City gets $5.3 million gift horse

You shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, the old saying goes. But at their meeting Tuesday, Feb. 18, members of the Chico City Council not only peered into the horse’s mouth and counted its teeth, they examined the contents of its stomach and gave it a colonoscopy, as well.

Can’t be too careful, they seemed to be saying. Even a good horse can go lame.

And it was indeed a good horse: a $5.29 million two-year federal grant that would create 15 new positions in the city’s stretched-to-the-max Fire Department, generate $700,000 for the depleted general fund, and require that the city put up no matching dollars.

To the many firefighters in the audience and their supporters, it was a no-brainer: Take the money, and the city will be safer, they told the council.

Not so fast, council members said. Yes, it’s a bunch of money, but we have questions and doubt—many of them.

Some were concerned because they didn’t learn of the grant until recently and hadn’t had sufficient time to study it before the Feb. 24 acceptance deadline. They chided the department for the lack of communication while praising it for doing the hard work of obtaining the grant.

They also worried about a provision that disallows any layoffs in the department during the life of the grant. As Councilman Sean Morgan explained it, should the city need to make further budget cuts, it could be forced to cut police positions, something it doesn’t want to do. The possibility of obtaining a hardship waiver in that case struck some council members as unreliable.

Finally, they worried that the grant could have unanticipated ancillary costs to the city and that the temporarily hired personnel could come before the council in two years (or four, if the grant is extended) demanding to keep their jobs.

Chico received the Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response, or SAFER, grant specifically because the Federal Emergency Management Agency recognized that its Fire Department was grievously understaffed because of the recession. It’s the largest such grant any California city received this year and the eighth-largest in the nation, as Councilwoman Ann Schwab noted.

The award will allow the department to restore full service to two engine companies, Company 1 (downtown), which has been operating only half time, and Company 3 (airport), which has been mostly closed. Response times will improve and more of the city will be covered, explained Division Chief Bill Hack, who along with Interim Fire Chief Keith Carter and Division Chief Shane Lauderdale explained the grant to the council.

Hack sought to allay Morgan’s fears that the grant might put the city in a budgetary box by noting that it allows nongrant positions to be vacated by attrition. Some 17 department personnel are nearing retirement age, he noted.

A provision that allows the city to fill two of the 15 positions with current employees is a sweetener. It will save the city $700,000 during the two years of the grant—and more after that if the grant is renewed, as most are, Hack said.

Fifteen audience members spoke on the matter, and all supported approving the grant. Two of them, Mark Ristine and Andrea Zigan, noted that the quality of fire protection greatly affects the cost of homeowner’s insurance. The better the service, the lower the rate, they said.

John Kelso, head of the local firefighters’ union, pointed out that firefighters had worked hard to drum up support for the grant, even going so far as to canvass downtown businesses on their off hours. They’ll get no financial benefit, he said; they’re behind it because “they love Chico and remember the level of service we had in 2008,” before layoffs hit.

Ultimately, Vice Mayor Mark Sorensen, reprising the council’s concerns about the grant, moved to approve it on condition that the department agrees to limit overtime costs and that new hires be given written notice that their positions are temporary.

When the motion passed 6-1, applause broke out. The lone dissenter, Councilman Randall Stone, said he simply couldn’t vote to lock down the budget but wasn’t entirely unhappy to be on the losing side.