 Good evening. Welcome to this joint meeting of the local agency formation commission the Aptos-Lacelva Fire Protection District and the Central Fire Protection District. We need to start with a, we will start with a roll call of the three bodies. Good evening Mr. McCormick. Good evening. Good evening. Mr. McCormick, Executive Officer, calling roll call for Lafko. Mr. Jim Anderson. Mr. Roger Anderson. Mr. Friend. Mr. First. Mr. Lafue. Mr. Tarrasso. Chair Llepo. Good evening, and hello, Fire Chief Apptas of the Civil Fire Protection District. Roll calls for the board of directors. Director Aditya Khan, absent. Director Hurley. Director Lucchese. Director Skizak. Board President Foster. Here. Good evening, and roll call for the Central Fire Protection District. Good evening, and Steve Hall, Fire Chief of the Central Fire District of Santa Cruz County. Director Burnham. Here. Director Couples. Here. Director Frankie. Here. Director Haas. Here. Director Lucchese. Here. Director Walter. Here. And Chair Miller. Here. Thank you. Thank you. If you could all rise and we'll do the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic of America, for which it stands, one nation, under God, and indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Well thank you everyone for coming out tonight. I want to let you know, if you didn't already know, that if you're parked outside, parking is free here at Cabrillo after five o'clock. So you don't have to worry about over parking, or having to get a new tag before the end of the evening. I also hand out to the PowerPoint and Executive Summary of the report that is in the back of the room and outside. If you haven't had a chance to see it, or if you want to get a copy of what you see here this evening. We will open tonight's meeting with oral communications. If there are items under the purview of the local agency formation commission, or one of these two fire districts, please come forward. If you've found a nice agenda, please come forward and we'll give you up to three minutes to make some oral communication. Is there anyone who would like to make oral communication to these boards? Well, seeing none. Let me just tell you about why we're here tonight. The purpose tonight is to review the Mid-County Fire Agency's consolidation feasibility study and service review. The local agency formation commission is a commission that is, there's a let go in every county and they were formed in 1963 to deal with growth in California. We work on preventing urban sprawl, protecting prime ag land, and we work for the orderly and efficient services of government, which is, think of it as a boundary setting commission. We are required by state law to do municipal service review of the county, the cities, special districts. We do that every five years, and we regularly look at special studies in areas where we might be able to help improve the efficiency of services. We also set out sphere of influences, which determine where different special districts or cities might be able to grow, so people can have some effectation of where they're going to grow, and rather than happening haphazardly. That's worked pretty well for 55 years. Tonight we are here because these three organizations have decided to take a look at the fire services in the Mid-County to determine whether we could provide, what these services would be provided in another way that would be more efficient and more effective for the community. We'll hear a lot more about that. I want to ask Joe Foster, who is the chair of the Aptos and Salva Fire District, if he wants to say anything about the fire district. Thank you very much. Again, Joe Foster, president of the board of the Aptos and Salva Fire District. I see a lot of familiar faces out there tonight and a lot of new faces too, so on behalf of the Aptos and Salva Fire Protection District, thank you for your engagement in this issue and coming out tonight to hear the presentation about the study and to engage in this topic, one that's been thoroughly looked at up to this point, and we know we're still sort of in the preliminary stages and looking at the findings of the report and how things will go going forward. For those of you who don't know, the Aptos and Salva Fire District is a three-station district serving the beautiful communities of Aptos and Salva. We have a lot of our firefighters here tonight and thank you for being here as well. And we have three other board members here as well, one that's absent, but we're very pleased to be here and I'll hand it over back over to Supervisor Leopold. Thank you, Mr. Foster. Now to turn to Owen Miller, if he wants to say a few words about the Central Fire Protection District. Sure, thank you. I guess I don't get a mic. Anyway, I am Owen Miller. I'm the board chair of the Central Fire Protection District, which is live Oaxacao in Capitola, with the result of a merger of three districts in 1987. On behalf of the board, I'd like to welcome you here tonight. Again, I'd like to echo the same sentiments that we want to hear from you. We're your representatives. This is a consolidation study that you just heard. Is it preliminary findings, if you will, where we look forward to what you have to say once you hear what the study is presented for you. As board of directors, we're looking forward to the information that's being presented tonight and see what the future holds for both our districts on a possible consolidation. Again, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Miller. Our Santa Cruz laugh, though, has looked at fire services throughout the years. In addition, there have been grand jury reports and other reports looking at consolidation of services or mergers. Last year, when Lafko looked at the municipal service review for our fire districts, the fire districts asked us to do a more in-depth study. Working together with both fire districts and members of our local Lafko, we stoked out what a study would look like and each of our three agencies have contributed equally to the creation of this study. Tonight is an information to share information about what's in that study and to ask questions. We will not be taking action on this study tonight. Save for one thing. Our local Lafko will, at the end of this meeting, I will see whether they want to accept this study. But then each of the fire districts will be taking it back to their boards. We'll be talking about it some more. And depending on where people want to go with this, it could lead to more actions at our local Lafko. But we haven't predetermined. This study is very thorough. It's about 200 pages. It's available on each of our agencies' websites. And I encourage you to take a look at it. It is a good read. There is a variety of recommendations and each of the fire districts will determine what they want to take with those recommendations and implement it over both the short and long term. So now I will turn it over to our consultants who will make a presentation. I should warn people, this is a long presentation, because we consider this a serious subject. And as a result, I want to ask my colleagues to join me in stepping off the stage and sitting in the front row so we can actually see the presentation. And then afterwards, there will be questions from members of the commission and the two districts. And then we will turn it over to members of the public to ask questions. There will be microphones down there and I'll say a little bit more about that when the time comes. But please join me in welcoming our consultants and they'll set up and we'll be down there. Good evening. My name is Dawn Middleman and I am Project Manager and Senior Associate for Emergency Services Consulting. And once again, I would like to reiterate what has been expressed here about appreciation to all of you folks for being here coming out on a Monday night and being your interest in this. As I'm going to introduce a little bit about our team just so you know our experience level. My experience, my specialty is LASCO. I have over 30 years experience with LASCO. And I'm one of the few folks in the state who has been both a commissioner and an executive officer of LASCO. In addition, I have been president of a board of fire protection district for 12 years. And in that capacity we were one of the first to join a fire district with a fire department. That has been extremely successful and is now in its 14th year. My other close associate here is a senior associate with the SCI. He has over 40 years experience in fire service with 27 of those years specifically as a fire chief. This is important that he has been a fire chief of both fire departments and fire districts because anyone that's involved with fire districts knows that it's quite a different process than a fire department which has a full range of city services available, whereas a fire district they have to handle all of those services, whether it's HR, finance, whatever it is. We also there was this is a complicated project specifically with respect to the finances. So what we did is we brought in a couple of different experts for this project. Randy Parr is both a CPA and a fire chief so he was our go-to person for financial analysis. Then with respect to the benefits and the packages and so on and so forth we brought in an actuarial firm and that is Bickmore actuarial firm and their report is attached to that extensively as we went through our analysis. I would like to express appreciation to Santa Cruz-Lathgow to Aptos-Lisilva Fire Protection District and to Central Fire Protection District. Everyone we've dealt with has been extremely helpful in getting this information very quickly and whatever we might need so we really, really do appreciate all that help and support. Alright, so the purpose of the study as mentioned a bit earlier was to study the consolidating of the two fire districts and to conduct a service review and sphere of influence update for the fire district. Our deliverables were to develop tools for a consolidated district and a description of operational improvements or reductions. Also to develop budgets for those two staffing models of a consolidated district. To look at salary and benefit levels of the anticipated budget and to also look at current and post current pension and post-employment benefits and liabilities of the districts. There again that's that deep dive into the financials and that's where the actuarial firm was extremely important. We also were requested to look at the government structure for a consolidated district for the boards and then to close with challenges, opportunities, weaknesses and strengths. Checking because up here we can hear a little bit of feedback and I want to make sure that you're not getting feedback out there. Pre-final study review. This has been a very long process as has been mentioned already with a lot of pages. So I'm going to start on page one. On July 11th we participated in facilitating a meeting with the steering group that's been with this project since its inception before it was even decided to carry it out. The interaction during this meeting the feedback was extremely informative for us as we moved towards the final document. At that meeting before we recessed the meeting and moved into our final production we made it very clear that we were not going to be able to bring our CPA to this meeting tonight. He's actually back at the National Fire Academy participating in the development of the program. So we asked that in the event there was any concerns with some of the projections that we went through in a two and a half hour meeting please forward that information to us along with the backup necessary to do the review before we did the final. When nothing was submitted we moved on to the final production. Tonight's presentation will be a fairly high flight because I didn't think you all wanted to be here for three or four hours. Organizational overview we've already heard a little bit about this many of you in the audience have heard of the overview of these organizations. However, as we moved into the study it was important for us to look at both organizations first individually and this is the history. And as you look at the history of both these districts what jumps out at us at least from the lay person from the outside looking in is both districts have a history of consolidation. Both districts cover an area very similar both districts protect a fair amount of assessed valuation so Aptos is up there on the screen Aptos stand alone those of you who are here from the district the board members the responders in the audience these are the boundaries as was already mentioned is three stations Central fire somewhat similar square miles more population a little bit more assessed valuation service levels are very similar all risk both agencies are all risk plus and then that's the layout of Central so now as we transition as we as the folks assigned to the team to look at this possible consolidation as we transition we get up a little bit in elevation we start to look at and start running models and start doing analysis as if it were one both districts have already gone through a standard of coverage and administrative and master plan type of document with another consulting firm it was not our intent to duplicate that work but to merely reference it and when necessary redo some of the data so as I said we step back a couple of steps we get a little higher in altitude and as you can see this is the layout of these two districts side by side as the organizational overview of where all the stations are at and the areas that they cover not only did we look at the areas that they covered not only did we look at the risks the hazards the call lines et cetera but we also looked at the facilities and apparatus we spent several days on site and I'll talk about interviews a little bit but we also my wife and I who are a team of the SCI spent time in both districts walking through facilities and it's kind of a fuzzy picture of Aptos along with some of the apparatus so as you'll see you already know there's three stations the stations are in generally good condition could they be configured a little differently yes absolutely as all stations that were built a few years ago quickly Aptos the service station range in age from 40 to 50 years old I referenced city gate had already done a couple of studies city gates recommendation was to look to relocating station 3 which is down near the beach that was a great station to visit by the way and possibly bring it up a little closer to the highway central fire five facilities range in age from 18 to 63 years several of them updated the model one and two in our tenement and non-engineered tenement will continue to serve the department well in the future three and four are aging they're in designated flood plains this was also called out in the city gate report the city gate report mentioned potentially relocating those stations in the future due to the fact from our perspective access of stuff egress of stuff it's always impaired by congestion they're marginally adequate for use in the future in our opinion consideration should be given to relocating those and possibly consolidate we looked at staffing we spent a lot of time looking at staffing looking at numbers I took a walk through the city gate report in both of these areas but not only did I take a walk through the city gate report but I also interviewed the chief of central and the interim chief of Aptos at the time and as Don mentioned I do have experience in running fire districts my wife has extreme experience in administration and consolidations so not only did we look at the city gate report not only did we interview the chiefs but we also relied some on our own experience of what it takes to run a fire district which is for those of you in the audience a fire district is a lot different than the city fire department in essence, a fire district is a city all those functions that the folks who are here from the city rely on those different departments and all falls on the chief to make sure those are taken care of Aptos is still the admin support except they're under all authority one chief one director to the services two admins a part time .20 that's actually shared with that shared chief which is not included in response so then we move on over to central central has a vacancy and their assistant chief and these are all the positions that central has as you can see a little more robust admin administration now we move over to the response side and both departments some of their admin folks also act as responders so when you see those numbers roll up some are double counted so Aptos has all these folks in the response algorithm just like central or similar to central the fire apparatus operator position everybody on the job is qualified for most of our operator central very similar a few more bodies four battalions 13 captains 33 apparatus operators no real firefighters every firefighter on the job is expected to operate and then a little different than Aptos central also utilizes paid call firefighters to augment their staff so broken down individually remember I said sometimes personally it's double counted because admin responds with the line so there's your breakdown for each of them individually not real big organizations let's look at what happens when you combine those numbers combine combine the two organizations make up for a pretty sizable force however as you can see in the admin support area it does need a little more review and we did a pretty deep dive in the report so the other another area of the study we took a look at how the organization staff how they respond and really they're very similar in the way they operate they're 24 hour shifts 48 hours at a time personnel report through those shifts they work with three folks called Aptos and ABC the only difference really is central has a paid call program and Aptos does not then we look at what's called critical tasks we look at alarm assignments we look at with the input from the districts what it takes in each position to fill the gaps in every alarm and then we make a determination whether or not in our opinion it's adequate in looking at the critical task and the alarm assignments that the district staff furnishes it's our opinion that neither district can feel the full first alarm without assistance from automatic eventually the next statement Aptos La Silva does not have a truck company they must depend on central's cross staff truck being available in the event they need a truck company service demand delivery and performance one of the reasons we look at service demand delivery and performance is we're seeing how busy the system is we're seeing how busy each unit is we're looking at how many times units are submitted to multiple calls so service demand delivery and performance you can see right there the two districts side by side blue is Aptos La Silva the golden I don't know what it looks like to the audience it's a little busier system but it shows you how things have escalated over the years it's interesting when you take a look at the dips what we typically see and I believe what we've seen here in central in December with Aptos for whatever reason the dips follow the recessionary track so we look at service demand we look at delivery we look at station location and then we look at call concentration so and again as you drive through the districts this really isn't that surprising and the crews will tell you this isn't that surprising they know where their hotspots are they know where their concentrations are this doesn't say it does not indicate that there's no calls going on anywhere else all it says all it indicates is per square mile these are some of the busier areas and this will be interesting when I show you some other recommendations later in the slide so then we move the station coverage in the event where it can solidate the district and you'll see sometimes that are on this slide are fours and eights when you get into the study there's many more maps and colors however we look to see what the footprint would look like from a response perspective in the event the organization was functioning as one and you can see that really there's a significant amount of the district as a traffic now again it was not our task to duplicate the city gate report the city gate report both of them have a significant amount of information on traffic I did ask our GIS analysis to take a look at what city gate had done in that area and she concurred so you're looking at the footprint for four and eight minutes you can see station three down there that is where city gate recommended bumping it up closer to high ground another section of the report is response reliability why do we look at response reliability we're looking to see how busy the system is the next figure I'm going to show you we're going to talk about concurrent incidents for each agency when we walk through this the more in-depth two and a half hour program with the steering group we spent a fair amount of time discussing how busy the two systems are and some of the overlaps more calls that are occurring at the same time results can lack of availability of units so what is this slide telling us this is 2017 data we redid a fair amount of response data because city gate's data was based up to 2016 and we made a commitment to our clients all three boards that were appropriate we would try to get real time and fresh data so we did so almost everything we've done is based on 2017 so what is concurrent calls mean in 2017 755 times Aplososilva fire protection district had two calls running central a little busier system three times 260 times Aplososilva had three calls working at once sent for fire 577 times now we're starting to get to the number of stations that the districts have so now 87 times Aplososilva four calls working once 226 times and I could go over down the list but the bottom line is these two districts are co-dependent because the number of calls they're running and how many concurrent calls they have and it's only going to get better so based on the incident provided in both departments we projected a 5% increase in calls through 2028 and our baseline was 2017 when we reviewed the city gate study the number is the same the percentage is the same I did not I did not have our GIS analysis look at the city gate study until she ran some of this information for us so that's how good it's going to get through 2028 you're going to have an extremely busy system and more and more concurrency of calls so get ready for it, it's coming we looked at response, we looked at stations we looked at apparatus and there's notes in there with the apparatus one thing I want to make clear this snapshot in time this study has been going on for 7 or 8 months due to the complexity so things have changed I know for a fact Central has ordered apparatus Aptos has ordered apparatus so when you look at the study they got new stuff coming yeah but we looked at what was on the deck we were there so when we and I don't want to belabor this too long but we believe in almost every single one of our studies, regardless of the type of study it is has a big stakeholder interview piece in it we were on site for 3 solid days working through lunch interviewing board members business community members labor members chief officers and you'll see in the report there's an extensive section on stakeholder input I just tried to get the common threads for the purpose of the presentation the common threads are up there I've got a couple of slides and a majority of the stakeholder input was positive both districts heard the share of resources including the truck when it's available good services, adequate response times I'm reading these because I think it's important to celebrate this the district provides a good service adequate response for a progressive provide fire medical many believe the two districts have been moving in a positive direction we also reviewed the history before we came in to the area to do these interviews many believe the two districts have been moving in a positive direction and the public has been giving you positive comments from the stakeholders potential opportunities to enhance service the town chief division chief oversight could be improved in the event they were won now I do know that as we were rolling through trying to get the study done there's currently a pilot program in place that pretty much is sharing chief officer resources and I've heard briefly that there's a lot of positives coming out of it eliminate the duplication of overhead improve duty coverage consideration of operational and consolidation of operational overhead right now you've got two districts basically doing their own thing and there's a fair amount of duplication or things that could be done in a more efficient manner cooperative opportunities for the first year to include duty coverage, streamlining these are not our recommendations yet I'll give you those Dedicated training officer environment depth of human resources economy of scale standardization of the SOPs and the SOGs again moving forward operating as one larger pool depth of resources span of control it's a big deal for us how many people truly how many people can one supervisor effectively supervise the enhancement of the specialty teams both departments have specialty teams staffing and hand utilization utilization of resources and talents and as I said there are numerous numerous statements within the study from the stakeholders so let's let's take a look to sum the opportunities that I picked out of this study that are in front of you to possibly enhance services of consolidated agency so you all recognize this picture this is Central's current truck doing his own work in the city gate study it does talk about the recommendation to relocate the existing Central truck however the city gate study was not a consolidation study so again what we did is we got up an elevation a little bit and I sat with a GIS analyst and I went in so first of all Marcia I want you to take the target hazards and critical facilities and plot them out as if it was one district then I want you to move the truck so as a result here's the map that occurred as a result and you'll see the little TPs or Triangle Triangles are critical facilities and then target hazards and you'll see them sum up groups and then you also see a footprint a travel time footprint for the truck truck company we like to see on the first alarm we like to see it there within 8 minutes so it can be part of the effective response force which is made up of X number of pieces of apparatus X number of personnel so after moving it around a few times and looking where the best as a consolidated agency serve the entire footprint of response area and you'll see it in the report it's our recommendation that the truck company be relocated to Aptos 1 for a while we also this was not a fire station relocation study Howard the opportunity to present to start moving a few things around especially when we realized the situation with Aptos I'm sorry the central 3 and 4 again I got with the GIS we started looking around and we came up with this recommendation that a new station and my terminology task force a multi-company multi-crew station be located in this vicinity not necessarily that exact corner but in that general vicinity and the reason is you'll see multiple maps in their response maps is we believe that enhances number one it enhances the response footprint number two it gives you a facility that will last well in the future and an offer I will make to the districts that I'm not going to offer full station relocation study for free in the event they come up with a map we'll build a little bit of mapping in runtime analysis question on a runtime analysis always comes up we use real streets we use the posted speed limits the program does take into account terms and grades if you've had the opportunity to read the city gate studies the consultant talks about a quick response unit we took that to another level and we are recommending that both districts consider putting in place something like this this is a quick attack unit that is nimble smaller than a fire engine and it can be staffed with a medic an operator or captain or however it can do EMS calls it can initiate cutting rescues I've had personal experience with these types of units and I've been tracking several other agencies that are now starting to implement these because of call load and because of traffic situations so let's personally I think the quick attacks are in the future they're already here so we took a look at remember those call concentration areas I showed you earlier we we narrowed it down and said okay, again to the GIS Alice if we were going to put a quick attack unit where would it park now understand I am not your typical fire chief I have no problem with taking a unit and putting it on a street corner 12 in Valley Fire Rescue up in Oregon actually has store front stations for certain times of the day so the crews can get in out of the heat but what we've determined we've calculated is if you're going to put a quick response unit in service this is one of the best places to park it now when you get into the study you will also see we spend a fair amount of time looking at time of day type of call etc and when we did that it was really really interesting because the people called peak hours are different in the two districts so here's the hotspot of the work and the guys that are here from the line they already know this this is the hotspot for ATOS ATOS of Silver again when you get into the report different hours different times of day literally if the recommendation to stand at the pilot was followed I believe you can run the pilot with one unit and float it back and forth on the appropriate days and appropriate times and obviously this is really a no brainer one of the best times to stand those units up and get it out of the street corner somewhere on the pilot in my opinion so that's all the response stuff I'm going to give you we're going to transition into finance and let me throw out a few things here I've done budgets I've had really good people I've run multi-million dollar organizations I've had really good people when we made the decision when we got started off on this project and started looking at the complexity and some of the concerns that came out during the stakeholder interviews I said to Don I recommend we bring the CPA that the company uses on projects throughout the United States on board and as a result of that no extra costs to the clients Don and I just shifted some of our hours and to show you the complexity this is a list of the resources and studies the documents that the CPA utilized during the financial analysis and projections it's extensive the Bickmore study which is attached to the report was a very very interesting document and if you have time to read that I'm actually using that now as an example to other folks who are talking about our funded liabilities who are talking about what it's going to take this is the level of detail you have to go to we had input from the fire district staff our CPA consulted the tax assesses of roles and office via the website the CalPERS actuarials that are quoted within the Bickmore report are extremely extremely important we looked at the MLU we looked at operating agreements and for those of you who have read the CitiA report there's a fairly there's a section that does talk about finances who did take a look at that we looked at the two districts actually we looked at their audits so he didn't walk into this blindly obviously as as he was producing the projections basis for the projections this is just a few bullets MLUs and I think it's important that we qualify and I asked the CPA I asked him several times I want to make sure I get this right what's in there is no freezes it's basically status quo he said that's right whatever increases were in the MLUs were already in the projections he said okay he did acknowledge the challenges regarding pay disparity, pay freezes et cetera that's part of the implementation plan and part of the negotiation process I also need to throw out we have been extremely careful not to give the appearance of predetermined outcome of negotiations which is why we look at what's going on now and what's projected in MLUs there's a really big there's a section of law in California that that would be considered bargaining in that way so I'm not going to show you every single chart that's in that report there's a lot I'm going to show you a couple of highlights but know that before the one I'm going to show you were developed and part of the RFP we looked at each district's finances using these guidelines using those references and did a five year projection for each district as if they were standalone and then as is required by the RFP he took a look at what could be what the cost savings could be there's two models in the report I'm going to show you the model not the card so the consolidation will allow for a screen lining of costs it will allow for the illumination delimination of some duplicate costs and they're listed for you in the book and admittedly this slide is based on some reduction of duplication but at the end of the day per the projection and you see it right down there at the bottom it goes up and up every single year it's a five year forecast so we roll that out to what would a combined district look like that is the bottom line what all that information all that stuff that's a very technical term all those references all those studies all those actual areas all those audits took all the information from staff plugged it into a spreadsheet and this is the CPA's projection of what a consolidated district would look like each year per five years bottom line no deficit positive growth now I will tell you one of the formulas used is the formulas allowed by calculus or retirement system for spreading out basically over 30 years the unfunded liability now you will see within the report both districts as of 2016 because that's the information Perz gave us it talks about what each district has as far as unfunded liabilities but I will share with you that both districts have been making strides to address and get their arms around the unfunded liabilities and the chiefs and their staff can address that much better than not so again model A and model B this is model A this is what an org chart an organization chart could look like in the event there was a consolidation you heard me talking about span control you heard me talk about the ability to divvy up the duties basically and as I look at this organization chart and I stand back at it and I'm just looking at it in the hotel room all the pieces are there it's got a good span control particularly up at the top it's got chief officers it has a fully staffed administrative unit and this is an organization that in our opinion can run that corporation which is basically a 30,000 dollar a year corporation now it's not a pie in the sky it doesn't come without considerations and these are some of the challenges like the issues that are going to need to be addressed during the process parity is a big deal for firefighters on the line benefit packages it's no secret that one organization's benefit package is more positive than the other both organizations have identified for both departments for both districts capital improvement and address replacement programs now I also know that while we were putting this together the districts have been moving forward to develop these and I'm not sure if they've been to the board chair combining two bargaining units into one never an easy task however it can be done evaluation and modification of the deployment schedule for people around and particular staff in the front considerations should be given the ideas and recommendations in the bickmore report that's a hefty report, it wasn't cheap I'm not complaining but there's some really solid recommendations in that report from a third party actuary we had no influence on that analysis of the district here's your bottom line on the CPA's analysis okay the analysis reveals that from my district the forecast to produce a positive cash flow why am I lingering on that because during the stakeholder interviews there was a lot of concern that was brought up about cash flow from either agency and you'll see what's in that last moment there is exactly what was on the slide before so in our CPA's the consolidation will provide multiple opportunities to improve service I believe we've laid that out for you all the way from the beginning when we looked at the organization as a whole elimination of redundant expenses standardization reduce administrative positions it as you already know are in the forecast savings will be realized under both forecast and the the extended determined by the staffing model decision thank you Kurt alright so from a last though standpoint we looked at there are various options for cooperative efforts and this we've run through this list staying as the agencies are advanced auto aid systems functional consolidation now that is what Kurt referred to there with regard to the pilot program that the two districts are involved in now to share chief officer contract for service is allowed and often used operational consolidation is their functioning is one agency joint powers authority this is forming a new agency with different representatives and it I want to say in the past it did not require the approval but there are certain instances now where it is required and they're also required to file their information with so that can keep track of the different local agencies providing services legal unification is the actual legally forming combining of the two districts and that's the one I want to get into that a bit more Commissioner Leopold went into a very good description of last though background and one thing that I would also include in there is that Lafgos reflect local conditions when they were first set up there was a thought that they would be a state organization come down with a mandate on local areas state organization of the board supervisors and city councils objected to this and so it was changed to be an organization that's much more reflective of local conditions you have two supervisors two county supervisors two city council members a public member and Santa Cruz Lafgo has two special district representatives these are elected locally elected officials and they set local policies that conform to the state mandate so it is very much reflective of the local conditions so when we come to legal unification which is that next piece that Lafgo is involved in there is forming a totally new district there is which is discouraged with Lafgo because of the proliferation of districts out there consolidation of districts which does form the two districts coming together and consolidation do form a new district a reorganization is a combination of actions that are occurring within one application and annexation is a single action of property coming territory coming into an existing district oftentimes I've heard merger the C word is often consolidation word is often avoided in some areas and so they I hear them oftentimes using the term merger but actually merger is if there's a city involved so it really doesn't apply when you have two districts coming together now I emphasize in the report I have all the terms and conditions that's in the appendix and then I run through them in the report as well but I bring this up because it's extremely important to note that Lafgo has a considerable amount of authority to attach terms and conditions to an action that they've approved and it is in those terms and conditions when you look at the list of what can be addressed in the terms and conditions you realize that so many of the issues that come up can be addressed in this portion and the districts have the authority when they make application to Lafgo to include terms and conditions in there so that's where I want to really emphasize the fact that these kind of details can be worked out prior to the application now I'm moving on to the service review update and there again Commissioner Leopold explained both the sphere of influence and the service review these are the factors that are considered when reviewing the services provided by a local agency Lafgo's have the authority to either look at service, conduct a service review by area or by type of service and Santa Cruz Lafgo has looked at it by type of service so in this case of course fire service in the report I've broken down each one of these factors to be considered where and where they have been addressed within the report now sphere of influence there again you heard that's a probable physical boundary of an agency these are the determinations to be considered when updating the sphere of influence and as mentioned this of course is really looking at the public service portion of it this is the current sphere of influence for Actos La Silva and this is the current sphere of influence for Central Fire our findings once again as I mentioned are in the report and that neither district expressed any kind of interest in expanding their spheres and they definitely have the capacity to that's been addressed in the report the facilities and the capacity to be able to provide the service and also their need for future facilities therefore it is our recommendation now it's important to understand that any of our recommendations in the report come from our national experience and the research that we've done we have no authority to implement these recommendations that is up to the decision makers so what we have proposed is a combining of the two existing spheres for if there is a consolidation of the districts then to see this as the sphere of influence only 50 more slides to go only kidding so these there's like 19 or 20 recommendations in the study I'm only going to give you the highlights first of all obviously we believe that the two districts they're both successful products of previous consolidations and annexations anyway we're recommending jointly address the standards of coverage and crash plan recommendations that was an easy one standardized policies we've already seen that come out of the stakeholders mobile data terminal hardware we were doing the interviews was discovered that one agency has one does not and they're being ready to move forward it makes complete sense for that to be standardized we've already the facilities there needs to be facility improvement relocation and new station plan as we look at agencies and this is not that unusual some of the folks who remember Proposition 13 anyway what happened Proposition 13 is a lot of the agencies ended up stripping out the plans that were actually recommending in order to survive so as a result we all got into a habit of when we had a good year we would buy apparatus and then we had a series of bad meters and we didn't buy apparatus but we're recommending as we go back to the old way of doing things and develop those replacement plans and fund them address the administrative support needs you'll see multiple pages in the document about critical tasks fully staffed the truck company contract consolidated administrative functions there's a precursor note within the study we believe this is a good move much like the pilot programs going on in chair and chief officers consider implementation of the quick attack units I know it sounds a little foreign sometimes to the line personnel I personally had resistance to it after 30 days they wanted another one and initiate the laughable process bottom line you figured out the bottom line our recommendation we believe that forming a consolidated district is a viable option that's cost-effective and enhances services it's in the long term best interest when you look at those maps and you think about operating both the districts as one I mean we're all here for the interest of the community and service of the community in our opinion that's exactly what comes out of this consolidation and we recommend that you take this step to pursue it in the document is a draft implementation plan in case anybody thinks this is an overnight process take a look at the draft implementation plan in the event at some point officials decide to move forward there's a lot of work still to be done and with that on for their presentation it was a long presentation not as long as I thought so congratulations and there was a lot of information there's a lot more information in the report and for those who are interested I suggest that you take a look at it we are going to ask questions as I said earlier there are many actions on this this evening we wanted to hear the presentation not to do a joint presentation so we could hear each other's questions from the consultants so I'm going to first look to our lack of commissioners and see if there are any questions that our members have the central fire district and see if there's any questions you have about the presentation just questions right now so now to the Atlas-Lisselva board are there questions that people have about the presentation if we could get the underlying data for the travel times analysis that's done in this report I know you said that you plug in things like hills, curves and so on but I know that there's got to be some data about the engine speeds engine travel times on San Andreas Road, Freedom Boulevard so don't try it I would like to be able to see those for our board computer program uses as opposed to speed limits other questions from Atlas-Lisselva there will be times at the end to make comments about all this but I will also want to see if there are members of a public who have questions Mr. Boston, do you have a question? No well then we'll ask to see whether members of the public have questions that they want to ask about today's presentation I have a microphone to get down there you're welcome to share your views about whether you think this is a good idea or a bad idea and take a look at it but I want to encourage you to think about questions that came up for you in regards to this report because we have the consultants here there will be time and each of you boards and if it ever made it to Lafko to express what you want to happen with this but this is an opportunity to ask questions of the consultants who put together this report are there questions? there's going to be microphones on each side so if you just raise your hand they'll come find you good evening thank you for the good presentation my name is Becky Steinburner I live in rural Aptos in an area that is served by Aptos-Lisselva on the first attack some questions that I had mentioned that the peak service times vary between the two districts so I wondered if those differing peak service times were considered in the possible hours for the quick attack stations and if it would be possible to have those same personnel serve those two quick attacks and to still be able to accommodate the increased service needs of those peak times for the different areas I also had a question about the recommendation to demolish I guess or abandon stations 3 and 4 in the Central Fire District when it looks like that is really the busy area for Central Fire District and if in doing so and just putting in one major station and a quick attack that would really provide the level of service that the very busy area of Central would need I also had a question about if this study has taken into account the county's plans for dense infill development and increased heights of buildings and if those plans if you were talking about the county planning department and certainly MBAC and some of those agencies that are driving the bus for what the development picture might look like in our future and also anticipated water needs thank you Do your best answer and if it doesn't all get answered we can deal with it and the rest of the board peak hour units were recommending the pilot I think the question was could that one unit be floated on those different days and hours not my decision to make however I did recommend the pilot program and during the pilot program if you take a look at the data that's in there as far as peak hours double check with the current data I believe running the pilot in that pattern will possibly work as a pilot I understand pilot recommending consideration to be given with staff with overtime to prove whether or not the theory will work 3 and 4 so as we look at the mapping and the street layout moving a station especially a station 3 and 3 miles or so about cost 1 and actually I believe if you were able to lift the crew out of the congestion and looking at the way the streets are laid out you're not going to have that much time in response times I know there's been a lot of discussion about taking you out of the busiest area but stop and think about this I showed you all the call concurrency the question is how many times does that unit even available in all the calls units are coming in from other areas I'm willing to run 2 or 3 models not a full station or location study but 2 or 3 models to prove whether or not some of the ideas and the locations that I know the chiefs have been talking about will enhance service or not the bottom line is those stations, something has to be done with them it won't come with an expansion county planning I don't have an answer for that it is a component of the analysis and I believe what we've found in all the studies is objective growth is actually minimal that's the best I could do there's a question over here 2 questions 2 questions Craig Chatterton Craig Chatterton I'm from the Aptos Larkin Valley area 2 questions, number 1 are the relocation costs the cost associated with the relocation recommendations including someone in the report I don't think I saw them there I see them mentioned today I'd like to know what those would be and how that might affect future planning secondly you didn't say much about this but apparently there's an assumption that the call numbers will increase over time and I'm wondering if there's something you could say about that specifically but I understand that perhaps improved construction mechanisms that actually fires are maybe less prevalent and is that need to go up to fires and the other things that are causing those calls what drives that increased call cost relocation costs were not included we were not asked to do that analysis we talked about it a little bit and costs of building fire stations particularly in an area where we have hard time finding land that is not cheap in the event the annuals recommendations were embraced then obviously part of the implementation plan and planning process would identify what those costs might be and where they may come from call increases on average in this day and age in the west particularly in California the fire department responds to roughly 2-4% of the cost there's another makeup and all that the chiefs address it that is not the only thing that drives the call increases call increases are driven by age by density by tourism by the associated risk of having the type of responses that are covered here and so when we look at them in total what increases are you're going to see increases in medical aids you're going to see increases in water rescues you're going to see increases in help by thong and can't get ups we call those others and I'd like to defer to the chiefs to give you the full break and as Kurt mentioned it's not just about fighting fires anymore we are very heavily engaged with EMS from the advanced life support side of the house which is our car management for both of our agencies we do numerous open water rescues in the ocean that seems to kind of be the normal day-to-day activity for us we're doing vehicle accidents constantly it doesn't matter if it's on highway water or surface streets the pickup and put backs as Kurt mentioned are the other type of calls are a daily event for both of our agencies so the fires are less and that's based upon our fire marshal for both districts our prevention bureaus, our community risk reduction attitude so even though we're still a fire service and we do respond to fires every time the harm goes off those are not our number one call right now for the fire department response another question for anyone here raise your hands I don't have a question but I do have a statement and I'm going to command the act plus the fire board and the simple fire board for having the guts to stand up and finally start talking to each other I've been in the fire service affiliated with the fire service for 49 years and when I first started we had 21 fire districts in San Francisco the county was in the state and we had 21 we're down to 13 now and we don't want to command both the board members and the team for our chiefs we're finally standing up and having the guts to start talking to each other thank you other questions Ms. Simon before you guys I just wanted to ask anybody else who has the chance to ask a question I'll give you a second but let's get this gentleman right here usually when you let one stop at the mic we had a low number of questions I'll ask you to ask a brief question but let's see if somebody has a chance thank you my name is T.J. Welch and first I want to thank Lafko both for works and fire chiefs and the labor groups for making this step because it's a I think it's an essential step and it's a long overdue obviously I'm pro consolidation but maybe not for the reasons of my concerns in a way of question here is the financial statements that was mentioned which is why I'm pro consolidation but not so much to save the money necessarily but to see that might put back into the fire service so we can meet a standard and frankly I was pretty disappointed in the standards of coverage studies that came out for both that cause and central I think they missed the mark and missed the mark because they went for a standard that is something that is I guess within reason that the fire service is looking at today but we in San Cruz County fall way short of meeting national standards in a piece 1710 so my question would be and this maybe is more for the boards than it is for the chiefs than it is for ESCI how are we looking at ways to reinvest the savings to maybe get closer to NFPA 17 stands and get the appropriate timestamps out there we have some great firefighters in this area I know many of them talked with many of them and kind of worked in the area we have great firefighters it's not the problem about the members that we have we have two chiefs now who are willing to work together and they're showing the ways that they can put together for training prevention at the time she's working together now those are all great moves to be more effective and efficient but we still fall way short of that standard so are we looking at how we get closer to NFPA standards with that funding TGI I just want to we're trying to focus on the study and you're talking about another study that we need to present this is my concern the study shows the savings the gentleman that just said next to me is the assistant to the city manager Capitola of Woodward Reside right now he's going to the city manager I'm sure saying hey there's going to be the savings I guess my concern in the study is if it shows the savings but in reality I don't want to be I don't want people to be misled because I really think that the study should show that we could and I'll be honest the QRV is something I'm not real warm to but I guess I'll leave that to the extras but if that's a standard then how do we get closer to meeting a bigger picture with the savings I just don't want to end it with we have a savings here briefly from the fire district board this is a little off the topic and I just want to also say that there's a lot of it for us to move forward on this so for the district to move forward on this there's going to be a lot more discussions a lot more deeper dive then we'll get here this evening but I'm not sure if Mr. Miller you want to say anything I don't know TJ we go back away but in my opinion this is that's actually what this part of the study is all about on each right now there's two boards and each of those boards one of the biggest things we do is how do we spend your money to give you the best possible service we can get and we have to break it down accordingly on what you saw in the part study benefits for employees but again apparatus housing of our personnel that all comes into play this is another option that is being looked at that could improve the service and I think that's what both boards want to see the bottom line does this improve the service to the folks we serve there'll be if we go down this road and you can solve it there'll be a brand new board that will have those decisions to make when they're savings on where those savings go whether it's a combined new station spending whether it's for personnel costs or putting new folks on the line or in Atlanta who knows but that'll be for a new board but this study is part of that resolution thank you other questions that people have I'm just looking to see if anybody has a chance to ask a question I said we're not here Brian with the Central Fire the one question I do is were you able to identify in the course of your study any similar or like special districts in the Greater Bay Area to offer a best practices example of an administrative structure in order to help validate the proposed merge structure that you have in your study the simple answer is no and that was not part of the scope of work nor the RFP the more complex answer it goes back to what I said earlier and that's the review of the two studies that have previously been done the interviews with the chiefs of the organization for reference to time and the fact that the fire districts in the past and when you take a look at the duties and when you take a look actually you take a look at the city gate study the the organization at Central is building is very similar to what they recommended so we were not asked to compare it with anybody else I'm sure there's comparisons out there I would be honest with you most districts in this day and age have pretty much stripped their admin down as far as they can through the recession to keep crews on the ground so now many are now just now starting to rebuild their administrative functions very, very cautiously because you never know when the next recessions are up Other questions I'll let Ms. Simoner have a second bite of the apple if you'd brief who will only ask four questions Thank you very much thank you Simoner again and thank you for all of your notions I had it here but I didn't read I had a question and want some clarification about moving the ladder truck to Casa Salvo Fire Station 1 does that mean there would have to be additional facilities built at AP1 to house a truck of this size I don't know if the current one could and on my second question is would this consolidation of whatever if it goes forward whatever form include someone that would be I was happy to see a full time training officer would there also be would that include training staff for a successor responsibilities so that when a division chief leaves there are people that have been trained to move up through the ranks in house and I guess I've got a third question what about a permanent in house plan checker that reviews building permit applications and is there a familiar with the area and problems rather than putting them out to contract as that Casa Salvo permit does now Thank you, I'm done Alright, let's reflect that I have a second question and you broke the rules but I'll take the second one I'll refer to the chiefs on the first one in review in the very refreshing by the way when I saw this recommendation and these concerns in the city because this is an area has been very very weak and ignored in the fire service and that's the succession plan and we fully believe with the retirement taking place that succession planning should be the next step once the organization gets all these I'm going to try to study the job however I do those so and for all those reasons we recommend there's cross training staff with the admin staff we recommend that succession plans start taking place in the event that you don't lose the institutional memory every time somebody retires and I'll let the chiefs be able to take the first and the third of the three that was in two the latter the latter tried moving to station one that is something that we're looking into depending on the new latter kids here there's more to it than just whether the vehicle will fit inside the station the members of both ATOS and Central League to have discussion about where the dorms would be and other considerations like we talked about there's a lot more to it than just putting the vehicle into a station so there's a lot of discussion between the management labor administration and the board for that to occur I'll reiterate the succession plan right now I'm new to this area four months here I got to commend everybody here that's part of the community ATOS has sell the firefighters Central firefighters, the staff, the boards I come from an area where we don't have a lot of communication and collaboration and it's impressive so what we've done with the chief officers right now and working with labor is we're developing a plan to work not only internally but also externally with our neighbors to the north in central one of those things that we have done is we have a shared inspector service that we do share an inspector with them Chief Hall mentioned the community risk reduction model which is something I'm used to it provides a proactive approach to hopefully evaluate that data maybe we can reduce those numbers by understanding what we're going to and how we can reduce that risk but that might be something we use as a cost savings from what this study provides us there's a lot of opportunity here I think that's why one of the reasons the score pickings because I present is that we have a great relationship and I think both labor organizations and us are working together with our boards to support every opportunity including moving the ladder truck including succession plan and having a more robust community risk reduction model that has our own personnel there to provide the best level of protection not only for you as citizens but that level also protects our firefighters the less exposure I can give them to go into incidents the better job we're doing as board of directors and leaders thank you and take, bring back the microphones up here I'm going to ask each one of our boards to see whether they have some comments that they would like to make I'll look to my fellow commissioners on Lafko see if they want to make any comments thank you Supervisor Leopold I'd like to make a brief comment that you know Lafko this is not a Lafko driven process even though we recognize that there are there's the authority here this really is something that's in a significant amount of difference to these two districts this is something that the districts have brought to and requested as Supervisor Leopold mentioned at the onset and it's not something that Lafko is trying to impose or require it's really something that would be we're looking to the boards and the two districts to say what's best for your districts and how can we help facilitate what's best for your districts and I think that that's not necessarily how it plays out across the state as Leopold mentioned there's a remarkable amount of collaboration that's already gone on into this and a remarkable amount of collaboration in the fire service in this county in general Lafko is here to serve a facilitation role more than anything else just a few comments first of all I'm very pleased that this process is going through the report I believe is a very good start however there are a lot of things that the decision makers are going to have to deal with in terms of actually coming up with an implementation and I'd like to just tell a few things at least in my life after meeting this report which is a pretty massive thing that there are some questions of trying to figure out what's going to be the most great kind of point that's going to take real effort on the point of the fire boards and the firefighters that will be involved in this as well the first thing is that I don't think it's a surprise but the pensioner abilities are enormous issue we're talking about from the big report something like 50% of salaries will have to pay for going to benefits now that's a long amount and it still doesn't really say how long it takes to get out of the hole there and one thing that I did know was making that this report is that the actual area of people report the unreliability is a fraction of table more commonly it's not a fraction of the total actual actual reliability so I think it would be good that those members would be provided and I'm sure that the consultants have that and the second question for comment is trying to estimate the increase in calls now apparently Kurt mentioned that he has the data for the breakdown by different types of calls and I assume and I hope he has that historically because that would be pretty good evidence exactly where the calls are coming from and I think he's actually right there are a lot of car accidents and a lot of problems at the level of and he's right that people are getting older and so there's no risk for that sort of thing as well and so those types of and I think the similar question has to do with the time of day that the various calls are I'd be quite curious whether are there real accidents in a medical where maybe both are the ones that really occur during a particular time of day and I don't get the point in the report and it's kind of interesting it's a very broad distribution of that maximum basically it's only the very early hours of the morning that it's quiet but they're still like an 18-hour period and it's fairly substantial so there's going to be some more discussion again I admire the people that are going to do this work and I certainly think this report is a very good start thank you I wanted to commend the presenters for the report and all the work they completed I think it really provides a compelling picture about fire service in these districts and I also wanted to call out the gentleman in the second row of the media's comments about the leadership for the boards of these two fire districts on evaluating this the city of Santa Cruz recently went through a merger with the UCSC fire department and frankly there were some certainly negotiations challenges but I think it's if you were to speak to the firefighters there they feel that it has been moving in a really positive direction so I think it's good that we're having this discussion here I also want to just say that this is an opportunity when you look at the service delivery and the scope of influence it provides an opportunity for us to kind of see what type of service delivery is taking place and really evaluate how we're working with the UCSC as public agencies to better serve Santa Cruz County so I think that doing these types of reviews are really important for us moving forward and they provide really good context for our ability to serve the public in the best and highest possible way Lowell Hurst here Mayor Watson though I just want to say and commend all the folks in the audience here as well as the chiefs and the staff members here not everybody wants to talk about these difficult issues and everybody here is interested in that so commendations to all the brave and bold people in the room that are willing to take on this tough discussion I think one of the things that and I don't know if it's a question or just a statement that how do we access data, how do we filter that and find ways to generate predictive prevention and utilize technologies like auto vehicle locators and what's going to be new on the scene as far as technology and prevention and being there when things happen. Thank you Thank you all my fellow commissioners now I'll look to the Actos La Selva District to see if there's any comments from there Mr. Foster Thank you So just a couple of brief comments. One special thanks to our partners in this again ESCI, LAFCO and the Central Fire Protection District I think that as sort of been said by members of the public and other folks up here on stage that this is really an important step in a long process, a long discussion about looking at things in a different lens in these communities so I'm really probably part of it as I'm sure everybody up here on stage in the audience is too As I mentioned in my opening comments thank you all for being here thank you all for being engaged in this process we still have a long ways to go to look through these recommendations and the information that's in this report there'll be a lot more stuff that'll come up in conversations that will be had public meetings with both fire districts here in the coming months so I hope all of you will come on for the riot and bring more people as well too to engage in this and provide community feedback because really through the day what we're trying to do here is make sure that both districts are serving their communities as best they possibly can providing the highest level, highest service so again thank you all for being engaged and please remain engaged as we move on down the line with this, thank you. First of all I've felt for many years that the idea is 30 years ago about joining the different fire districts what's the right idea and it's still the right idea. It's going to take some time and surely I remember well when there were 21 fire districts and a friend of mine named Charlie we will also remember from the sheriff's office and I sat one night and tried to figure out how to cut down all the police departments and fire departments and after all the martinis that we drank trying to figure that out I don't think we got our path right but the idea has been percolating for years and we still joke about that from 40 years ago. I think the elephant in the room point number two, the elephant in the room is the parody of bargaining units if you read the report in depth it talks about the potential and again these are ideas to talk about not something to get angry about but right now it talks about the potential of wiring or freezing compensation of the act also silver membership while the central membership catches up that is definitely going to be something that's going to be discussed and so people have to start thinking now about whether that's the way to do it or whether there are alternatives and the last thing I think looking ahead three years, four years, five years is the successive failure of unifying these agencies is probably going to be with the actos and silver part protection because when you look at the response times and you look at the history of actos and silver you'll see that people are going to be very sensitive to the idea that they're going to be told that their prior partner is now going to be headquartered on 17th avenue and they'll ask well is a fire engine going to come faster than seven minutes to my area in seascape or through the boulevard or Larkin valley or am I still going to get a fire engine in seven minutes but my government will be on 17th avenue and I think that's going to be the big question that's going to make or break this deal and so I think it's a mistake to not present a plan it's a future structure not just a future governing structure but an actual future structure of where the fire stations would be where the people would be the membership would be and what the response times would be because you're not going to sell it to actos and silver if you tell them that they get a seven minute response time and we're going to change the name of the doors so I would hope that going forward there would be much more granularity much more detail in the plan and one of those things would be even the name of the agency right now it's titled the mid-county fire agencies which again it's just a title for talking about agencies that are generally speaking in the mid-county but if you've ever had the pleasure of listening to the historians of Carrillo College like Sandy Leibnir they will tell you that South County begins at the actos creek bridge and that's about halfway to the actos and silver fire protection district and so when you start talking about oh boy we're going to be central you just told half the actos and silver district that they're going to be re-designated geographically again, politically something to think about in the future about how you sell it to the people I work with now I'll look to our members of the central fire district Mr. Miller if you or any of the other members want to make any final comments again I just thank all the partners who are here I don't have to repeat them all again so you don't have to shorten this as much as possible this is an opportunity we needed a starting point I've been a part of successful mergers there's been studies about this merger before and we haven't gone for you just heard a number of issues that are going to be out there what I've seen is mergers have fell because they've been rushed or they've had set dates to get things done by we have a lot of questions that answer this study is going to help us get started and the important thing that I think is different in the past is that we have two boards that are interested in it we have the firefighters from both unions interested in it we have management groups that are interested in it so we have a real opportunity so I think we need to exhaust this to make sure that we don't miss an opportunity here to move forward and give a better service to the folks that rely on us for our response times for the personnel we send them so again patience, be a part of the process we'd love to hear from you our meetings are moving to 2 o'clock in the afternoon for Central Fire District just in case you haven't heard that second Tuesday of the month so we'd love to hear from you in September if you are able to make our meeting but again thank you for being here tonight first of all I want to purpose my comments by pointing out something that I see a lot of professional firefighters in the audience I see a lot of people that are related to the fire service in some way indirectly and I want to purpose these comments who is the general citizenry that are here today to share something with you that I think is the biggest takeaway from this report and that is when Kirk talked about response times effective response forces and response liability and even some numbers on 4 minute travel time and 8 minute travel time etc etc what he was talking about is this national standard from the National Fire Protection Association and currently neither agency meets that standard my hope is that through some kind of staffing file and through the work of all these individuals we can reach that outcome and what that outcome means to you the citizens is that a better outcome in regards to EMS response and also to fire response in all emergencies and I think that's the biggest takeaway to take out of this for me personally is we really have an opportunity for the citizens of both Abtos, La Selva and Central Fire Protection District and finally I want to share with you as far as taking action I think probably most of you are heard or know but we know the devastating fires that occurred in Napa recently the County Board of Supervisors about 2 weeks ago are now approved to consolidation of 39 Fire Department Sinsome County they're taking action to make a difference with that County and I think that I hope that we can do it here in Santa Cruz County First of all, thanks for being here it's good to take your input to make this happen I was really excited about this today and I want what's best for our citizens and a lot of people on the line not coming out for safety I want just what's best for us I'm looking forward to actually working to see when we get this together Thank you to all the members of both Fire District and the Commission thank you all for being here this evening it takes a lot of work to put together a report like this but it takes real leadership to give guidance about what that should look like these two boards have shown real leadership to say let's ask some tough questions let's pay for some good information let's have a meaningful discussion I'm glad that LAFCO is able to participate fully in this and I also want to recognize Pat McCormack our long-serving Executive Officer of Santa Cruz LAFCO his many years of experience have helped us create a good scope for this report and helped us provide information so thank you Pat for all your work I also want to express my appreciation to the Fire Chiefs Chief Hall and Chief Lowe who are here tonight Chief Lowe's predecessors in terms of Fire Chiefs have also been instrumental in providing information making people accessible having a staff to be available to use with the consultants you've wrote up your shirt sleeves to help make this happen so thank you very much I also want to express my appreciation to our firefighters not only for what you do every day but for your leadership in wanting us to take a look at these very difficult questions you've shown real leadership in saying we should be asking this and we should get some answers and you will also play an incredibly important role as to whether this would actually happen for the reasons mentioned here earlier and I think that you could have a major role in deciding whether these two districts are solidate, reorganize or shared services or whatever the future might be it will depend in a large part on how our two, all of our firefighting units work together now would be a time for us to for our left field commission to do the one action we have tonight which is to accept this study is there a motion motion by Taraz seconded by a friend all in favor signify by saying aye any opposed, motion carries unanimously in order to make tonight happen there are a lot of things that need to happen there's we are here at Sampler Hall, Cabrio in part because of all of you you all voted for Cabrio Bond back in 2004 that allowed us to build this wonderful facility so thank you very much for your foresight and leadership in ensuring that we have facilities like this in our community I also want to recognize two key members of the Cabrio family that are here tonight one, the president of the college Matthew Westing is here welcome Matthew and long-serving member of the board of trustees I have the pleasure of serving with him for eight years, Al Smith served for 24 years our consultants also did a great job and I appreciate the presentation Dawn and Kurt and your colleague in Texas you gave us a very thorough report, a lot to think about I'm sure there will be more questions that come up and we'll call on you to figure out why you said what you said or why you gave us the information that you did you all showed that to the community by taking time out of your busy schedule to be here tonight so I want to thank the members of the public who are here and participating in this discussion one more person from Cabrio to thank is Poco Marshall who is the performing arts complex coordinator he helps make sure that the lights turn on these microphone works and this entire evening was filmed by community TV Victor Herman and Lynn Dutton have been doing a great job and we'll look forward to seeing how well you did when we watch it on TV sometime soon I want to thank everyone for being here tonight I look forward to this continued conversation and a leadership from all three of these organizations thank you and good night