I am a bit surprised these well-to-do (or perhaps better off than most) full service cities in the South Bay are looking at ditching their Fire Dept's.
Hermosa already has, Rendo already has requested a full proposal study, and now Manhattan Beach.
I know El Segundo decided against contracting not longer. Interesting.
http://file.lacounty.gov/SDSInter/b...udyfromtheCityofManhattanBeach.Sept272018.pdf
They can't afford to expand their services and they cannot afford to maintain benefits. California really is bankrupt once you add in the cost of benefits when people retire. As an example, my high-school girlfriend is a top-tier attorney for a state agency. She's the chief counsel. Already making $250k a year, she's about to cash out and will retire at 80%. Cities can't afford this. I have two friends for the Sheriff's Department that have paid into their retirement but both had salaries and benefits in excess of $200k. They cash out just fine. Great people that have work their asses off for it to.
Manhattan Beach has an average household income of $139k. The rest of the South Bay communities drop progressively from there. One would think with their combined resources they can handle Mutual Aid by creating their own Mutual Aid Pact but they haven't done it that way. It seems everybody has a different way of doing things.
I realize most of you don't take me seriously but I actually do have some insight on this. San Bernardino County Fre Department has made leaps and bounds in taking over the entire County one proposal at a time. There is some holdouts but their goal is to provide services to all of the communities.
Up here in the mountains where I live there are two holdouts. Running Springs Fire Department, a full service, full-time Fire Department, and Arrowbear, a volunteer fire department. Oops, forgot Big Bear Lake City Fire Department. Not to be confused with Big Bear City. Calfire has an influence here as well. Figuring out who covers what doesn't matter because they have what's called Auto Aid.
The standard sales pitch is that since the county has deeper pockets and a much larger fleet of fire resources they can better serve the communities than the communities themselves. As it stands, Arrowbear is only able to respond to Medical calls and Running Springs automatically sends the paramedic unit duplicating the efforts. The county is already pitching arrowbear, which is a small community to begin with, with providing full-time services. They're doing it through Running Springs anyway. Running Springs is said to be holding out but they too have a point where they will have to seriously consider the proposals.
Is it possible that the South Bay communities are doing the same thing with LA County Fire? As you probably know LA County Fire took over Hacienda Heights Fire even though it's in Orange County. They had a better bid. That was what 10 or 15 years ago? Everything today seems to be about consolidation.
Los Angeles City already has just about every city that they provide fire Services to. I'm trying to think of one city that doesn't use LA City Fire.
All of the others have gone to ICIS.
This being the case, what makes Los Angeles County think they're going to roll out a countywide radio system with LA-RICS? ICIS already has the backbone in place. Add cells and Link them via microwave. They've just acquired Santa Monica.
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