Abbott gives presentation at CALAFCO conference

North County Fire Protection District fire Chief Steve Abbott was one of the panelists at a presentation during the California Association of Local Agency Formation Commissions’ fall conference at the Tenaya Lodge near Yosemite National Park.

Abbott was one of five panelists for the “LAFCO and Fire Protection Services: Synching Up Spheres, Boundaries, Contracts and Auto-Aid” presentation. The other panelists were Lakeside Fire Protection District fire Chief Don Butz, San Diego County LAFCO executive officer Keene Simonds, CALAFCO chair and Sacramento County LAFCO member Gay Jones and California Fire Chiefs Association president and city of South Lake Tahoe fire Chief Jeff Meston.

Approximately 200 people were in the audience.

“LAFCO’s position was: Look, we’ve got this need to address these independent districts which up and down the state some of them are struggling,’” Abbott said. “LAFCO has to play a role in trying to make sure these services are provided when and where the district can’t function.”

An independent special district has directors elected by the voters within that district. The governing body of a dependent special district is the county board of supervisors or in some cases a city council. A dependent district can have an advisory board of residents, although that advisory board is appointed by the governing body rather than elected by the residents.

Each county has a Local Agency Formation Commission which handles jurisdictional boundary changes including city incorporations, annexations, consolidations and detachments. CALAFCO consists of the 58 county LAFCO agencies. CALAFCO monitors legislation which affects local governments and considers recommendations on such legislation. CALAFCO also provides an opportunity for the county LAFCO agencies to utilize each other’s experience, and the state organization also provides training and advice benefits to its county members.

LAFCO approval is required for a jurisdictional consolidation but not for a joint powers agency between two or more districts or for other functional consolidations such as resource sharing agreements or mutual aid agreements.

For the fire service, including paramedic service, an automatic aid or dropped boundary agreement allows the closest resource regardless of jurisdiction to serve the emergency. A mutual aid agreement means that another agency will assist if additional resources are needed to combat a fire or address a mass casualty situation. A statewide mutual aid system was developed in 1950 and includes all counties, incorporated cities and fire protection districts.

Officially, the North County Fire Protection District has automatic aid agreements with U.S. Marine Corps Camp Pendleton, the city of Oceanside, the Vista Fire Protection District, which contracts with the city of Vista for fire protection and emergency medical services, and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection whose activities include a contract to provide fire protection and emergency medical services to the Deer Springs Fire Protection District resources.

Because the North County Fire Protection District does not share a border with the city of Escondido, the city of San Marcos, the San Marcos Fire Protection District or the Valley Center Fire Protection District, no formal automatic aid agreement exists although agencies will respond to calls in one of those areas if necessary.

“In a sense we’ve got automatic aid with every agency in North County,” Abbott said.

Abbott’s portion of the presentation addressed funding and other challenges and opportunities. The financial challenges include larger fires and a greater demand for mutual aid, the increase in service demand exceeding the increase in a fire agency's revenue growth, greater regulatory requirements including training and inspection mandates, fewer volunteer firefighters and health care industry changes including insufficient primary care and hospital overcrowding.

“Funding is an issue for the fire service across the state,” Abbott said.

The North County Fire Protection District has provided paramedic service since 1990. Initially the fire district responded to 70 calls per 1,000 residents. The current response rate is 110 calls per 1,000 residents.

“The fire service has seen a tremendous increase in call volume that’s disproportionate to their funding,” Abbott said.

Potential legislative solutions to the funding challenges, according to Abbott’s presentation, include a state constitutional amendment to reduce the threshold for a fire protection district to pass a property tax increase and distributing a portion of the half-cent sales tax authorized by the state’s voters in November 1993 to fire protection and emergency medical services. The tax is for public safety, but all of the tax revenue in San Diego County and in many other counties has been given to law enforcement. Other solutions include suspending the Education Revenue Augmentation Fund shift from special districts to school districts, which is a statewide developer impact fee, and integrated community paramedicine and mobile health programs.

Jurisdictional consolidations are one potential solution but do not solve the core funding issue, and the cost savings are typically limited to upper administration since the service required for the combined area does not change.

“The suggestion we gave to LAFCOs across the state is be marriage brokers but not marriage arrangers,” Abbott said. “Consolidation doesn’t necessarily always solve problems. Sometimes it creates unintended consequences and new problems.”

San Diego County’s most recent fire agency consolidation was finalized in fall 2018 when county Service Area No. 115, which provided fire protection and emergency medical service to the part of the former Santee Fire Protection District not included in the 1980 incorporation of the city of Santee, was dissolved with the Lakeside Fire Protection District annexing the northern area and the San Miguel Consolidated Fire Protection District expanding its boundary to include the southern portion.

CSA No. 115 was one of two county service areas providing fire protection and emergency medical service which were not consolidated into the San Diego County Regional Fire Authority in 2011; the other was CSA No. 107, which covered Elfin Forest and Harmony Grove and was more appropriately consolidated with the Rancho Santa Fe Fire Protection District than with the county agency serving more eastern parts of the county. De Luz was also part of the original SDCRFA.

The consolidation of CSA No. 107 with the Rancho Santa Fe district occurred in 2016. In 2008 LAFCO and the county board of supervisors created the San Diego County Regional Fire Authority by a phased approach; the original creation brought in territory not within the boundaries of a public agency but served by a volunteer fire department while the 2011 phase added five of the seven county service areas providing fire protection and emergency medical services. The third phase involved willing fire protection districts, and in 2015 LAFCO approved the consolidation of the Pine Valley Fire Protection District and the San Diego Rural Fire Protection District into the SDCRFA.

The Grossmont-Mount Helix and Spring Valley fire districts merged in 1988 to create the San Miguel Consolidated Fire Protection District, and in 1994 the Crest and Bostonia districts consolidated as the East County Fire Protection District. The East County Fire Protection District was absorbed into the San Miguel Consolidated Fire Protection District in 2008.

Before paramedic service was a standard function for fire departments the Lakeside, Santee and Bostonia fire protection districts formed county Service Area No. 69. Because paramedic service was provided by an entity covering three fire protection districts, CSA No. 69 provided automatic aid by sending paramedics from any fire agency to the call. The replacement of the Santee Fire Protection District with the city fire department and CSA No. 115 did not alter the boundaries of CSA No. 69, nor did the replacement of the Bostonia Fire Protection District with the East County Fire Protection District or the replacement of the East County district with the San Miguel District. The Lakeside and Santee districts signed an automatic aid agreement in 1977 which also resulted in Lakeside response into both the city and CSA No. 115 after the incorporation.

“They still manage automatic aid, but there are some challenges when the partners around them change,” Abbott said. “That can create some different arrangements when your automatic aid partners change.”

Automatic aid agreements rarely involve an equal number of responses by each agency, but in the case of North County Fire and U.S. Marine Base Camp Pendleton, the automatic aid agreement provides different resources.

“It’s a very good symbiotic relationship,” Abbott said.

Station 9, which is on the Naval Weapons Station, is most likely to provide automatic aid response to the North County Fire Protection District. The North County response to Camp Pendleton is most likely from Station 5 in Bonsall.

The North County district does not have a ladder engine, so Camp Pendleton may send that resource into Fallbrook or Bonsall.

“They provide that truck company to us,” Abbott said. “We are certainly willing to offer up our paramedic ambulance.”

Although the volume of mutual aid responses is not equal, the NCFPD assistance is often greater.

“We don’t commit resources nearly as frequently. When we assist it tends to be for a much larger part of there,” Abbott said.

Simonds invited Abbott and Butz to join the CALAFCO panel.