Firefight – The conflict between the City of Manhattan Beach and MBFD reaches a boiling point
by Mark McDermott Manhattan Beach Fire Department Captain Dave Shenbaum believed he’d seen just about everything a firefighter, paramedic, and lifeguard could see in the course of his 30 years in the service. He’d seen homes burnt to cinders, every manner of awful injury, dozens of drownings and near-drownings, too many deaths to count, and over the past decade, a burgeoning number of massively destructive wildfires Shenbaum and his colleagues have been asked to fight as part of regional strike teams. But what arrived in his email on April 14 was something Shenbaum had never seen before. It was a press release issued by the City Council, and though its language was bureaucratic, its message was incendiary. It called MBFD the highest paid fire department in the state and declared that the City had made its final offer in contract negotiations, which by this point were already beyond strained. MBFD firefighters had already been working without a contract for two years. The Council’s message zeroed in on overtime. “The City’s proposal is responsive to the need to reduce overtime, both to improve the quality of life for the firefighters and to responsibly curtail unnecessary, excess…
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