Back in March 2025 the Fullerton City Council decided to fire the City’s ambulance contractor and take the responsibility in-house. Why? Well, naturally there’s the official story, which is that there will be some sort of saving, which is nonsense, since it means adding 20 new public employees on the payroll, and was all based on wishful thinking. So instead of shopping out the paramedic business like Placentia did, Fullerton did the opposite, requiring acquisition of ambulance rolling stock and the various other appurtenances like gurneys, etc.
On this Tuesday’s Council meeting Agenda Item #10 proposes a payment plan for this nonsense. Guess what? It looks desperate. City staff is still proposing to finance the acquisition of all the ambulance stuff through acquiring debt, via a master agreement with Bank of America to buy City bonds at a coupon rate of 3.5%, and then use the proceeds to lease ambulances.
Well, there she goes. Don’t worry. There’s more where that came from…
Yes, you read that right. We’re paying for Fire Department empire creation with $2,000,000 credit. The capital repayment and interest on the bonds would amount to $2,175,000 by the time the last bond matures in November 2031. And let’s not forget the dough paid to bond counsel and financial consultants (UFI) who are selling this deal. And oh, yeah, let’s consider there’s now insurance, maintenance, fuel, etc., of vehicles owned by the lessor (BofA), which was all glossed over last April 1st, as was the cost of financing which is over $200,000.
The single Agenda Item #10 staff report sentence justifying the financing is laconic, and notable for what it doesn’t say; that the City still plans to finance the purchase orders for this equipment supposedly issued in April. Here’s all we are told:
“Urban Futures, Inc. (UFI), the City financial advisor, and staff determined private placement financing offers the most beneficial and cost-effective solution for the City.
But there is no explanation why. None at all. Zip. Is the City borrowing $2,000,000 at a lower interest rate that it is making in an investment pool? Who knows? The City Council and the public aren’t informed, just as they weren’t informed when financing was proposed back in April.
The fun aspect of this is that the lease of these ambulances would be rent-to-own, a little con – making the credit-risk-uninformed think they are getting something great. I mean, who doesn’t want to own stuff, right? What good is a owning a six year old old ambulance? I don’t know, but my guess is they depreciate really fast. Maybe even faster than rent-to-own toasters.
He’s on it…
I really don’t know what to say about this completely unnecessary move. If the Council had just voted no on the unsolicited plan from the FFD we wouldn’t be looking at having to cover any loan vig at all. Neither the Councilmembers who voted for this – Zahra, Charles, Jung and Valencia had much if anything to say about this bond/lease back in April.
This is how I bought my first car, a 1991 Yugo!
Of course Zahra and Charles don’t give a rat’s ass about wasting money, especially when they script some sort of feel-good performance. Hopefully, Jung and Valencia will change their minds about this resistible offer, but I’m not optimistic. Maybe Dunlap can talk some sense into them.
With Fullerton tottering on the edge of financial meltdown the Council’s behavior towards the fire department (and its union employees) has been highly irresponsible. In October they accepted a one-time FEMA grant to hire a platoon of new “fire fighters” that we will become completely responsible for in 3 three short years, pensions and all.
No, I’m not optimistic at all. The financial leveraging is bound to be used as a pretext to pass a sales tax increase next year. And what if that fails?
Why write about news when you can try to make your own! (Photo by Julie Leopo/Voice of OC)
Yes, indeed. In an editorial masquerading as some sort of news, Fullerton Observer sister Sikita Kennedy explained the failure of government and the ways in which that failure is dressed up to look like victory. This article appears to be an AI generated creation since the estimable Satskia has never shown this sort of perspicuity in the past, but, whatever. After you weed out the jargon some fundamental management truths emerge.
The topic of course is something almost nobody gives a rat’s ass about: getting rid of bike lockers at the train station, the reason given that they are underused. The awkward title shouts out “Fullerton’s Bicycle Lockers Spark Controversy Among Cyclists” as if an inanimate object has such puissance. Naturally, it’s the removal of said lockers that is causing Siska herself grief; not a solitary cyclist is interviewed or quoted in her essay.
But I digress. The topic is inconsequential, but the analysis of failure is quite remarkable and completely uncharacteristic. Kennedy seems to have finally discovered the cultural behavior of government bureaucracies that we have known all along. Let’s enjoy some of the fruits of her editorial labors:
Organizations in crisis rarely announce themselves as such.More often, they produce charts, reports, and performance metrics that tell a reassuring story — one that, on closer inspection, was shaped by the same decisions it purports to evaluate. This is one of the quieter dangers of institutional mismanagement: it doesn’t just damage an organization, it can generate the evidence that justifies its own continuation.
How perfectly true, and so descriptive of almost every staff and study report ever produced in Fullerton. The classic dodge is to answer a question that nobody asked.
“…a dispute over bicycle lockers is offering a textbook example of how low performance, manufactured by neglect, gets cited as the reason to eliminate the very thing being neglected.
Yes, indeed. Sort of sounds like the death-march noise ordinance fiasco, doesn’t it, wherein City failure to enforce codes results in the push to abandon the process of code enforcement altogether.
When managers make poor decisions, they typically face two options: change course or defend the course they’re on. Defense, in institutional settings, almost always involves data. The problem is that those same managers often control what data gets collected, how it gets measured, and how it gets reported.
Good Lord, Satkia, has had her come to Jesus revelation! The truth may yet set her free! How often have we seen a circling of the wagons, the manipulation of information to reinforce the error? Mostly data collection, crooked or otherwise, isn’t even necessary. Convoluted rhetoric often does the trick. Option number one never takes place.
A leader who has misallocated resources will tend to measure success in ways that don’t reveal the misallocation. A department head who has pursued the wrong strategy will frame performance indicators around the metrics where progress is easiest to show. Over time, the organization’s entire information infrastructure bends toward confirming decisions already made.
This is something we’ve seen time and time again. Throw out the jargon and it means this: “look over there.” The misdirection is so common as to be commonplace. This is what will happen when the City’s disastrous “fire fighter” ambulance driver chickens come home to the proverbial roost.
This is the classic mismanagement data trap: measuring outputs rather than outcomes, and then using those outputs to validate the decisions that produced them.
Amen, Sister, testify!
The “data trap” of measuring outputs was nowhere better seen than on the horrendously useless Trail to Nowhere, where the efforts were all about building something expensive and then patting yourself on the back for…building something expensive. But that wasn’t about a few piddling bike lockers, no, but the waste of $2,500,000, an irony lost on the Fullerton Observer editorial staff of two. The Observer Sisters will never expend a moment’s time worrying about actual users (or complete lack of same) on the “trail.”
One of the most common tools in this playbook is selective periodization — choosing a start date for measurement that makes current numbers look favorable by comparison. Applied to civic infrastructure, this often means measuring usage after a program has already been allowed to deteriorate, rather than tracking the arc from functional to neglected.
How funny. Siskia has had her epiphany, alright, but it sure is a selective enlightenment. Remember when staff tried to keep the ridiculous Waste on Wilshire going by citing low traffic on Wilshire after the street had been closed!
Organizations under poor leadership often commission external reviews that appear to provide independent accountability but are structured to confirm decisions already made. The questions given to reviewers shape the findings, and the questions come from the people who need favorable findings. The result carries the authority of objectivity while functioning as a mirror.
Let’s consider the very recent Grant Thornton report whose results were meant to cauterize a huge embarrassment without naming a single culprit or a single systemic failure. No outcries from the Observers, of course.
Cities do this too — with traffic studies, usage audits, and infrastructure assessments that are framed around the conclusion leadership has already reached. Whether that’s what’s happening with Fullerton’s active transportation data is a question advocates would do well to press publicly.
They sure do, Sitka. Who are you supposed to believe, your commonsense or the experts we have hired to back us up? Ahem, remember the “experts” hired to produce pro tax findings, pro development findings, pro this or pro that findings? In fact data supporting everything that the City Manager who hired them wants. The latest examples is that “traffic study” for the overbuilt Harbor/Hermosa project that will never in a million years stop the project as designed, from being built.
The antidote to data shaped by mismanagement is not more data — it’s differently sourced data, with different incentive structures attached to it. Independent audits are conducted by parties with no relationship to the decisions being evaluated. Performance metrics set before interventions begin, not after. Usage data is examined in the context of program accessibility, not in isolation.
Great Caesar’s Ghost! What a splendid statement of objective accountability and something that should be happening, at least occasionally, and not on some silly bike lockers, but on real issues where millions are spent, from hiring ambulance drivers to deciding if anybody is now going to use a new but previously failed park; on weather there is a chance in hell that anybody would patronize a “boutique” hotel at the Transportation Center.
There is a vast irony in the Observer’s new-found demand for objective standards to promote accountability – exactly the thing government employees dread. See, it’s the squalid world of professional management, and such accountability is not to be applied to government bureaucrats who are made of a finer material. They are working for us, see, and have a noble calling not to be subjected to accountability.
And it’s deliciously ironic that the new Observer spirit has been discovered due to some footling bike lockers, and not the decades long history of Fullerton disasters that nobody but FFFF has chronicled.
Might Sciatica Kennedy’s observations and suggestions be applied to future Fullerton mishaps? Bet not. But let’s enjoy them while we can.
Fullerton is supposed to have its budgets wrapped up by the end of June. That’s when fiscal years end and new ones begin. It’s in the Municipal Code.
But not this year. So a resolution was needed to keep the gears of government grinding in Fullerton at current levels so that “essential services” be maintained. At the June 16th meeting the City Council passed the appropriate resolution authorizing the continuation of the process into July. Here’s the casual explanation of what’s going on::
“Staff continues to evaluate revenue projections, expenditure estimates including cost containment and deficit reduction strategies, capital improvement requirements, reserve levels, organizational needs and other fiscal considerations as part of the FY 2026-27 budget development process.”
Permit me to translate the double talk: “a complete absence of leadership has stalled the process and nobody in City Hall has the remotest idea how to deal with the massive, impending budget shortfall except by taxation.”
Where there’s smoke…
We have seen over the past year the revitalization of the footling Budget Sustainability Committee that accomplished exactly nothing. Zero. Zip. Well, not quite nothing, because its members reflected the positions of those that appointed them. Dunlap’s appointee voted against all tax proposals offered up. Jung and Valencia’s appointees supported a half-cent special infrastructure tax, but not a general sales tax. Zahra and Charles’ appointees rejected a special sales tax and pushed for the one cent general sales tax.
One committee member suggested privatizing the Water Utility; another suggested borrowing from the deep pockets of the new (or old) waste hauler. Another idea was creating a business district to pay for the Downtown Fullerton deficit. Innovative concepts for a City on the edge of insolvency that got no traction. T he committee how disastrous budget cuts would be to the public, especially to the hallowed halls of “public safety” that sucks up the lion’s share of the budget. Service levels, donchaknow.
I don’t recall anybody discussing mandatory salary reductions. Maybe I missed it.
Which leaves the City with no viable tax path forward even getting one on the November ballot. Other revenue generating ideas went nowhere, including selling off real estate, particularly that where Water Fund activities are going on. Other ideas, such as selling the boutique hotel site aren’t practical because Council and staff and City Attorney have led to humiliation and fraud on the property and has seen it tied up in dispute.
Even as Fullerton’s “leaders” fiddled away their time, new information about huge accounting errors revealed the situation was even more dire than previously imagined.
It would be dereliction not to remind Friends that our illustrious City Council actually agreed to hire a bunch of ambulance drivers on credit and a dozen new “firefighters” at the behest of the their union even as the budget crisis loomed on the near horizon.
Well, there she goes. Don’t worry. There’s more where that came from…
When a misleading City of Fullerton agenda proclaims: “Introduction of Special Fiscal Audit – Grant Thornton Risk Advisory Services.”
I assumed, wrongly, that somebody had already been hired to look into the misdirection of funds into the General Fund Reserves that should have gone some place else, a fact that has caused considerable embarrassment to our severely and habitually underinformed City Council. I also figured this firm was going to talk about what they found.
But no.
A Manfro all seasons…
In fact, the firm of Grant Thornton Risk Advisory Services were brought before the council by the City Manager, Eddie Manfro, simply to make a sales pitch for their services. And what services.
Step one is to be some sort of forensic accounting exercise, a fishing expedition to explore the world of Fullerton’s accounting regime to see what, if anything, is amiss. Nobody said anything, but there must have surely been some internal squirming when the company rep kept using the word “fraud.” And that included our Finance Director and recently anointed City Treasure, Steven Avalos who was sitting in the pit.
The second phase of GTRAS’s endeavor was to explore how the City might improve efficiencies, save money, and help address Fullerton’s grim fiscal situation. Why this all-purpose company was suggested for this task seems odd, the two tasks having nothing to do with one another.
I’ll address the first project first. Why is it necessary at all to delve into Fullerton’s accounting with an audit? We have been told that there were seemingly honest bookkeeping errors – embarrassing, sure and it did alter the already dire projection of General Fund reserve draw downs, but fear not, all was well. The councilmembers kept talking about transparency and public trust, but what does that really mean? Is this serious or just a political pantomime?
Consider the following facts. GTRAS was picked by the City Manager under his own authority and just brought to the council to give them a chance to ratify the decision. That’s a sole source contract, and the public has no idea how much they will be paid, and won’t without a PRA request. Will added scope to the $100,000 contract be reviewed by anybody except the City Manager and Steven Avalos? If some sort malfeasance were actually discovered – purely by accident, of course – would offender(s) names be published? Is any of this going to discussed in Closed Session because it touches on employee issues? Who knows? The Council approved the deal, without knowing whatever it is or might be.
As for the second part of GTRAS offer, the City Manager announced that would be returned to the Council for approval of a $130,000 deal. At least someone might get the chance to ask some pertinent questions, such as why is this “economic development” effort needed, given that Fullerton has highly paid staff who enjoy employment as economic developers. What have these people been doing and why do they need outside help. These people have been on the payroll for years. What have they accomplished?
Economic Development is my specialty…
Sunaya Thomas, in charge of economic development, was in attendance. Her presence at the meeting was an almost begging of the question about her own success in this endeavor, the effort of bureaucrats that never even pays for itself.
I wonder if GTRAS will actually suggest something that might help, outside of taxes. Personally, I doubt if their suggestions would even pay for their own service. That we will probably never know because no one will talk about it. This will be an agreement with no metrics for success or failure, just more electronic billboards and hotel occupancy taxes. Staff reductions? Getting rid of all our brand new “firefighters” and ambulance drivers? Don’t be ridiculous.
Anyhow our brave Council voted unanimously to proceed down this dark corridor, protesting their sincere desire to pursue those most elusive prey: transparency and public trust. No one said much about accountability. They never do.
Yes, that Jan Flory. The Mistress of a hundred Fullerton disasters during her three terms on the Fullerton City Council.
New and improved. At least that’s her story.
It seems she is very unhappy with Mr. Jung for his Supervisorial campaign ballot designation as a business owner and many of his claims in the ballot statement. She is so unhappy, in fact, that she is acting as a surrogate for Connor Traut, who is pretty unlikely to state his real occupation: ambulance chaser.
I’m a bid, I’m a plane, I’m a lawyer!
Anyway, Flory claims Jung has resorted to falsehoods about his record, including the Fullerton budget; and she should know. She lied to the people of Fullerton about her budgets as being balanced when of course they weren’t, facts she didn’t share with voters in her recent try for a fourth time around the track.
She has sent her complaint to the courts naming the OC Registrar of Voters, Bob Page, as the respondent.
At Tuesday’s Fullerton City Council meeting our honorable elected representatives found out that our fiscal reserve funds were overpopulated with bucks that belonged someplace else. I haven’t been able to view the video – the City Clerk’s link doesn’t work – so I’m relying on a Voice of OC article.
It seems monies that should have gone to Fullerton’s Redevelopment Successor Agency and other sequestered funds were being counted in the general fund reserve pool – $10,000,000 worth. How and why this occurred wasn’t spelled out in the article except as some sort of accounting error:
“These funds remain part of the city’s overall fund balance, but are now set aside in a way that better reflects their intended purpose,” said Steven Avalos, the city’s finance director, at Tuesday night’s meeting.
Mr. Steven Avalos, Fullerton’s New City Treasurer
Wow, that’s an application of bureaucratic soft soap, massaging what amounts to an egregious accounting error, or worse.
What it means is that all previous budget discussions led by Mr. Avalos and his predecessor have been nonsense for the past 5 years. And decisions in just the past year obliviously come into sharper focus for their foolishness – like going in-house with ambulance drivers and hiring a bunch of new, permanent “firefighters” based on a one-time FEMA grant. Parenthetically, I note that Mr. Avalos was appointed City Treasurer earlier in the Tuesday meeting. That’s a bit funny, really.
The Voice reports heated and loud interlocutions between Ahmad Zahra, the perpetual grandstander, liar, and victim, in exchanges with Mayor Fred Jung and Nick Dunlap. The exchanges as reported generated a lot more heat than light, but so it is when Zahra begins his sanctimonious routine. Ironically Zahra says a new sales tax increase won’t help.
The Man from Manfro
We are informed by the article that City Manager Eddie Manfro is going to meet with the ad hoc Budget Sustainability Committee on March 30th which seems like just a stall of 12 days.
Won’t look you in the eye while you’re trashing him…
One interesting statement was uttered by Jung in a Voice interview:
“I think we were set up to fail.”
We don’t know what this means because apparently the reporter didn’t follow up. Does the Mayor believe this misallocation of funds was deliberate to create a budget crisis at some point? Who knows?
Things are grim in City Hall, and a cactus garden in front isn’t going to cheer anybody up.
Right after the City Council votes to ban nitrous oxide in Fullerton, they will discuss the creation of an ad hoc (that’s Latin, darlin’) committee of two councilmembers to work with staff to develop sales tax ballot measure language. It’s item #20 on your scorecard.
Well, there she goes
The tax idea was floated by an earlier ad hoc committee, the so-called Sustainable Budget Committee, or something suchlike. That committee ultimately decided to recommend to limit the parameters of the tax to two different special half-cent sales taxes, one for infrastructure and one for our old friend “public safety.” It was probably reasoned that they would get more support than a general sales tax, but they need a two-thirds vote of approval for a special tax – a tough nut to crack.
Of course, a General Tax increase only needs a 50%+1 threshold to pass. But you need a council super- majority – 4 votes – for that to get on a ballot, and that seems highly unlikely.
You will be taxed…sooner or later!
It’s been painful to watch this drawn out Kabuki and it seems as it if will go on at least until the deadline for getting on next year’s ballot. Fortunately there is little chance that Mayor Fred Jung will let the obnoxious and incompetent spendthrift “doctors” Ahmad Zahra and Shana Charles anywhere near this language-developing process.
We have all seen the way that these government-written ballot measures twist language and logic to try to fool the public to approve them. The examples are so plentiful they hardly need enumerating. Remember the ill-fated Measure S in Fullerton? Hoo Boy was that some seriously misleading bullshit. Hopefully, Jung can require a simple and honest text without the usual treacle.
My cynical side wonders how much of the infrastructure tax language will actually include funding for the cops and financial bailout for the idiotic firefighter-union-members-as-ambulance-drivers decision, or FEMA FFD expansion grant nonsense. Anyway you cut it you want those well-funded unions on board for the inevitable campaign PR campaign.
Cry harder…
Fullerton Boohoo and the Kennedy Sisters will be crying out loudly that the fix is in by their new bogeyman – the evil Bushala Bloc – and that any ballot measure language will be crafted to fail without the steady guidance of our in-house council “intellectuals.” Tender young sprout Elijah will demand TRANSPARENCY. They may even still squawk about the need for a General Sales Tax increase, after all. But I think that Good Ship Lollipop has sailed.
Thanks to a federal grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) our city government is being presented with almost $3,000,000 to hire 12 new sworn fire department personnel and subsidize the new employees for three years to the tune of 75%, 75%, and 35%. The new hires will consist of three “Fire fighters,” three “Fire engineers,” and three “Fire Captains.” The City’s obligatory “matching” contribution is $1.8 million for those three years.
Another fire truck will be re-activated at Fire Station 6, requiring promotions of existing FFD underlings to take the vehicle to emergencies. This part of the item is not covered by FEMA.
It’s Item #14 on tomorrow night’s council meeting agenda.
If you want to read about it, here, you’ll see that the staff report is a virtual shell game of verbiage and is based on the notion that savings from the operation of the ambulance service hijacked by the FFD will cover the City’s new expenses; of course these “savings” are speculative – most likely the wishful thinking that goes along with empire building. There is not a single utterance about budget impacts now or in the out years.
Never a fire fighter around when you need one…
Sustainability? It would be nice to know what happens to these 12 positions after the three years are up and there is no longer any federal subsidy. Will these worthy folks be discharged in the name of budgetary constraint? Will they be kept on courtesy of cuts elsewhere? The new jobs will have to have pension costs now, and of course in the future which jack up our required payments to the good folks at CalPERS. On these issues the staff report is silent as a tomb.
There it goes…some might come back. Less overhead!
It’s long been a tenet of conservative principles that these dispensations of largesse from Washington and Sacramento are sort of like a pusher getting his junkies reliant on his dope. Here, specifically I have to wonder why FEMA is even in the business of increasing fire department sizes and budgets and the obligations that go along with that augmentation.
Obviously the agency that is known for helping communities’ response to big crises, mostly of the natural disaster kind, now has a remit and a budget to hand out money without reference to any disaster at all. And that budget most be pretty damn big if Fullerton can get a $2.8 million commitment.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the federal revenue that pays for this were kept at home, in the hands of the taxpayers and their local representatives, in the first place.
You know when last week’s volunteer proposal to put public employees in ambulances popped up, I had to smile, just a little. The whole thing was so shaky, so duplicitous, so-ill conceived that you had to admire how the Heroes were able to so easily put up a hollow con job that a little kid, unlike our City Council, would question.
Of course the interests of the Fire Department and its employees jumped ahead of the interests of the citizenry.
And then it struck me. There are all sorts of ways our elected officials put others’ welfare ahead of the public, and nowhere is this better seen than in the way massive development projects that overwhelm Fullerton’s landscape. There is never any dissent. The councilpeople fall all over themselves to approve giant cliff dwellings for no discernable reason other than someone wants to do something to make a shitpile of money, and City staff gets to charge hours against fees and permits.
In short: no one is looking out for the interests of the people as the infrastructure gets taxed, neighborhoods get overwhelmed, and parking deficiencies are assumed by everybody – except the developer – who comes up with the best tale about why his project doesn’t need cars.
Which brings me, finally to the god-awful monstrosity going up on Chapman Avenue. I think it’s called “The Hub” a pathetic marketing tag that the developer hopes will generate buzz among the crowd that can afford a $3000 per month one bedroom apartment.
Just look at this hideous cliff-dwelling, which must now be the tallest residential building in Fullerton. Seven stories, eight stories? Forget about how this project was completely deficient in parking and how it’s going to impact traffic for everybody who uses the Chapman corridor. Think about the thousands of toilet flushes into the City’s sewers every day; think about the stress on Fullerton’s antique water transmission system needed to bathe these new residents and wash their clothes. Just think about the poor bastards who live across the street and will get to ponder this ponderous pile of overbearing, overbuilt, over-dense, under thought-out mess – for the rest of their lives.
Monster
Remember, Friends, this project, just like so many before it was a voluntary erection on the part of the City, rubber stamped by the people we elected. Nobody forced anyone to vote yes on this, but they all did, and they would all do so again. And they looked the other way as the burden of environmental impacts were shifted to the public. This project required General Plan Amendments and zone changes. These government entitlements are worth a fortune to a developer and that benefit reflects the shift of negative externalities to everybody else. What did the people of Fullerton get for the entitlements giveaways?
So take a drive along Chapman one of these days and see if you think our City Council is working for you…or somebody else.
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.
