Second Station Closes in San Bernardino

SAN BERNARDINO -- A second of the city’s fire stations has been unstaffed since July 1 and will stay that way until new firefighters can begin responding to calls, a month or more from now.

The paramedics at Station 223, on Medical Center Drive at 21st Street, had previously been “browned out” — temporarily closed — because of staffing issues, but now is always unstaffed like Station 230, the fire station at Mill Street and Arrowhead Avenue that has been closed for budget reasons since October.

This time, says City Manager Allen Parker, it’s not that the city doesn’t want to spend the money to staff the station — it’s that too many firefighters have stopped working for the city and the remainder are stretched too thin.

“In my opinion, this is bordering on a crisis,” Parker said, adding that he thinks that at one point a shortage of firefighters had recently closed four stations at a single time.

Firefighters continue to respond to every fire, medical aid call or other emergency they’re called to, said acting Fire Chief Tom Hannemann.

“The guys are extremely hard-working, dedicated employees,” Hannemann said. “They strive to, day to day, provide the best service in the region. They’re going to continue to provide the best response.”

Response times remain slower than the industry standard, but the Fire Department is working toward that benchmark, he said.

The city has been actively recruiting new firefighters since February, but it’s a lengthy process, Hannemann said. There are now 14 firefighters ready to be hired, but once they start it will take another four-to-five weeks of city-specific training before they can begin responding to emergency calls.

That will make a big difference for a department that now has 20 vacant positions — 14 firefighter/paramedics, 5 engineers and a captain — on top of anyone gone on a particular day because of injuries, sick time or personal time off, he said.

In the meantime, some positions are being left unfilled when fire administrators consider it necessary, which the City Council voted to allow in October over the objections of the fire union.

That’s being felt mostly at station 223 because that’s what consultant Citygate Associates recommended after a thorough investigation of the Fire Department, he said.

But it’s unfair to always close one station — especially one that happens to be in a particularly poor, minority area of the city, charges Councilman John Valdivia.

“The Westside community always gets the impact of these lopsided discussions,” Valdivia said. “Let’s do rolling brownouts. I’m not advocating brownouts, but if (a station must be closed) let’s try it out in the districts of the council members who immediately cry, ‘Oh, these firemen make way too much.’”

The discussion of Station 223’s closure came during a discussion of raises for firefighters — collectively, more than $500,000 in base pay, overtime and related increases such as pension payments — that the City Council approved on only a 4-3 vote Monday night, despite City Attorney Gary Saenz warning that City Charter Section 186 required the salaries be raised to the average of 10 like-sized cities and expensive legal action would follow if the raises weren’t approved.

Council members Virginia Marquez, Fred Shorett and Jim Mulvihill said they were voting “no” in protest, because they oppose tying pay to cities that have far higher median incomes without allowing council discretion.

Including overtime and benefits, the city said in U.S. Bankruptcy Court last year that the average compensation for the city’s 40 top-paid firefighters $197,000 a year, the next 40 $166,000 and the next 40 $130,000.

But the firm that put together the city’s bankruptcy exit plan, Management Partners, also says that public safety is less compensated than their counterparts in surrounding areas, with compensation 8 to 10 percent below market level.

Station 223 is actually located in the ward represented by Johnson, but it has served Valdivia’s ward since Station 230 was closed in October.

The issue has become more drastic since the city lost funding July 1 of nine positions that in recent years had been funded by a grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency through FEMA’s Staffing for Adequate Fire & Emergency Response program.

“These positions were funded under a SAFER grant and were not funded in the 15/16 budget,” Hannemann said. “Therefore in order to stay within budget we have un-staffed (Station) 223 until we hear from FEMA regarding our 2014 SAFER application.”

Citing a lack of stability and a perceived lack of respect from city officials, firefighters have been leaving the city in record numbers this year. In May, when 10 had left for jobs with other agencies, that was more than the previous four years combined, and more than triple the average for 2005-2014.

Others now say they’re about to leave, although they haven’t officially given notice.

City officials are trying to contract out fire services, as part of a bankruptcy exit plan that counts on $7 million to $10 million in savings from the outsourcing move. Parker said he will present a recommendation on July 20 that the City Council move forward with outsourcing either to the San Bernardino County Fire Department or a private firm called Centerra.

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