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Finding needed resources for Kings County fire services a constant battle
Several communities in California depend on all volunteer units. The City of Lemoore is one such community that relies heavily on its volunteer department, considered by many as one of the best in California for its training and response times. A volunteer force may work exceptionally well in Lemoore, but elsewhere such volunteerism may be impractical.
Kings County, because of its size and the geographical distance between stations, can’t depend on just volunteers, and instead employs 65 firefighters to man 10 stations throughout Kings County, including one at South Lemoore Avenue, the station adjacent to the Lemoore Municipal Golf Course, which currently houses two firefighters.
Other locations throughout the county aren’t as fortunate. Kings County currently has four fire stations that regularly have just one firefighter on duty. According to Brandon Jones, the President of the Kings County Firefighters Association, Kings County has a total of 65 firefighters and employs three platoons of 18 per shift. He said four fire stations – Stratford, Island District, Hardwicke, and Burris Park – have just one man on duty at all times, which he and others say is bad policy.
Kings County also provides county services for the cities of Corcoran and Avenal – at a cost to those communities.
Jones also said that several of his fellow firefighters are not only fighting local fires, but also fighting wildfires in the Sierras, hundreds of them, the result of drought and dry brush. “We have four engines out right now,” said Jones. “Eleven guys are out there right now. We just rotated them out again. We just sent out a new crew and they stay out for 14 days, 12-hour shifts. It actually translates into a 16-hour shift,” he added.
The State of California currently foots the bill for fire departments that send men and women to the front fire lines.
According to the most recent Kings County budget message regarding the county fire department: “This continued level of marginal staffing, impedes the effectiveness of the department’s emergency service operations … and (the county) faces two significant staffing issues in its efforts to provide public safety. First is the lack of adequate daily staffing, to provide an effective force when dealing with emergency response and for providing for the overall safety of personnel. The second is insufficient relief staffing to provide for coverage related to sick leave and workman’s compensation events, resulting in the increased use of overtime.”
Jones says this problem of understaffing has been an issue since he joined the Kings County Fire Department 17 years ago. “It’s still the status quo,” he said. “The grand jury has made statements on it. The national standard is three people per engine, and we’re not even close to that. We only have one. I think it’s a little bit of complacency, but we’ve been able to work with what we have.”
According to Jones, the fire department’s budget is derived mostly from property taxes. “We can’t live within that budget any more. We have to have another funding source come into the fire fund.”
This year’s budget, finally approved on Tuesday, offered some support for Kings County firefighters. The department, in its budget requests, wanted six new firefighters it said it needed to eliminate single-person stations. They got three firefighters in the budget. But they will get some additional overtime too. Seems the department racked up $809,909 in overtime costs last year, more than doubling the amount budgeted for that fiscal year.
Bringing on three new firefighters is somewhat of a risk, admitted Kings County Executive Officer Larry Spikes. The money for the three new firefighters comes from the department’s fund balance. That balance may not last, and either attrition or another revenue source will have to be found to keep them on the payroll. Spikes said that the county could in fact dip into hazardous waste tax monies if it needed to.
“This is the first year in several we anticipated there would be more revenue,” said Spikes, referring to the hazardous waste tax, which comes from an assessment on the Kettleman Hills waste facility. “That extra $350,000 - we just put that into capital outlay funds. We don’t want to get into the business of relying on that for ongoing expenses. It could leave any time. We can’t rely on it.”
The county anticipates earning about $500,000 from the tax. $150,000 of it is committed to services in Kettleman City. “I’m thinking it’s something we may have to do, but I don’t want to do that until we have to.”
He also said the Kings County Fire Department also gets about $1.3 million in revenue from Prop. 72, the Public Safety Augmentation Fund, passed by voters in 1993. The department also gets its share of Williamson Act backfill money to the tune of $245,000 and $700,000 a year from an agreement with the Tachi Hotel and Casino.
In the budget message, supervisors learned that the most recent evaluation from the Insurance Services Office (ISO), the organization that rates fire departments, the Kings County Fire Department got a low rating for personnel. The department received only 5.12 points out of 15 possible due to the lack of adequate staffing.
Despite the need for additional firefighters, the board of supervisors, at its Tuesday meeting, approved a budget on a vote of 4-1. Overall the budget was about $332.7 million, about $23.3 million more than last year’s adopted budget. The General Fund Budget – the source of most general operations – is about $207.4 million, about $18 million more than last year’s $189.4 million budget.
The lone no vote on the budget came from Corcoran-area supervisor Richard Valle who bemoaned the fact that the county failed to deliver for its firefighters again. “I voted no,” he said after studying the budget for the last couple of months and undertaking a careful department by department review by the board.
“The biggest issue is the single-shift fire station,” said Valle. “It’s very dangerous. There’s only one firefighter at four stations. We’re looking to get more firefighters to do away with single shift stations.”
Even other board members agreed that single-man fire stations were unacceptable, said Valle. “We tried to do something but it just didn’t happen.”
Valle did offer a motion to use some of the hazardous waste tax money to fund additional firefighters. Valle suggested that the remainder be used to hire three additional firefighters. “I ran it by the board. Every year the county gets money from Waste Management,” he said. “This year the revenue source was small. I proposed $350,000 of that money … be used to hire three county firefighters.”
Valle got support from Supervisor Craig Pederson, but that was it as his motion fell on a 3-2 vote.
The issue is that the county demands an ongoing source of revenue to fund certain operations, such as the fire department. The hazardous waste tax is a continuing source of revenue, but for some reason, the county treats it as a one-time source of funding.
“This is a critical issue,” said Valle. “Firefighters feel the same way.”
He also highlighted the fact that many Kings County firefighters go above and beyond the call of duty, like fighting hundreds of wildfires throughout California. “Many of our guys are deployed,” said Valle. “They’re not eating hot meals, they’re not sleeping in their own beds at night, and while they’re doing that we’re not providing one dollar that increases their safety as well as the public’s safety.
“I feel for them. They’re under a lot of pressure. They’re not complaining, but I think we need to be more sensitive to what they’re going through. The least I can do as a county supervisor is find the funding they need.”
Another area of concern for Kings County is the age of its fire facilities. The need to maintain the county’s fire stations is a primary issue. Having limited funding available, the need to continue to update and repair these facilities is paramount. Many of the county’s older stations are in need of major remodeling and updating in order to remain viable and to meet the department’s current and future needs. These undertakings are extremely costly and dedicating adequate revenue from the fire fund is not possible.
The Kings County Fire Department primarily serves the rural areas of Kings County and provides contracted services to the cities of Avenal and Corcoran, and since 1985 has experienced a continual increase in the number of emergency calls. The department responds to over 4,700 calls annually averaging nearly 13 calls daily.
Pederson, who supported Valle in his motion to use hazardous waste taxes to fund three firefighter positions, says he understands the department’s needs and thought that perhaps the use of ChemWaste money was an appropriate venue. For Pederson, the issue of public safety is one of the primary reasons he serves on the board of supervisors.
“When I ran for office my whole thought process was developed around providing public safety and protection of private property and your family. My belief is that this is the most common goal of our county government - to provide that public safety.”
Tuesday’s effort to use hazardous waste funds was an appropriate response to the situation and Pederson supported Valle’s motion. “It was an effort to find some funds,” he said. “At some point we’re going to hit a wall and we’re going to have to talk about generating future funding, whether a tax increase or public safety tax. I favor taking it to the people. If we have the challenge in meeting our public safety commitments, we obviously have to have this discussion.”
Kings County Supervisor Joe Neves, who represents Lemoore and Stratford, voted against Valle’s motion because he felt the funding was not stable enough, but would not rule it out assuming it becomes a stable source of revenue for the county. “That could certainly be a source,” he said. “There are some other revenue streams that we have to tap into.”
He suggested a utility tax on recent solar initiatives in Kings County, including the Kettleman Solar Power Project, built on 264 acres of Kings County land along Highway 41, a few miles north of Kettleman City. It began producing electricity on Aug. 14. Clenera LLC developed and operates the 20-megawatt plant, which includes about 87,000 solar photovoltaic panels. Apparently the city of Palo Alto is buying all the power. Neves queries whether the county should apply some type of utility tax on the project, money which could go into staffing county fire departments.
“We need the revenue streams to maintain the level of service that residents and visitors to Kings County deserve,” said Neves. “We generated about 148 megawatts of power generated through renewable sources via the commercial solar farm industry. A lot of that energy, as we anticipated, goes into the grid and is used throughout the state of California. It would be nice if there was a local revenue as a part of that generation.”
