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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2007/12/05 - Minutes - SpecialDecember 5, 2007 CITY OF RANCHO CUCAMONGA REDEVELOPMENT AGENCY/FIRE PROTECTION DISTRICT/CITY COUNCIL MINUTES SPECIAL MEETING A. CALL TO ORDER A special meeting of the Rancho Cucamonga Redevelopment Agency/Fire Protection DistricUCity Council was held on Wednesday, December 5, 2007, in the Council Chambers at the Civic Center located at 10500 Civic Center Drive, Rancho Cucamonga, California. Chairman/PresidenUMayor Donald J. Kurth, M.D. called the meeting to order at 3:05 p.m. Present were Agencymembers/Boardmembers/Councilmembers: Rex Gutierrez, L. Dennis Michael, Sam Spagnolo, Vice ChairmanNice PresidenUMayor Pro Tem Diane Williams (arrived at 3:11 p.m.) and Chairman/President/Mayor Donald J. Kurth, M.D. Also present were: Jack Lam, Executive Director/City Manager; Pamela Easter, Assistant City Manager; James Markman, Legal Counsel/City Attorney; Fabian Villenas, Principal Management Analyst; John Gillison, Deputy City Manager/Administrative Services; Charles Scott, Sr. Information Services Specialist; Mahdi Aluzri, Deputy City Manager/Community Development; Trang Huynh, Building Official; Deborah Clark, Library Director; Lieutenant Bill Lenew, Rancho Cucamonga Police Department; Chief Peter Bryan, Deputy Chief Mike Bell, Deputy Chief Mark Hartwig, Battalion Chief Don Cloughesy, Fire Marshall Rob Ball, Management Analyst II Pamela Pane, Management Analyst II Emergency Preparedness Breanna Medina, Fire Prevention Specialist I Shane Adams, Rancho Cucamonga Fire Protection District; Kathryn L. Scott, Assistant City Clerk; and Debra J. Adams, Assistant Secretary/Secretary/City Clerk. B. PUBLIC COMMUNICATIONS 81. Dennis Cisneros, Vice President of the Fire Safe Council, stated for the last four years they have been volunteering their service with regards to fire safety for the City of Rancho Cucamonga. He hoped wild fires will not start again. C. ITEM(S) OF BUSINESS C1. UPDATE ON FIRE CALL TRIAGE AND PRIORITIZATION PROJECT The item was introduced by Chief Peter Bryan stating call triage and prioritization started being looked at in 2000. He stated staff is committed to making this come to fruition. He stated they have been working on the Call Protocol Implementation Project with the City of Ontario. Vice Chairman/Vice PresidenUMayor Pro Tem Williams arrived at 3:11 p.m. A power point presentation was given by Mark Hartwig, Deputy Chief, which is on file in the City Clerk's office. Agencymember/Boardmember/Councilmember Gutierrez asked if all the calls that come in are from 911. Special Redevelopment Agency/Fire Protection District/City Council Meeting December 5, 2007 Page 2 Deputy Chief Hartwig stated people can call the front office for non-emergency matters, but that all emergency calls come from 911. He stated at times, people have called the front office and they were directed to call 911. Agencymember/Boardmember/Councilmember Gutierrez asked if the two people in the ambulances are paramedics or EMT's. Deputy Chief Hartwig stated in order for them to meet their contract obligations with the local EMS agency they are required for 911 calls to have one paramedic and the other person on the ambulance would be an EMT. Vice ChairmanNice PresidenVMayor Pro Tem Williams asked if at some point the ambulance could be included in the triage prioritization. Deputy Chief Hartwig stated through this system everyone will be more prepared to handle calls with all resources involved. Vice ChairmanNice President/Mayor Pro Tem Williams hoped that the ambulances could handle more of these calls without tying up an engine. Deputy Chief Hartwig stated the call that is received would have to be very specific to eliminate the engine. He stated the key is to get the correct equipment resources to the scene to handle the call. Deputy Chief Bell reported how a call is routed once it comes in through 911, i.e., through Ontario Dispatch and then through AMR and the Fire District. Agencymember/Boardmember/Councilmember Gutierrez asked the difference between an EMT and a paramedic. Deputy Chief Hartwig stated an EMT can provide basic life support skill, splinting, and bandaging. He stated a paramedic would be advanced life support like defibrillation, IV skills, medication administration, etc. He stated they can also alert a hospital to the extent of what is happening with the patient. Agencymember/Boardmember/Councilmember Gutierrez asked what type of emergency training the police officers have, if any. Lieutenant Lenew stated they all have basic first aid and possibly a little EMT training, but no life support training. Agencymember/Boardmember/Councilmember Gutierrez asked why the Police Department's response time is so much quicker than the Fire Department's. Lieutenant Lenew stated part of it is because of the number of units they have in the field and when a call comes in the closest unit responds. The clock stops and that is considered the response time. Agencymember/Boardmember/Councilmember Gutierrez asked if an officer can perform CPR. Lieutenant Lenew stated yes. Agencymember/Boardmember/Councilmember Gutierrez asked why the Police always get their before Fire. Lieutenant Lenew stated usually Fire is there first because of how the call is dispatched. He stated on traffic collisions they usually get there at the same time. Jack Lam, Executive Director/City Manager, stated the Police Department has been able to meet the 5 minute response time because of the number of personnel they have. Special Redevelopment Agency/Fire Protection District/City Council Meeting December 5, 2007 Page 3 Vice Chairman/Vice President/Mayor Pro Tem Williams asked how all the response times are logged in Lieutenant Lenew stated each agency that responds has separate response times and provided more detail about this process. Agencymember/Boardmember/Councilmember Michael asked once we have a call triage program would there be calls where only AMR, Fire or someone else might go to a call. Deputy Chief Hartwig stated that will be a policy decision of the Fire Board. Agencymember/Boardmember/Councilmember Michael asked if this will be part of the budget process as far as the cost and implementation of this program. Jack Lam, Executive Director/City Manager, stated at the end of the fiscal year we will hopefully know where Ontario and the County stand and what the cost will be. He stated even though San Bernardino has a system in place, they have their own challenges. He stated we need to find out what our own cost will be to implement this, which we do not know at this time. He stated the information will come back to the Council to decide. Chairman/President/Mayor Kurth asked about the dispatching of ambulances and how this is done. He asked why there are so many fire personnel standing around when an ambulance is needed. Deputy Chief Bell stated he has never stood around on a call and he has always helped out in any way he could. He stated they are there to help the citizen however they can. He stated it is always a team approach with everyone who responds. Chairman/President/Mayor Kurth asked how we handled calls before 1996 before we had a paramedic program. Deputy Chief Bell stated we had more people die because we did not have the paramedics to take care of them. Deputy Chief Hartwig stated that Chief Michael, prior to his tenure on the City Council, was instrumental in getting performance based contracts for the County of San Bernardino. He stated it used to be that there was very little oversight, but through Chief Michael's involvement with the Emergency Medical Care Committee, the performance based standards for ambulance companies were established. He stated the Council can be assured that staff will be very active and vocal with the RFP that is put out for ambulance services. Jack Lam, City Manager, stated it is the Council's decision as to what level of paramedic service they want for the City. Deputy Chief Hartwig talked about how our Fire District personnel are trained and how efficient they are with a small number of personnel. Agencymember/Boardmember/Councilmember Gutierrez felt we need the best service possible, the best response time, etc. He felt we do need to be efficient because of the number of people we have in the City. He stated he did agree with triage prioritization. He felt we need global positioning to know where to put our resources. He asked how a fireman gets back to the station if they ride over to the hospital with the ambulance. Deputy Chief Bell stated we do send an engine over to pick them up and that is the fastest way to get the engine back in service. Agencymember/Boardmember/Councilmember Gutierrez stated he wasn't sure this is the most efficient way. He asked what is considered a "call." Special Redevelopment Agency/Fire Protection District/City Council Meeting December 5, 2007 Page 4 Chief Bryan stated they have calls, incidents and responses. He stated the call is when someone picks up the phone and calls in an emergency. An incident is the particular response they went to at a particular location. He stated a response is that particular unit that goes to the particular emergency. Chairman/PresidenUMayor Kurth asked why the dispatching couldn't be put out with a bid to the private sector as well. Deputy Chief Hartwig explained this does occur, but that it is not very frequent. He stated they will be considering everything. Vice Chairman/Vice President/Mayor Pro Tem Williams felt our "save" rate is so good because of all the state- of-the-art equipment the Fire Board has approved for the Fire District. She asked when they are number crunching these next six months, that she would like to know how many of the incidents have excessive responses (what could we do better). She wondered how much it cost to run the engines down the street for gas. Agencymember/Boardmember/Councilmember Michael stated he is glad to hear about Ontario being interested in a regional dispatch center. He felt cost effectiveness is important. He hopes Ontario is interested in call prioritization. He stated he would like to know who would be interested in the private sector also. Chairman/PresidenUMayor Kurth felt we have gotten bogged down with Ontario and don't have control over it. He felt we should put it out to bid so we do have control. MOTION: Moved by Kurth to put this out to competitive bid for the future as part of the City's policy for the call triage system -the whole dispatch system. James Markman, City Attorney, wasn't sure there would be any bidders. Jack Lam, City Manager, stated we are not currently aware of any private companies, but that we will look into this as Chief Hartwig stated. He stated if the Council wants an RFP, staff will do this. He stated staff needs to know what we are putting out to bid at this time. Vice Chairman/Vice PresidenUMayor Pro Tem Williams felt we should put this out on the List Serve ii there are any private companies. She stated we need to know what we want before we put it out to bid. She stated instruction has been given for this to happen. Agencymember/Boardmember/Councilmember Gutierrez stated he would second the motion, but felt we should get better analysis in the meantime. Agencymember/Boardmember/Councilmember Michael felt in all fairness to staff, there is a provision in Mr. Lacy's report to contract out all fire services. He did not feel we should bid out each issue separately, but should get through everything before we do this. He felt Ontario Dispatch will be pretty tough to beat cost wise. He felt we have a much bigger issue to deal with instead of just taking one portion of this. He stated he cannot support this motion. Chairman/President/Mayor Kurth stated the motion is intended to be a policy on the bidding system. Vice ChairmanNice PresidenUMayor Pro Tem Williams stated we need to know what we need before we go out to bid. Agencymember/Boardmember/Councilmember Spagnolo stated he agreed with the City Attorney that we don't even know what we want at this time, and stated he would not support the motion. James Markman, City Attorney, clarified the motion as follows: "With respect to the provision of any portion of dispatch services where the standards are upgraded or new standards set, staff will seek all potential providers of that service, catalog them, and seek a response through a proposal for the ones who are viable potential providers." Special Redevelopment Agency/Fire Protection District/City Council Meeting December 5, 2007 Page 5 Vice Chairman/Vice President/Mayor Pro Tem Williams stated she does not want to put out a bid tomorrow for these services. Agencymember/Boardmember/Councilmember Michael stated he would be more comfortable with this being a City-wide policy. Motion carried unanimously 5-0. C2. UPDATE ON WILDLAND URBAN INTERFACE FIRE CONCERNS Due to the lack of time to hear this item because of other meeting obligations, the Council concurred to table this item to a future meeting. D. ADJOURNMENT The meeting adjourned at 5:10 p.m. Res ecifully n mi~te~d,~n ~ l~ Debra J. Ada , CMC Assistant Se etary/Secretary/City Clerk Approved: January 16, 2008