residents throughout the district and not just those in their respective cities.
Some speakers accused the Brentwood and Oakley directors of sparing stations in their cities.
Four of the nine board members are from Brentwood, three live in Oakley, and the remaining two are from Bethel Island and Discovery Bay.
But directors explained that they chose the facilities in Byron and Discovery Bay because they receive the fewest calls.
Firefighters at Byron’s Station 57 responded to 294 incidents last year and those at Station 58 in Discovery Bay fielded 379.
Totals ranged from 383 to 1,853 at the other stations.
Of the more than two dozen people who spoke, many said they’d be willing to pay more to preserve the current level of service. Even after scaling back, however, the district says it still will have to ask the public for additional funds.
Directors are considering several possibilities: a special tax that would be a flat amount per parcel, an assessment that would vary among properties, and a user fee for residents outside the district who require emergency services.
Director Chris Finetti, of Discovery Bay, who voted against the station closures along with Bethel Island’s Robert Kenny, warned his colleagues that in deciding to close stations, they have hurt their chances of persuading residents to pay more.
Those who live near a three-person fire engine won’t feel as much need to authorize a tax, and those in the communities that have lost a station will be in no mood to shell out more money, he said.
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