After more than 107 years of service, the Hermosa Beach Fire Department will soon be no more.
Starting some time next year, fire services in Hermosa Beach will be provided by the Los Angeles County Fire Department. In a decision described as both difficult and historic, the City Council voted 5-0 at its Tuesday night meeting to contract with the county.
In explaining their move, council members cited the evolving responsibilities of fire departments, ongoing staffing challenges and the multiplicity of services offered by L.A. County Fire, one of the largest departments in the country. And while they acknowledged concerns about what giving up the independent department could mean, they were unanimous in their belief that the county represented a superior option going forward.
“The county provides a higher level of service, a deeper pool of resources, a deeper pool of personnel,” said Mayor Justin Massey.
Under the county option, the Hermosa Beach fire station will remain at its existing location, with units deployed from there. The county will continue to honor aid agreements with surrounding cities.
Council members Tuesday were confronted with two options: contracting with the county or improving and expanding the existing department with added staff and a renovated fire station. A change from the status quo was necessary because ongoing staffing shortfalls within the department created both challenges for overburdened firefighters and compromised the level of fire services delivery in the city.
This was the conclusion of a report presented by Citygate, a municipal consulting firm hired to analyze the city’s contracting decision. Stewart Gary, public safety principal with the firm, laid out the staffing shortage in what he said were unusually stark terms.
“You are understaffing fire services in this community. I don’t say that lightly, and I don’t say that very often,” Gary said.
But the consultant’s pronouncement only confirmed anecdotal evidence that firefighters had been offering for years. Firefighters complained of being forced to cancel vacations and work extreme amounts of overtime, and said that an injury to one firefighter could upset a shift rotation with no room for modifications.
The ongoing difficulties prompted the city’s firefighters association last fall to unanimously endorse contracting with the county, concluding that it provided a more stable future. At Tuesday night’s meeting, Aaron Marcks, president of the Hermosa Beach Local Firefighters Union 3371, did not rehash the points in favor of staying or going, but instead thanked the council for focusing on the issue.
“It took courage to recognize this issue. It took even more to keep it going,” Marcks said.
Others in the audience, especially those opposed to the county option, saw it differently, claiming that the department was only in that position because the city had neglected it for years.
Mayor pro tem Jeff Duclos said that there was “some truth to” the charge. (“Dwindling resources were placed in a department that needed to be a priority, and it wasn’t,” he said.) But Duclos, who also served on the council from 2009 to 2013, said that many of the decisions responsible for the department’s personnel woes over the years — to eliminate a battalion chief, to reduce staffing by one firefighter per shift — came without any public outcry at the time.
Among those weighing in on the matter now was the Hermosa Beach Police Officers’ Association. In a letter from Sgt. Robert Higgins, the association’s newly elected president, the association laid out risks he said were associated with contracting with the county. Although the letter said that police officers had not officially endorsed the expanded department option, it made clear that officers felt that contracting with the county presented long term risks to both the city’s finances and the quality of fire services.
“The HBPOA has not/will not take a public position on the matter of contracting with the county. However, the HBPOA does believe it is not the right decision to contract with the County because it will negatively affect our city, the HBPOA, and the citizens we all serve.” [Italics in original]
County fire officials said internal data showed otherwise. In a 2012 study, the county examined costs in its contracting cities that maintained their own police departments. Chief Daryl Osby of L.A. County Fire said that county personnel costs grew at a slower rate than those of the accompanying independent police departments.
Nonetheless, the county option does represent a cost increase over existing fire department expenditures (although it is not clear that it would have been more expensive than expanding the existing department which, in addition to added personnel costs, would have required the city to bear the cost of constructing a more expensive station than will be required with the county). In future budget projections, Finance Director Viki Copeland said that the city had relied on one-time planning fees imposed on the proposed Skechers office complex on Pacific Coast Highway to pay for the first one-and-a-half fiscal years with the county.
Councilmember Carolyn Petty, in announcing her support for the county option, said the arrangement indicated the ongoing importance of development to the city’s ability to pay for core services.
“The only way we pay for this is $1 million from Skechers,” Petty said.
