Sonoma County still mulling fire department changes
After years of discussions and hundreds of thousands of dollars in studies and time, Sonoma County’s 11 remaining volunteer fire companies - entrenched for decades as independent first responders in the county’s most rural pockets - will be absorbed, run by larger neighbors or combined into one fire district.
But not just yet.
And while regional groups of fire agencies continue pushing toward further consolidation and more seamless operations, that also remains in flux.
While all of this has been long sought by many of Sonoma County’s fire officials during four years of plodding toward improvements to the county’s outdated, uneven and underfunded fire services network of nearly 40 agencies, change remains several hurdles and a few years away.
Fewer fire agencies has been a trend in California as counties opt for streamlined administration and efficiencies. Sonoma County officials want the same, but have not identified where the money to revamp the system will come from, particularly in the aftermath of October’s firestorms.
“Fire is on top of everyone’s mind based on what we all went through as a community in October,” said west county Supervisor Lynda Hopkins, who is working with several fire agencies in her district toward collaboration. “Fire district and volunteer fire companies are our safety net and they stepped up hugely in October. Now is a good opportunity to have those conversations about being better and stronger and to ensure the services are available for years to come.”
During the October fires, the county’s volunteer and career firefighters fought together for weeks while de-emphasizing agency distinctions.
“Our efforts to work together prior to the fires also paid dividends in how well we were able to function together at a higher, more coordinated and effective level during the fires,” said Sonoma Valley Fire Chief Steve Akre.
The monumental firefighting effort helped ease much of what remained of longstanding agency turf wars. “Differences became petty” during the fires, said Jim Colangelo, interim director of Sonoma County Fire and Emergency Services which oversees the ?11 volunteer companies.
“Everybody came together and helped each other and realized we are all in this together,” he said. “We have pushed each other away for reasons that don’t make sense anymore.”
Galvanized by the firestorms, fire chiefs have fast-tracked plans for change. The 20-member Fire Services Advisory Council, set up by supervisors two years ago to shepherd the transition, approved a committee of six fire leaders to forge a proposal to meet Supervisor James Gore’s challenge for bold changes in exchange for county funding. The resulting proposal, still being refined, includes continuing regionalization of the volunteers companies, fire districts and city departments, adding staff to supplement volunteers in underserved areas, improving standards and more strategically locating stations.
In the plast two years, supervisors have approved about $4.5 million for countywide fire services, well short of the $11 million chiefs have called for annually to get agencies to uniform firefighting abilities. The new plan could seek more, chiefs said.
In the meantime, Gore has changed his message, saying a fire-exacerbated housing crisis and millions of dollars promised for county road repairs mean large sums of money aren’t available for firefighting. He has suggested chiefs champion a fire services ballot measure for a sales or property tax to create the funding they need.
Fire officials say they lack the time and expertise to launch a complicated ballot measure by next fall while working on a countywide fire fix. Instead, they decided to keep pushing their proposal to supervisors.
“I was gut punched. Supervisor Gore said ‘go out and raise your own money,’?” said Fred Peterson, a volunteer fire engineer and board member for Geyserville Fire Protection District, who also sits on the fire advisory council. “The county needs to make the hard decisions. That’s their job.”
In the midst of this seminal reorganization effort, there have been other fire-related developments, including the Fire Services Advisory Council recommending supervisors give $700,000 of already- approved county money to split evenly among seven firefighting regions for recruiting and retaining volunteers. A dwindling pool of volunteers has put more pressure on neighboring agencies, straining the system and slowing aid.
Additionally, the latest in a long line of taxpayer-funded studies analyzing the current fire services network flopped. The county has spent about $225,000 on three fire studies in four years, none of which significantly illuminated a way forward. The most recent, a $115,000 review by San Francisco-based Matrix Consulting Group, contained numerous mistakes and was never completed. Officials stoppedstopping payment at $86,000 and won’t seek reimbursement.
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