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SAFETY ALERT

Tuesday, March 19
7:00 pm Pavilion @ Holbrook-Palmer Park

Due to the current healthcare emergency
the March 24 & April 1 meetings have been postponed.

We will post the new dates as soon they are available.

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Questions & ANswers

The Town of Atherton asserts in their ‘Athertonian News Letter’ that Fire and EMS Protection only costs $4.6 million to $7.5 million dollars, is that true?

There are assumptions within the Matrix Report that are wrong, as well as important items that should have been addressed when the Matrix Report was attempting to cost out an ‘Imaginary Fire Department’ that were not accounted for.

Wrong Assumptions

1. There is an assumption that if the Town of Atherton were to ‘detach’ from the Menlo Park Fire Protection District that the fire service levels within San Mateo County would remain the same. 

a. The Town of Atherton makes up 29.9% of the Secured Property Tax Revenue to the Fire District, if the Fire District were to lose a nearly a third of their budget it would have to cut nearly a third of their staffing and service levels. 

2. It is likely that if Atherton were to ‘detach’ from the District there would have to be a reduction of work force and emergency response fire apparatus that is equal to these numbers.  These reductions in service will have an impact on the Regional Fire Service and its ‘Automatic Aid’ system that has been agreed upon by the County’s Fire Chiefs.

3. The Matrix Report assumes that the Menlo Park Fire Protection District would be not only willing to but able to provide ‘Automatic Aid’ to the Town of Atherton and specifically the area of town west of Alameda de los Pulgas with nearly 1/3rd less Firefighters, Apparatus and Stations.

Costs not accounted for in the Martix Report

1. The area west of Alameda has no coverage from the town of Atherton’s two proposed Fire Stations.

2. If the Town of Atherton were to separate from the Fire District it would be liable to pay a portion of the unfunded liabilities of a pension obligation of the Firefighters who current serve the Town of Atherton.

3. The report does not include accurate costs to purchase land or build the two Fire Stations needed per the study.

4. The report does not provide for Training or Mechanical Divisions.  Nor does it accurately account for administrative functions such as Payroll, Information Technology, Human Recourses and Finance.

5. The report does not accurately account for any of the staffing backfill associated with firefighter leave such as: sick leave, vacation or workers compensation.

All of these costs are significant and are in no way covered by the $4.6 million to $7.5 million dollar budget touted by the majority of the Town Councilmembers and their Matrix Report..

The Matirx Report advocates for a 2 Station Fire Department with 2 apparatus staffed with 7 Firefighters, what would the ‘right size’ for a Fire Department the size of Atherton?

To answer this question, you have to first need a basic understanding of Fire service Deployment.  The Fire and Emergency Service deployment is dictated by ‘response times,’ ‘response standards’ and ‘response unit reliability.’

Response Times

1. Total Response Times start with ‘Dispatch Times’ which time it takes 911 Dispatch to answer the call, determine the proper resources to dispatch and then then stops when units are ‘Dispatched.’

2. The ‘Response Time’ is broken down into 2 parts, a) ‘Turnout Time’ and b) ‘Travel Time.’

a. ‘Turnout Time’ in the time that it takes fire companies to stop what they are doing, put on the appropriate Personal Protective Equipment and board the apparatus.  (In San Mateo County the Standard is 90 seconds)

b. ‘Travel Time’ includes the time it takes to travel from the Fire Station to the Emergency.  This varies with the type of Emergency.

Response Standards

The ‘Response Time’ Standards for ‘Fire’ and ‘Emergency Medical Service’ (EMS) calls are found in two different areas. 

The ‘Response Time’ Standard for Fire Companies responding to EMS calls in San Mateo County is set by the San Mateo County’s EMS Agency and is 6 Minutes and 59 Seconds for a 3 Person ALS company.

The ‘Response Time’ Standard for Fire Companies responding to Fire calls is found in the National Fire Protection Association’s (NFPA) 2010 Standard entitled “NFPA1710, Standard for the Organization and Deployment of Fire Suppression Operations, Emergency Medical Operations, and Special Operations to the Public by Career Fire Departments.”  This Standard lays out ‘Travel Time’ which does not include ‘Turnout Time’ and is as follows:

·  First Due Unit with 4 Firefighters has to arrive within 4 minutes of ‘Travel Time’ to arrive on the scene of a fire. The balance of the response is dictated by the hazard of the occupancy.

o Low Hazard - 17 firefighters total within 8 minutes of ‘Travel Time’

(low hazard occupancies are 2000 square foot single family residences with no basements or exposures).  Typically, homes in Atherton do not fall into this category and anything greater than 2000 square feet or any structure with a basement are moved into the next classification.

o Medium Hazard - 28 firefighters within 8 minutes of ‘Travel Time’ (includes 1 medic unit with 2 personnel)

(medium hazard occupancies are typically open-air strip malls or a typical 1200 square foot apartment in garden style apartment house)

o High Hazard - 43 firefighters within 10 min 10 seconds of ‘Travel Time’ (includes 2 medic units with 4 personnel)

(high hazard highest floor 75 feet above lowest level of FD vehicle access)

Response Unit Reliability

‘Response Unit Reliability’ refers to how reliable a company is to be available to respond to an emergency.  Busy companies are considered less reliable and therefore plans need to set in place to account for replacing these companies on assignments.

Now that you have a basic understanding of Fire and Emergency Service deployment, you can better understand why the Matrix Report is not only flawed due to not being able to provide service to anything west of Alameda but 7 firefighters on duty daily does not account for the 28 Firefighters that are needed to extinguish structure fire in a typical ‘Medium Hazard’ home in Atherton.

The Menlo Park Fire Protection District Staffs a Total of 7 Stations with: 2 Battalion Chiefs; 2 Truck Companies; 7 Engine Companies and 1 Light Rescue Company for a total of 33 Firefighters Daily.  This is the service the residents of Atherton pay For and it is the one they need.  2 Stations staffed with: 1 Quint and 1 Engine for a total of 7 Firefighters Daily is only 1/5th of what the Menlo Park Fire Protection District provides.

The Town of Atherton asserts in their ‘Athertonian News Letter’ that the Fire District provides ‘basic fire and emergency medical services’, is that true?

The Menlo Park Fire Protection District does not provide ‘basic fire and emergency medical services.’  Highlights of services include:

• Providing the citizens of Atherton with a Insurance Safety Office (ISO) Public Protection Classification (PPC) https://www.isomitigation.com/ppc/  Classification of 2.  In 2017 when the District received this classification (1-10) Fire Chief Harold Schapelhouman Stated: “Nationwide only 241 fire agencies have earned a class 1 rating and 1,324 were rated as a class 2 Fire Agency. That places the Fire District in the top 3.42% of all fire agencies rated by ISO in the United States and that’s something to be proud of.” https://inmenlo.com/2017/04/23/update-on-various-menlo-park-fire-protection-district-news-activities/;

• Fully Staffing: Two (2) Battalion Chiefs; Two (2) Truck Companies; Seven (7) Engine Companies; and, One (1) Light Rescue Company.  As well as Cross Staffing One (1) Heavy Rescue Company on a daily basis with at least one (1) Paramedic on each company;   

• Being the Sponsoring Agency for California Task Force 3 (CA-TF3) which is 1 of 8 Urban Search and Rescue (US&R) Teams in California and 1 of 28 US&R teams on the National Level;

• Having 1 of 13 Office of Emergency Services (OES) Water Rescue Teams in the State of California;

• Having 1 of ? OES Type 1 Heavy Rescue Companies in the State of California;

• Being part of the San Mateo County Tactical Emergency Medical Services (TEMS) Team which provides Tactical Medics to 4 County Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) Teams and several Federal Agencies;

• Having 1 of 3 OES Certified Rescue Systems Training Sites within the State of California;

• Having a Live Fire Burn Training site that is utilized by other Fire Agencies in San Mateo County;

• Being heavily involved the OES Interagency Resource Ordering Capability (IROC) program, not only for Wildland and US&R Deployment but Single Resource Deployments as well.

• Having the largest and most advanced Drone Program in not only San Mateo County but the greater Bay Area.

What exactly is the Town Council’s Plan for Fire and EMS Protection for the residents of Atherton if they detach from the Fire District?

The Atherton Town Council’s written plan for what Fire and EMS looks like, if the Town were to detach from the Fire District, is outlined in the Matrix Report and it is a reduction of service.  The Town Council states in its recent ‘Athertonian Newsletter’ that it has no plans to form its own Fire Department but the Town Council states in their newsletter that ‘the Town can opt to detach from the Fire District and provide services under contract with another agency (called “detachment”) or if negotiated, back with the Menlo Park Fire District (at a different cost).’ However, the town has not solicited any other entity to determine if they would be interested in providing such a service and they have certainly not provided a bid to determine what the cost of such a service would be.

Outside of a reduction of service, the Town has no viable plan on how Fire and EMS Services will be provided to the citizens of Atherton if they were to ‘Detach’ from the Fire District. What makes it worse is that the numbers generated from the Matrix Report are wrong due to either bad or incomplete information and a majority of the Town Council is choosing to use the numbers from the Matrix Reports ‘imaginary fire department’, which is a reduction of service to Atherton Residents, as the baseline for what Fire and Emergency Service should cost the Town of Atherton.

The Town of Atherton asserts in their ‘Athertonian News Letter’ that the Fire District receives 15.7% of the 1% property taxes collected within the town of Atherton to provide ‘basic fire and emergency medical services’, is that true?

The Menlo Park Fire Protection District is broken down into 235 Tax Rate Areas (TRA), 38 of them are within the Town of Atherton.  The taxes provided to the Fire District range gross from 12.83% to 16.73%, however, after 12.55% of those taxes are shifted from the Fire District to Public Schools under the State of California’s Educational Revenue Augmentation Fund (ERAF) those percentages go down between 11.22% to 14.63%.

The Town of Atherton asserts in their ‘Athertonian News Letter’ that the Fire the residents of the Town of Atherton collectively contribute $18 million dollars (Attaching a chart showing $17.1 million in 2018/19 and $18.3 million dollars in 2019/20) to the Menlo Park Fire Protection District, is that true?

The $18 million dollar figure is misleading due to it referring to Pre-ERAF dollars.  It is true that the Fire District was supposed to receive $17,117.622 in 2018/19 from the San Mateo County Assessors Office, it actually received $14,579,255 after a portion of those taxes were shifted from the Fire District to Public Schools under the State of California’s Educational Revenue Augmentation Fund (ERAF)

The Town of Atherton asserts in their ‘Athertonian News Letter’ that it is seeking to have the ‘excess property’ tax revenue redistributed to other taxing agencies in order to reduce the reliance by those agencies on potential bonds and taxes, is there ‘excess property tax’?

There is no ‘excess property’ tax, the ‘excess property’ tax revenue the town is assuming exists is based off of the Matrix Report which not only does not provide for an accurate accounting of Fire and EMS Services costs but lowers the Service Levels the Fire District currently provides to the citizens of Atherton by 60%.