Lego My Hero
Tomorrow night’s council meeting promises to be a big affair. Once again the Kennedy Sisters will be ringing the tocsin – calling all Boohoos – oppose a policy creating ban on free, non-governmental materials in City property. The inevitable crying and hand wringing will be amusing to watch.
And there may be some of our Fire Heroes, and their families there, too. How come?
Because the Fire Department is proposing to take over the driving, washing, and maintaining their new fleet of sole source “coaches” and figuring out how use their new fleet of gurneys,
Of course Giant Savings are forecast. But do you believe them?
The comparison “study” is at such a high level that no details are shared – big problem. The City knows the current private operators numbers because they gave them to Fullerton under the contract. How about those of the Fire Department. No.
One of many downsides is that the “in-house” option budgets have a high degree of speculation.
Are all of true costs known? One would have to be pretty well-convinced (or gullible) to believe that newly unionized and pensioned ambulance drivers could be cheaper, and cheaper by a lot.
If these drivers leave town after they are vested, who picks up the CalPERS check, for say, the next 30 years?
The City assumes full liability. Are insurance premiums for this new FFD scope expansion forecast in the budgets presented budgets? I wonder.
And finally I come to the biggest problem. Accountability. From soup to nuts. No accountability for the forecast budget’s accuracy, no accountability for anything else. There would be no contract with which to enforce performance and delivery – especially bad performance.
No doubt the heroes will proclaim a local control, budgetary and public safety victory. Will it be? I think the public should be made aware of the details that back up the simple chart in the agenda.
True, the current system is ridiculous. An FFD paramedic takes a trip to St, Judes with the ambulance. The an entire crew with a fire engine follows to the hospital. Not to look at the bad art on the lobby walls, but to pick up their compadre and return to the fire station.
However the correct response is not to take over the ambulance driving, but to follow the lead of Placentia and privatize the damn paramedic job! Their results in Placentia have been fine and they’re saving money.
Kind hard to believe.
Maybe someone from Placentia will school us on their model.
Funny you should mention Placentia….you know who doesn’t mention them? The fire chief in his agenda report….the report notes that the chief is going to enter into no fee mutual aid agreements with Anaheim and Brea but why not Placentia? Could it be that the fire heroes will never allow their residents to see private paramedics providing a superior service on their turf? It’s always the taxpayer who gets the short shrift and plays second fiddle to the bank accounts of the fire heroes.
Truth!
anaheim, brea, and fullerton use the same dispatch. placentia doesn’t
So?
It looks like Fullerton Fire is the latest department to run this scam. Anaheim, Laguna Beach, a few others are getting into the “ambulance operator” game. The game is this: Medicare and Medicaid will pay government-run ambulance operators a premium for ground transportation – the GMAT program. They won’t pay private operators this fee. Why not you wonder? Well, you can put two and two together. Not only that, they push the private provider completely out of the picture and collect all the other ground transportation, medical supply reimbursements and advanced life support fees – all the EMS fees generated including fun ones like First Responder Fees which Fullerton charges and most insurance companies won’t cover so the city balance bills the patient. It’s a money grab – a way to help bolster local government budgets.
They will pay these “ambulance operators” minimum wage and they expect to cycle through them every two years. The fire department says in their own report that these are short-term positions used to fill firefighter vacancies. These kids will line up for these jobs anyway. Sure – when was the last time Fullerton held an open recruitment for open firefighter positions? Do they really have so many vacant rookie firefighter jobs they need a steady bullpen of eagerly salivating 19-year old kids hoping to land a gig on the big red machine?
The best part of this is that these are going to be full time positions and will be subject to CalPERS – it even says so in the presentation. So the answer to the question is yes, they get added to the CalPERS roll which means that Fullerton will own a piece of the pensions earned by every one of these short term employees they give birth to for the rest of their careers, over and over and over again….the back end costs on this whole thing will be tremendous.
The Harpoon correctly notes a tremendous amount of holes in this proposal but notably absent in the entire discussion are the new revenues the City will be collecting by pushing Falck out. That’s really the whole point of this exercise, why let a private company get these revenues? We always have the taxpayer to back stop the cost anyway. The fire department will have you believe they can bring the hourly operating cost down by 15% over the current provider? For how long exactly? And has anyone bothered to calculate the cost of the long-term pension debt created by all these new positions?
Those costs are the least of Fullerton’s problems….they don’t have 201 rights for ambulance services which means they’re supposed to issue a competitive proposal to the market to secure ambulance transport services. They’re hoping no one notices or challenges them but the city can easily be sued for this if there’s a company out there willing to pick that fight with the Mustache Mafia.
I missed reference – page 10 of the Power Point. But it was a foregone thing – all city employees get guaranteed benefits via CalPERS.
Bringing this service in-house is a horrible decision that will cost Fullerton taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars and only benefit the Hero Union Crime Syndicate. Given these facts, Jamie Valencia will proffer her first quid pro quo to the Hero Unions that funded her campaign, vote “YES”, and the proposal will pass 3-2.
Fullerton being Fullerton.
You’re wrong, I think. It will be 4-1 with Dunlap voting no. At least I hope he knows the right questions to ask and really digs in.
3-2, 4-1. Potato, potatoe.
Thanks, Danny Quayle.
Didn’t this blog once do a story called Adam Loeser, Dishonest Fire Chief?
Fred is proudly wearing his union kneepads again.
Of course he is. He’s running for Supervisor and he needs the Heroes’ endorsement and cash. Meanwhile, he helps saddle Fullerton with ever growing pension debt and piss poor service from the union goons.
The proposal passed and Fullerton Taxpayers will be stuck with another huge bill courtesy of the Hero Union Goons when it all goes sideways! What was the final vote?
4-1, Dunlap voting no for lack of details and transparency.
The 4 bought and paid for stooges barely bothered to scratch the surface before salvivating over their yes votes.
Zahra was so giddy he made a joke about pretending to vote no for April Fools.
Quid pro quo wins, Fullerton taxpayers lose, AGAIN!
Jamie Valencia isn’t even going to pretend that she isn’t in a servile quid pro quo relationship with the Hero Union Goons. She dropped to her knees and gave them what they wanted first chance she had.
As I recall this blog campaigned heavily for Valencia. Still feeling good about that 4F?
I was going to go last night, but then I thought……..why?
Good point. The majority of city councils don’t give a rat’s ass about community input. They’ve already made up their minds before it hits the agenda.
Whitaker was the only one to ever stand up to the fire union. Problem? He was pretty useless because he was alone in his objections. To expect any of them to say no to fire is not realistic. Even Dunlap only objected because he didn’t like the process. Donations from fire are small by comparison. What they need is the “public safety” badge and without it, you lose. Recent examples are clear: Arnel Dino and Johnny Ybarra lost to Shana Charles, Oscar Valadez lost to Ahmad Zahra, Kitty lost to Jamie Valencia, Greg Sebourn lost to Jesus Silva. Commonality? All endorsed by fire. Dunlap won without their endorsement, but they did not endorse Jan Flory either. Them’s the breaks.
Whitaker beat fire union endorsed Aaruni Thakur, but Thakur was a useless and lazy candidate.
Hard to win an election with the last name Thakur.
Heard Fred has family in public safety. Jamie says she’s a nurse. They’re both fire true believers.
Fred’s son is a Placentia police officer. This blog was warned repeatedly about Valencia. Nurses and firemen go together like peanut butter and jelly, cheese and burger, kool aid and sugar….Fred needs the Hero cash and endorsement for his big run for Sup, Shana and Zahra….good lord, Zahra needed a napkin to wipe his chin after all his slurping. The Kid Dunlap the only one left with any modicum of good sense and stewardship.
Kid Dunlap voted for that idiot Shana Charles for Mayor. Good sense? Stewardship? IYKYK
That vote will come back to bite him in the ass. She has been a disaster. Why does she talk so much and say so little?
In an alternate universe, there exists a version of city council that is Mayor Ahmad Zahra, Mayor Pro Tem Shana Charles, and Councilmembers Jesus Silva, Kitty Jaramillo, and Jennifer Fitzgerald. Think long and hard about what that would be like for the city…
There would be no city left.
Is that the universe where Fullerton looks like a scene from The Walking Dead?
No. Worse. It is one of the signs of the coming rapture.
Christ, give a guy a heart attack, would ya.
Fullerton doesn’t have .201 rights to provide ambulance services. As such, they are required to solicit competitive proposals for these services – they are of course free to submit their own proposal but it has to be an open competitive process. Fullerton is ripe for a lawsuit on this and given what an absolute disaster Dick Jones is as an attorney, this will be easy pickings for even a half-assed attorney to win.
We’re not sure that’s the case.
Have anything definitive on Fullerton not being grandfathered? We’d love to see it.
Do you have anything definitive that Fullerton DOES have 211 rights? Fullerton has never had 201 rights because it has always contracted for these services. You’re only grandfathered if you have always provided the services yourself u interrupted since 1981. I’m looking forward to this lawsuit.
Fullerton doesn’t have a finance director right now so you have an idiot fire chief trying play financial planner here. What could possibly go wrong?
Plenty of things could go wrong and plenty of things have gone wrong. But I will give the three reasonable people on that council the benefit of the doubt. Because one is a liar and a master manipulator and the other is so fragile, a gust of wind would have her crying because leaves were dying on the ground.
This scheme was first presented to the City Council in closed session….under the guise of “Anticipated Litigation.” That’s because they know there is a distinct possibility of getting sued knowing they don’t have .201 rights.
Well, that’s totally illegal.
Good times.
Fullerton, being Fullerton.
Hero Union Goons don’t know math.
Think about this, Jung would have had that tool Castaneda up there if he hadn’t imploded. Got a know nothing newbie instead. Still better than Kitty though.