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NCFPD hears economic impact report with options to make up for Prop. A failure

Stephen J. Abbott, chief and CEO of the North County Fire Protection District, presented NCFPD board members with a presentation, an economic report and varying ways the district could recoup funding potentially lost by the failure of Proposition A in November 2019.

“When Prop. A failed, we had mentioned a variety of other means of exploring alternative revenue sources, which of course are potential consequences of Prop. A failure,” Abbott told the board during its Tuesday, July 28, telephonic meeting. “And then those included things like increased rates on various service charges and perhaps implementing new fees as well.”

Abbott said the district used California State University San Marcos to canvas various departments around the country to come up with solutions that the district could consider going forward.

“What they did is they looked at our current practices and ways that you can potentially augment those, as well as new ways that we have not currently implemented to be considered,” Abbott said.

While Abbott didn’t go through the entire 63-page report, he touched on a few of the key options.

One involved potentially charging market rates for transportation across the county.

“The reason for that is that unlike other systems that may have a third-party provider, we don’t charge for first response, which is a component of our delivery service,” Abbott said. “And in fact, in other systems that have a third-party provider, there’s actually a fee to reimburse those fire departments for the first response services. That’s currently not something that we have taken advantage of.

“One recommendation is that we look at our ambulance rates or the regional average, which is typically updated in the fall, and then adjust accordingly. I will say that could be rather substantial increases in rates. However, that would be consistent with the regional average,” he said.

One of the board members asked if there was a limit to what the district could charge, and Abbott answered that there is only a limit to what the district would be reimbursed for.

“Statutorily, it pertains to our ability to collect a reasonable fee that doesn’t exceed the total cost of doing business,” he said. “But again, that’s why when you look at bond services and facility depreciation to costs, which we’re currently not capturing, that does provide some additional headroom for us to adjust our rates justifiably.”

Abbott said a third-party billing firm determined that the district could expect to see approximately another $390,000 in receipts, adjustment to full market rates, if they went this route.

Board director John Van Doorn said he thinks the issue is a big one and warned that there are some political issues if the district raises the rates too much.

“I don’t want to make the decision today,” he said.

Abbott reiterated that no decision needed to be made during the meeting and added that the cost to the district would be little to none to implement raising fees.

“It’s not like we need more bodies to collect more revenue,” he said. “It’s simply adjusting our costs to fully capture our expenditures.”

Another suggestion made involved incident cost recovery.

“In investigating this, when we had adopted the updated cost recovery policy, it appears as though the board authorized staff to charge for an array of services,” Abbott said. “However, the direction from the board many years ago, the only to charge for the cost recovery associated with motor vehicle accidents. We could very easily adjust our arrangement with our collections agency and simply expand our cost recovery efforts to what has already been authorized by the board in the previous action. And especially with this, it would be when we start charging for hazardous materials, clean up vehicle fires and things of that nature.”

Another option Abbott touched upon from the report was false alarm filling.

“This is an option that the staff did support,” he said. “It is not something that we currently do. There is a financial component that you can see on Page 156, it’s roughly $9,000, which is not a huge chunk of money. However, a really important point is that this is time for our resources, particularly our headquarters, which is already rather busy as it is, and as much as most of our official occupancies. And for that matter, residential densities in the downtown area, it would help ameliorate a lot of false alarm calls, many of which are repeat offenders.”

The board also addressed consent events that involved reviewing and accepting the Emergency Service Overtime Tracking Report for the fourth quarter 2019-2020 which demonstrated that annual and sick leave expenditures for the quarter are decreased over the same quarter last year, with current overtime at 100.62% of budget.

They also reviewed and accepted the results of a customer satisfaction survey that reflected a 96% response of excellent, as well as the annual fleet services and training report.

In action items, the board reviewed and approved the sale of four surplus vehicles, established multiyear facilities and equipment plan for the fire mitigation fee program, and reviewed and approved the fixed charge special assessment for weed abatement to the county when deadlines are met.

They also reviewed and approved a resolution accepting a report on state-mandated inspections.

Jeff Pack can be reached by email at [email protected].

 

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