The county’s nearly 60-year relationship with Calfire could be going down in flames Tuesday.
The San Benito County Board of Supervisors is scheduled to consider a recommendation from a senior staff official to start negotiations on a contract with the City of Hollister for fire service and end the relationship with the state agency.
The consideration comes more than two months after supervisors considered an agenda item to immediately start negotiations with the City of Hollister to replace Calfire, while the state had not been given the opportunity to make its own, official proposal. After supervisors delayed a decision, and allowed for a comparison of those competing proposals from the city and state, County Administration Officer Rich Inman is recommending to start talks with Hollister – which has provided a cost estimate of about $1.107 million per year, versus three models from Calfire ranging from $1.122 million to $1.382 million, according to the staff report.
While the costs are relatively similar, Inman’s analysis notes that Hollister would provide more resources. The city would provide 10 firefighters per shift; Calfire would provide seven, according to the staff report. Inman said the county and city agree on the cost, leaving other matters to discuss during negotiations.
“We have to sit down and hammer out all the details,” Inman said. “We have to talk about how we implement it.”
The apparently looming end to the Calfire relationship and a beginning with Hollister comes on the heels of rising tensions between the state agency and San Benito County. The county’s service calls for one engine company on Fairview Road. San Benito has had the agreement in place since the late 1950s, but Calfire officials contend that they have asked for a definitive coverage plan, to no avail, since 1981.
Calfire officials in October expressed concern that a deadline had passed for the state to have adequate time for a transition to its Amador Plan, which uses varied, shared resources depending on the time of the year. Rick Hutchinson, Calfire’s unit chief for San Benito-Monterey unit, at the time argued that county leaders during prior budget hearings approved the new plan for coverage. With an annual contract cost of $1.2 million now, he said it would increase the figure for next fiscal year by $109,000 because of the transition, but that the number would decrease to $850,000 the following year.
The models provided in the county’s staff report preceding Tuesday’s meeting merely indicate the annual figures from Calfire that exceed the city’s proposal.
Hutchinson on Monday referred to the county comparison as containing “flawed analysis.” He said that countywide with the Calfire deal, there would be five engines responding to emergencies, versus three with the city contract. He also said the total number of personnel at any given time in the county now is 10, while contending it would remain the same under the city deal and it would increase to 14 with Calfire.
Inman said he expects the county and city to agree on a three-year contract. He said county officials realized they would be entering into a contract with a city facing an uncertain fiscal future. Hollister City Manager Clint Quilter’s “austerity plan” – in the event voters in November do not approve an extension to the Measure T sales tax, leading to a projected $3.5 million annual deficit – calls for eliminating seven firefighter positions and closing Fire Station No. 2 off Airline Highway within three years.
“We’ve talked about financially,” Inman said, “they have a plan that if [the Measure T extension] doesn’t pass, they have a plan that wouldn’t significantly change our contract if we entered into one.”
Quilter said the potential impact to county fire service from a no vote on the Measure T extension – what he called the “worst-case scenario” – would include moving from the proposed three-person companies to two-person companies, which is what the county currently gets from the Calfire arrangement.
As for the city’s fiscal impact from the deal, Quilter said he expected it would be “neutral” while adding resources to the community.
And while the city and county appear intent on moving ahead with a fire contract, Hollister officials have indicated they don’t have interest in the long-studied idea of law enforcement consolidation. A hired consultant late last year concluded such an arrangement between the Hollister Police Department and San Benito County Sheriff’s Office would save a combined total of around $316,000 annually, or about 5 percent of the local police budgets.
Quilter pointed to complexities with police administration – in a theoretical law enforcement merger – which are much less severe in the fire service.
“They’re unbelievably different,” Quilter said.
