Whether it's $250,000 or $400,000, it's still more money than most Californians will ever make in a year, and that's exactly the range of the deficit that the Half Moon Bay Fire Protection District is facing this coming fiscal year.
On top of that, the Point Montara Fire Protection District is expecting a shortfall of $148,000. However, for one reason or another, the PMFPD Board of Directors is much more concerned with those figures than their counterparts in Half Moon Bay.
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"If we're going to be together, we're going to be together. Let's work on this together," he said, referring to ongoing discussions to merge the two districts into one. "This is about fiscal responsibility and the time is now."
MacKimmie said the biggest cost that can be avoided is having firefighter/paramedics staffing the ambulances. By having just paramedics on the ambulances, the district would save more than $270,000 a year, his figures show. And if the district would reduce its administration by one chief, that would save $170,000, he added.
"There's no ifs, ands or buts, we have to tighten our belts on both sides of the district. We can't ride in the car with you if you're going to drive off Devil's Slide," MacKimmie said.
PMFPD Director Gary Riddell said, "We're looking at ways of trimming our costs. Some of these figures I'm not buying. We have to cut personnel. That's the only other option we have to cut these budget deficits." He added, "Where we look at to cut costs is the management because that's the fat, not the meat."
PMFPD Director Ginny McShane said, "So far the decisions being made in Half Moon Bay haven't been very good ones. We are probably your savior at this time."
She referred to a section in the contract between the two districts that states that during disputes, the PMFPD would pay the Consumer Price Index increase to last year's budget until these issues are resolved. "We haven't accomplished that much. These meetings cost money. We've asked Half Moon Bay for figures and deliberation in the past," yet,
she said, "we haven't made
that much progress on the budget."
HMBFPD Director Dave Eufusia fired back: "To say that you're supporting us is as flawed as saying that we're supporting you." Referring to MacKimmie he added, "I couldn't agree more that we should be in this together. I'm open to your ideas. Some of them hold a lot of weight," however, "my last option is to reduce people on the line."
Riddell reiterated that PMFPD will be eliminating a position at its next board meeting. "We can only react to what your board decides," he told the HMBFPD board. "We're going to have some hard choices to make this year. One of the problems with the contract, from our perspective, is we're always reactive, we can never be proactive."
Tim Moran, president of the HMBFPD board, said, "This last year has been an extremely unusual year for this board, you know. Sick leave has been out of control - we have extreme legal bills."
Fire Chief Jim Asche said, "We've got a couple of tough years ahead and I think, again, if we can contain our costs for the next couple of years, there's no need for us to
panic."
Moran added, "One thing we don't want to do is reduce services if we can avoid that. I don't want to see either district reduce services just to save a few dollars."
El Granada resident Leonard Woren said, "When your costs are going up and your revenues are flat, you've got a problem. If you don't solve the problem you're going to crash and burn." He added that proceeding down the road to consolidation without identifying savings makes no sense. "You have not identified one cent of savings from consolidation," he said.
Asche was admittedly taken off guard by MacKimmie's recommendations and took issue with some of his analysis and figures. First, he contested the figures that MacKimmie presented as the deficit amount. Asche says the deficit is closer to $275,000 and that fund balances from the previous fiscal year will reduce that amount to $39,000.
It's not clear what those fund balances are leftover from, but some critics fear it is from the weed abatement fund and other accounts that are being swept into the general fund. Nonetheless, MacKimmie said this is a typical tactic of Asche's. "Every time he's done this to us. They morph into a different number. I didn't make up that number, Jim Asche gave me that number."
In Asche's June 18 memorandum to the HMBFPD board, he wrote that the deficit was at $251,211, which would be recovered by the fund balance. Eufusia did some of his own math, and estimated the deficit closer to $400,000, MacKimmie said. And that's why he made recommendations for cutting costs close to that amount.
Asche said that taking firefighters off the ambulances would be a step backwards,
reducing the district's ability
to respond to complex events. He also thinks it would be a mistake to reduce a chief. "If you did a survey of any fire
district or department, we would be as lean as any," he said. "I would have a lot of concern about even considering that."
Regarding the hurdles to consolidation, Asche said, "The thing that's really lacking is the trust. There's a feeling that each side wants to take over the other. Both sides need to come into this thing with some open-mindedness."
He also thinks the budget isn't as serious a concern as others think. "It's not as bleak as some people would make it sound," he said.
Lane Lees, who has a pending lawsuit filed against the district claiming he was retaliated against and forced into early retirement, said, "In business, it's easier to identify poor management when you're short of funds, but it's never justifiable to have bad management practices just because you can afford it."
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