The last item on Tuesday’s Supervisors meeting consent calendar is a retroactive, five year, $4.2 million renewal of Mendo’s emergency dispatch services contract with CalFire.
REPEAT: That’s $4.2 million over five years on the consent calendar, meaning it's an automatic go, no discussion called for.
We’re not against it. We get our money's worth from Calfire.
But retroactive, big dollar contracts should not be on the consent calendar.
Besides, there’s some important neglected history to this particular contract.
In October of 2017 the Supervisors narrowly decided to retain CalFire as the operator of the County’s fire and emergency services dispatch center by a split 3-2 vote after having voted 3-1 to put the dispatch contract out to private bidders the week before.
The County gives hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to an unaccountable obscure Sonoma County agency called “Coastal Valleys Emergency Management Services for administrative oversight of Mendo’s emergency services. Unlike Calfire, we don’t get our money’s worth from them.
In 2017 they pushed for a dispatch privatization proposal until Supervisor Dan Gjerde got back from vacation and convinced temporary-fill-in Supervisor Georgeanne Croskey that putting Calfire’s local dispatch operation out to bid was a bad idea. So Croskey changed her earlier vote and joined Gjerde and McCowen in postponing the Dispatch privatization indefinitely.
After that re-vote the Board voted for the “Formation of an ad hoc committee to work with the City of Ukiah and possibly the City of Willits to form a unified approach for Emergency Medical Services (EMS) and Fire Dispatch Services; and to negotiate with CalFire for enhanced dispatch services that will optimize an Exclusive Operating Area ambulance contract.”
Supervisors Carre Brown and Dan Hamburg, after having voted against Calfire in 2017 for no other reason than the overpaid and underserviced Coastal Valleys EMS Agency had recommended it. They petulantly refused to volunteer to even be considered for the ad hoc committee which was supposed to consolidate dispatch services to save money for the County and the agencies involved.
Hamburg and Brown, citing a version of staff-(i.e., Coastal Valley EMS) right-or-wrong, steadfastly refused to reconsider — even when faced with a phalanx of local firefighters and cops who explained in detail why privatizing Dispatch was a very bad idea.
In explaining at that time why she had no interest in saving the County and the City of Ukiah some dispatch money by consolidation, Brown specifically referred to the prior week’s 3-2 vote to hold off on the Dispatch RFP, adding that she was sure Supervisor Hamburg felt the same way. “Thank you, Supervisor Brown,” replied Hamburg, indicating his solidarity with Brown’s nonsensical refusal.
Supervisors McCowen and Croskey were appointed to the dispatch consolidation ad hoc committee in 2017, but not until Brown and Hamburg had again reminded the other three Supes that they had no intention of participating in the “cooperative” manner they always talk about.
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Fast forward to January of 2019, right after Supervisor Ted Williams was seated to replace Hamburg as Fifth District Supervisor when the following item was quietly approved on the Consent Calendar:
“Approval of Formation of an Ad Hoc Committee Regarding Contracting for Dispatch Services for Fire and Emergency Medical Services and Appointment of Supervisors Williams and McCowen.”
The Board Clerk conveniently noted: “Previous Board/Board Committee Actions: On October 3, 2017 the Board appointed Supervisors Croskey and McCowen to an ad hoc committee regarding contracting for dispatch services; on December 18, 2018 the ad hoc was disbanded due to Supervisor Croskey’s impending departure from the Board.”
Supervisors McCowen and Croskey’s committee had produced nothing in 14 months before their ad hoc was unceremoniously disbanded when Supervisor Croskey up and moved to Ohio without having done a single thing in her short tenure after having been appointed to finish out Supervisor Tom Woodhouse’s similarly accomplishment-free term when he resigned for mental health reasons.
So the Dispatch consolidation committee re-established itself in 2019 with newly seated Supervisor Ted Williams replacing Croskey along with McCowen.
That committee also produced nothing. We have no idea if they even met because ad hoc committees are not subject to Brown Act meeting requirements.
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Introducing himself as “Tom Allman, private citizen,” former Sheriff Allman raised the subject again at a January 2020 Board meeting.
Allman patiently explained that Mendo has five overlapping 911 dispatch centers — the understaffed and underfunded Willits Police Department has one, the Ukiah Police Department (which, oddly, also handles Fort Bragg), the Sheriff's office for unincorporated calls, the Highway Patrol has its own, and Calfire. Nine people work in five dispatch centers in the middle of the night when few calls come in. Allman noted that there’s lots of money to be saved by “working with our other entities and having just two 911 centers — one for fire and ambulance, and one for law enforcement.” Allman pointed out that a consolidated dispatch operation could also operate as an emergency operations center during disasters.
Any other place but here consolidation would be a no-brainer; all they had to do was work out some details.
Newly elected Third District Supervisor and then Board Chair John Haschak replied to Allman as he and his colleagues often do with nothing more than: “Thank you.”
Ignoring Allman’s practical suggestion, the Supervisors rambled on aimlessly and at length about committees and meetings, and groups and ad hoc this and ad hoc that.
Supervisor Ted Williams seemed to vaguely agree with Allman but he thought the only way to solve it was to throw money at it.
“It's been nine years since the Fitch [inland Ambulance services] study. It's been nine years of Let's have meetings, let's get fire people in the room, let's get ambulance providers in the room, send it out to this committee or that and we haven't gotten anywhere. This situation is worse today than it was nine years ago. It may be that we have to get a group together, but I only want to do that if funding is a possibility. We need to get a group together to address creative solutions to the outlying areas. But if it's not backed by public money I don't see how we are going to make progress. We have gone through that exercise n-times. Why has there been no estimate of the cost, why are we still talking about this a decade later? Where is the breakdown?”
No one knew, probably because there are no mirrors in the Supervisors chambers.
This was followed by more talk about plans and committees and meetings and funding.
It was so lame and unfocused that AVA reporter Malcolm Macdonald was moved to try to light a fire under the Board.
Macdonald: “I live on a ranch where one side of my family has lived since the 1800s. If you break a leg or an ankle there you crawl up the hill to the nearest relative or friend or neighbor, you get in a car and drive to Willits and hope that Dr. Bolan or one of his proteges is on call that day. That's the reality in this county. If you are on the coast in the past you might see Dr. Lagomarsino. That's the reality of being in a rural area. I am hearing a lot of obfuscation here. You have an opportunity to do something. But you would rather form a committee to start a study to form an ad hoc to get some ‘stakeholders’ which may be real stakeholders maybe not. It ends up just being a runaround and runaround and the runaround and we are still here. … You have people here interested in your legacies. With this runaround you are going to abrogate your responsibility to public safety right now. It's already happened. You can't change the past. But if you are going to go down this ‘form a committee to form a something to form a something else’ — that's ridiculous! As I used his say to my students: catch a clue. They are flying by all the time. Maybe you have to do some piecemeal things. Maybe you need a countywide plan. But that may not be possible unless you want to wait for six or eight or ten more years and we are talking about supervisor Williams’s legacy. Catch a freakin’ clue! This has to happen in the here and now. You better set some dates and hear from people with experience in ambulances. Make them come up here and talk to you.”
Allman agreed: “This is a critical time. We are coming up on these summer months. Whatever you decide, I certainly suggest that you do a six-month quick fix while we talk about what kind of solution there is going to be. Whether it's MedStar or the Fort Bragg ambulance, let's get somebody who is going to commit to being up in the north quarter of the county as soon as possible. Then we can have a conversation about how we are going to solve the problem.”
Allman’s short-term, quick-fix/bandaid suggestion was ignored and the Board voted unanimously to ask Coastal Valleys EMS Mendocino coordinator Jen Banks to come up with a financial summary of the situation for further discussion at an upcoming meeting. Which she later did, albeit only partially, but only when the Board was handing out PG&E settlement money, a little of which went to County ambulance services. But it had nothing to do with dispatch services.
And the subject went away again.
No one followed up on Allman’s dispatch consolidation proposal where large amounts of money could be saved and dispatch efficiency enhanced, with saved funds perhaps re-allocated to underfunded and understaffed ambulance services.
A few days after that 2020 meeting, Supervisor Ted Williams posted this comment on the Fifth District facebook page:
“I ask you to watch the ambulance discussion from our Tuesday BoS meeting. It's long. What I submitted as a fifteen minute item consumed two hours. It began somewhat contentious, but in the end I was proud of the full board for engagement, asking critical questions and hearing varied messages from the field. More questions than answers, but with the board better aligned on the problems, I left confident that we're on the initial phase of identifying solutions. Years into an ambulance crisis, we don't have the core causes documented. That's about to change.”
Of course, not only did nothing change, but the subject hasn’t even come up again since then.
Now it’s April of 2022 and in all likelihood the subject will continue to be ignored. In fact, even the Calfire contract renewal itself has been ignored for nine months.
April 5, 2022. Consent Calendar Item 3aw: “Approval of Retroactive Agreement with California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) in an Amount not to Exceed $4,165,206 for Fire and Emergency Dispatch Services, Effective July 1, 2021 (our emphasis) through June 30, 2026; and Adoption of Resolution Authorizing Mendocino County to Enter into Agreement with Cal Fire to Provide Fire and Emergency Medical Dispatch Services.”
The $4.2 million Calfire contract expired in June of last year and is only now being put up for retroactive renewal on the consent calendar.
In all likelihood this item, like the ad hoc committee that was formed years ago, will not be discussed on Tuesday, and the prospect of saving millions and gaining substantial operational efficiencies will be tossed down Mendo’s expanding memory hole along the Board’s and the CEO’s long list of major failures and dropped opportunities.
In the last few weeks, we have pointed out a number of those major failures, such as:
Failure to deal with non-reimbursable mental health and drug-addled residents as Measure B called for.
Picking a pointless fight with the Sheriff over computer independence and liability for ordinary budget overruns.
Failure to enforce Measure V to reduce standing dead tree fire hazards, consigned to the County Counsel’s office two years ago and never mentioned again.
Failure to revise the pot ordinance after their latest use-permit proposal was withdrawn in the face of a pending local initiative, leaving the County and well-meaning applicants in permanent limbo.
Failure to plan or budget for their ill-considered consolidated Chief Financial Officer office despite voting it into existence with no plan or analysis.
Failure to convene their Public Safety Advisory Board despite its incorporation in County Code more than a year ago.
Failure to follow advisory Measure AG which was supposed to allocate the majority of pot tax revenues to Mental Health, Roads, Emergency Services and enforcement. In fact, nobody has even asked for a tally of those revenues for purposes of proper allocation.
We could go on and on.
But, as we learned at CEO Angelo’s teary send-off last month, the Board views criticisms of the CEO or themselves as “unfounded personal attacks.”
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GEORGE DORNER COMMENTED: Isn’t the use of ad hoc committees an end run around the requirements of the Brown Act?
Mark Scaramella replies: There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with ad hoc committees which can be useful in doing research and preparing white papers and recommendations on specific assignments. But in Mendo they’ve become a way to sidestep and dither on important issues. The Supervisors themselves don’t seem capable of focusing and preparing organized presentations or proposals.
Last year, for example, Supervisors Williams and Mulheren assigned themselves to an ad hoc committee to develop improved ways to report on mental health and substance abuse services. But that too has disappeared, despite Williams saying at the time that our suggestion of simply reporting how many release plans were written and how many didn’t relapse would be a good indicator. (Ms. Schraeder’s “data dashboards” are meaningless, out-of-context numbers which don’t provide any basis for evaluation and don’t track trends. The Kemper Report format was much better and could still be useful.)
At a minimum ad hoc committees should have specific instructions, have hard deadlines, and be required to report monthly on their meetings and status, including when they met, what they did, who attended and when they’ll be finished. But Mendo can’t even manage ordinary monthly department budget and status reports, so ad hoc overuse and abuse will probably continue.
PS. They also don’t follow their own “Rules of Procedure”:
“Rule 31. Ad Hoc Committees
Ad hoc committees may be formed by Chair directive or Board action and shall include prescribed duties and membership of the committee. Status reports from ad hoc committees shall be made to the Board at each regular meeting (our emphasis). Ad hoc committees are encouraged to conclude their business at the end of each calendar year but may be extended at the recommendation of the committee and approval of the Board. The Chief Executive Officer/Clerk of the Board will maintain a current index of ad hoc committees and their purpose.
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