By Rachel Cohen
Inside Bay Area (California)
Copyright 2006 MediaNews Group, Inc. and ANG Newspapers
All Rights Reserved
HALF MOON BAY, Calif. — A pending decision over the future of local fire services brought a large crowd to Tuesday night’s meeting of the Half Moon Bay Fire Protection District board of directors, but the board put off a vote for at least two more weeks.
The controversy over outsourcing came to a head after July’s release of a San Mateo County Civil Grand Jury report recommending that the district’s administrative, training and fire prevention services be contracted to another fire department by Dec. 31.
The board heard presentations Tuesday night from two agencies interested in the contract, the San Mateo Fire Department and California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF).
John Ferreira, chief of the San Mateo and Santa Cruz unit of CDF, gave an elaborate PowerPoint presentation on the benefits his agency would provide. San Mateo Fire Chief Brian Kelly also talked at length about his city’s proposal.
Currently, firefighters in Half Moon Bay and Point Montara work three days a week with four off; CDF proposes the firefighters work four days a week and have three days off. The current department employs 31 firefighters; the CDF plan would use 25. The CDF plan would retain the current firefighters unless they choose to transfer, board director Lane Lees said. Lees supported the CDF plan.
“It is over a million dollars’ savings between the two plans,” Lees said. He added that “The firefighters live off overtime.”
In calendar year 2005, the base salary for a top firefighter/paramedic was about $83,800. Including all overtime and incentives, the lowest-paid firefighter/paramedic received some $116,000 and the highest paid received $181,000, according to Half Moon Bay fire department secretary Janice Cochran.
“The current board has not lived up to their stated promises when they were elected, which was supposed to solve the financial problems,” said Dave Heckman, a firefighter-paramedic, who started out as a volunteer with the department in 1994 and left for the Woodside Fire Department in 2001.
Heckman said that financial problems, not being offered promotional opportunities, and talk of outsourcing has caused morale within the Half Moon Bay department to go down.
Speaking to the fire board Tuesday night, Ed Hawkins, president of the San Mateo County Fire Fighters Local 2400 union, said, “I didn’t see anything in the grand jury report that couldn’t be overcome.”
Many in the audience believed the board had already made its decision in closed session.
“We need a public hearing. You had a closed session. We don’t have all the information that you do,” El Granada resident Leonard Woren told the board.
Others believed that the board was trying to paint the picture that this was solely a financial decision. But board director Gary Riddell told the crowd, “It’s more than just money. If it was, we could buy everybody a fire extinguisher.”
Riddell added that trying to vote on the issue Tuesday night would be premature.
“We’re going at this too fast, too soon. This is the most important decision this board will ever have to make.”
The board agreed to meet again in public session at 5 p.m. on Aug. 17 at 1191 Main St. in Half Moon Bay.