Quick Take
For years, Santa Cruz County has not paid enough attention to community fire protection and safe movement, particularly in the rural wildland districts that ring the county, writes Sanjay Khandelwal. Now, he writes, it’s time. Lessons from the 2020 CZU fire mean we need an urgent rethink of how we handle fire protection. For Khandelwal, a Summit resident who served as the last chair of the county’s fire department advisory commission, an important step is converting county fire, which has a $10.8 million budget, into an independent fire district. The board of supervisors is considering this, and Khandelwal hopes the new board will push forward with this needed change.
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The elections are over and the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors will soon look different, with Monica Martinez and either Kim De Serpa or Kristen Brown likely joining the all-male board. I hope the new board will support the sorely needed changes afoot with Santa Cruz County Fire.
Over the past few years, the Santa Cruz County Civil Grand Jury has issued a number of investigative reports on fire protection, including one after the CZU fire. A recurrent theme of these reports is the lack of attention the county government pays to community protection and creating safe evacuation routes. Despite these reports, not much has changed over the years.
Until now.
At the September meeting, the board of supervisors voted to explore the potential to convert county fire into an independent fire district or merging it with an existing fire district. As the last chair of the fire department advisory commission (FDAC), I pushed for this.
In my 2½ years on FDAC, I realized how big a concern the financial and oversight model was. We had big, unanswered questions, like would we be able to pay for the needed services or do we need to go ask for more taxes, and whom do we ask and who will drive this?
The cost to provide fire and emergency services continues to increase. Equipment is aging and needs to be maintained and upgraded. Fire season is becoming longer and winters shorter, causing Cal Fire to want to renegotiate the contract with our community. There are many issues around service levels, use of volunteers, financial sustainability and oversight.
Now, an independent fire district is not a panacea but will, hopefully, resolve many of these issues.
An independent fire district will give us an elected and dedicated board that will work with Cal Fire, and with our volunteers, and be clearly responsible for getting essential emergency services to residents in unincorporated areas that ring the county. This will take those responsibilities away from the board.
It has to be better than what we have now.
Santa Cruz County Fire currently operates under the guidance and direction of the board of supervisors. As various grand jury reports and a recent master plan assessment done by an independent consultant show, county fire has not received sufficient guidance or direction.
Oversight is buried in the county reporting structure. The fire chief gets to speak at a board of supervisors meeting once a year. Every year, the budget gets approved by rote, as part of the consent agenda, but is not deemed important for any discussion.
Two-thirds of Santa Cruz County is considered a wildland-urban interface (WUI), putting a large percentage of our population, housing, economy, wildlife and environment at risk from catastrophic fire. A vast part of this population is in County Service Area 48, which covers most of North County, including Davenport and Bonny Doon, extends down the Summit area, and goes all the way to Corralitos. It’s a big area.
County fire provides us services including traditional fire protection, but also medical first response for emergencies, rescue services and hazardous materials response. It also conducts fire inspections, plans reviews, does fire-cause and arson investigations and offers public education and prevention programs.
County fire in Santa Cruz is mainly comprised of Cal Fire personnel. In addition, there are six volunteer companies, with about 70 volunteers (they always need more!). All these volunteers are much loved and appreciated. In the Summit area, our beloved Loma Prieta Fire and Rescue is considered part of county fire.
Santa Cruz County Fire has been operating under an Amador contract with Cal Fire since 1948. Things started to change with the increase of catastrophic fires across the state, including the CZU fire in an area that is part of CSA 48. Cal Fire holds the contract to provide services to county fire, but has started to push back on the Amador contract – which, to be honest, does need to be changed and updated. We are no longer in 1948, right?
In December 2023, the fire department advisory commission (FDAC) received a 272-page master fire plan report prepared by an outside county consultant. It offered a pretty good assessment of the current state of county fire, as does FDAC’s assessment of the report.
Look under other documents for the Jan. 17 meeting. This report, along with the FDAC assessment, was also presented to the board of supervisors on Sept. 24. Here is the board presentation.
On Oct. 2, the Santa Cruz Local Agency Formation Commission also recommended reorganizing CSA 48.
All signs point to the same thing: Iit is time to reorganize CSA 48.
The board presentation came with a recommendation that the county explore the feasibility of converting county fire into an independent fire district.
At the same September meeting, the board disbanded FDAC, recognizing it as an ineffective oversight group. Finally.
That has left us where we are.
We need county fire. Period. And we need the right oversight to ensure that these emergency response services are provided to us at the right service levels, at the right cost and by the right trained personnel.
It’s about time we look at alternatives.
Sanjay Khandelwal is a 20-plus-year Summit area resident who describes himself as a multipotentialite, i.e., someone with many interests and creative pursuits. To pay for all of them, he currently works in mergers and acquisitions and has served as an executive/consultant for companies like Hewlett Packard, Agilent Technologies, Spring Education, Twitter and Carbon 3D. Currently, he runs the 95033Talk community group in the Summit area, is the board president of the Loma Prieta Community Foundation and is on the board of the Fire Safe Council of Santa Cruz County. He served as the last chair of the fire department advisory commission.