Staff Report 5.2

Analysis

As part of consideration of a Municipal Service Review for West County Fire and Emergency Medical Service (EMS) Agencies in West County at the Commission’s August 7, 2019, meeting, the Commission expressed an interest in understanding what criteria might be useful for evaluating proposed sphere of influence amendments for fire and EMS agencies and directed staff to provide information regarding same.

Staff has prepared a report describing the criteria that it recommends for evaluating sphere of influence amendments and is seeking Commission review and comment.

In particular, staff is interested in any additional criteria that the Commission would like to see addressed in future staff reports and/or Municipal Service Reviews/Sphere of Influence Studies that would support Commission deliberations.

Background

The Commission has supported sphere amendments and reorganizations for several fire agencies in the past several years and, faced with a series of potential sphere amendment and reorganization proposals in West County (and other regions), has expressed concern that the proposals are properly evaluated.

These concerns are myriad and include, but are not limited to:

Are “homes” being found for County Service Area 40 – Fire Services territories in advance of the County’s stated objective of ceding responsibility for providing fire service? (Some areas of CSA 40 are provided services under contract by Volunteer Fire Companies; the remainder areas are Integrated Response Plan territories which are served under contract by neighboring fire districts.)

• Is a proposed sphere amendment appropriate given operational considerations?
• Will reorganizations enabled by sphere amendments lead to improved service levels?
• Will subsequent reorganizations lead to near-term, or ideally, long-term, financial sustainability?

Staff considers it a key goal to anticipate Commission concerns and, to the best of its ability, provide necessary information and analysis to support Commission deliberations.  To that end, staff has prepared, at the Commission’s request, a set of proposed evaluation criteria for fire and emergency medical service agency sphere amendment proposals (Attachment 1).

Use of the Criteria

When evaluating sphere of influence amendments, staff must prepare a Municipal Service Review (or rely on a recent MSR) and, in addition, propose determinations specific to the SOI amendment(s). However, the determinations required under the Cortese-Knox-Hertzberg Act do not directly address the types of considerations the Commission has expressed.

After review and comment by the Commission and after making recommended changes to the criteria, staff proposes to use the Criteria Evaluation Table presented in Attachment 1 either in staff reports or in a Sphere of Influence Study (or both) to provide a suitable level of analysis to the Commission.

Is a Formal Policy Warranted?

The Commission regularly adopts and amends a series of policies that, in practice, describe how the Commission will address a variety of proposals. The Criteria document could be proposed as a formal Commission Policy.

At this time staff does not believe a formal policy is warranted, as staff expects a series of sphere amendments and reorganization proposals both near-term and over the coming several years that may effectively “exhaust” proposed actions for fire and emergency service agencies. Therefore, a policy would have limited utility to future Commissions after that period.

However, if the Commission believes that a formal policy is warranted, perhaps as a document that can be cited to fire and EMS agencies, staff is certainly prepared to pursue formal adoption. (Staff would ask that the Commission refer the matter to the Policy Committee for review or otherwise ask that the proposed policy come directly back to the entire Commission for consideration.) 

Recommendation 

Staff recommends that the Commission receive and provide comment on the Fire and EMS Agency Sphere of Influence Amendment Criteria document prepared by staff.

Alternate Recommendation 

The Commission could direct staff to present the sphere of influence criteria in the form of a Policy that could be considered and adopted by the Commission. If so, staff would seek guidance on whether to refer the proposal to the Policy Committee for consideration or bring the proposed policy directly to the Commission.

Attachments 

1. Fire and EMS Agency Sphere of Influence Amendment Criteria Draft