Letters To The Tattler: Kevin Johnson & John Cooper

Emeryville Considers Folding The Fire Dept

Emeryville's budget nightmare continues to force cost cutting at City Hall and they are now considering folding Emeryville's independent fire department and contracting out services with the Alameda County Fire Department to help with costs.  This is an idea previously considered several times over the last twenty or so years by the city council but it's always been rejected.  Now the council seems to be serious since negotiations with the County have revealed Emeryville could save up to a million dollars per year and services for residents and fire fighting capacity would actually improve.  Significantly, the Fire Fighters Union is accepting of the current plan.  


Fire Chief Kevin Johnson addresses resident's concerns with the following letter to the Tattler:

       .              .              .              . 

  

"The Alameda County proposal clearly indicates that both the Hollis and Powell Street fire stations will be staffed-each with an engine company and each with paramedic/advanced life support personnel and equipment.  The service level would continue to be specified and directed by the City.  Alameda County Fire essentially will work for the City of Emeryville under contract and will provide the level of service that is specified by the City.  The proposal contains no reduction in the fire stations that will be staffed and response times will not suffer.  Part of the service involves making regular measurements of service levels and response times and reporting those findings to the City.  If there were any departures from specified service levels, Alameda County would have to make the appropriate adjustments to meet their contract requirements. 

Under the plan, current Emeryville firefighters will remain in the City during the transition and integration into Alameda County .  This transition phase is explained as “incremental” over one to two years.  During that period, Emeryville firefighters learn about Alameda County polices and operating procedures.  They begin to train with Alameda County firefighters and orient themselves with other areas of the County (and Alameda County personnel orient to Emeryville).  In time and after full integration, some Emeryville firefighters may choose to bid into assignments in other areas of the County.  The important point is that this process is planned whereby firefighters receive appropriate orientation and training before movements occur.

Additionally, the proposal includes a subcontract with the City of Oakland Fire Department to provide a planned and coordinated emergency response to augment Emeryville fire units in the event of a larger incident (such as a structure fire).  Currently, Emeryville receives assistance from Oakland but it is not particularly planned or coordinated and it is not through a written agreement.  Thus, the Alameda County proposal provides an enhancement to emergency response.  In any case, service levels will certainly not diminish.    

The concept of the [fire fighting] boat is to place that resource in Emeryville to handle water-based rescues should that type of incident occur.  While rare, from time to time there have been water-based incidents that have occurred in Emeryville.  As we all saw in the tragic case of the drowning at the shore in the City of Alameda , it is much better to plan for, train, and equip emergency personnel to handle foreseeable emergencies that may arise in their community.  Sometimes emergency incident planning dictates use of mutual aid resources from other communities (which Emeryville would still use in the event of a significant water-based emergency) and sometimes it is prudent to provide equipment and training in the community.  The placement of a small boat in the City represents a service level enhancement that would make Emeryville more versatile in terms of its response capability." 

.            .          .           .

Captain John Cooper, Union representative of the Emeryville Firefighters Local 55 also weighs in on the negotiations; in a companion letter to the Tattler, Mr Cooper notes that the rank and file voted for the new plan to contract out with the County in a 21-3 vote:

..."Regarding the three individuals who voted against contracting with Alameda County- The vote was done by secret ballot and those individuals were not specifically identified, however, concerns that were expressed all related to personal pay and benefit issues and not the quality of the service being offered. All members of the Fire Department agreed that the Alameda County Fire Department will be able to provide a much higher level of service than the current stand alone Emeryville model can at a significant cost savings to the City. 

Both of the current Fire Stations will remain open and all currently employed Emeryville personnel will remain employed. If you were to have a structure fire today, you would get 2 Engines and a 1 person Truck with 7 Emeryville Firefighters responding to your house without the use of mutual aid from neighboring Cities. When the Alameda County Fire Department starts providing service in July, you will get 3 Engines, a fully staffed Truck and a Battalion Chief with 16 firefighters arriving on scene without the need for calling for mutual aid. Response times to emergencies will not be affected and the quality of service and medical care you’ve come to expect will remain the same. 

The fire boat is a nice addition as we have responded to numerous water emergencies over the years and always had to rely on the Coast guard for assistance. This will allow us to respond faster with paramedic level care and water rescue capabilities to those people who are on a boat or in the water. 


I have been employed with the Emeryville Fire Department for 25 years and I can say that this solution will provide a higher level of service to the community than you are currently receiving which is saying a lot." 

Letter To The Tattler: City Attorney Initiative

The ballot initiative petition to change the way the city handles its legal affairs is being distributed around town for residents to sign.  Signers must live in Emeryville and be registered to vote here.  Many citizens are helping to solicit signatures for the possible November ballot.  These petition carriers have indicated that helping to circulate the petitions is open to all residents and Council Member Ken Bukowski can be contacted for those wishing to sign the petition or to help circulate one.  Mr Bukowski's contact number is in the letter (below) that was received today for posting in the Tattler:  

To the Tattler:

The ballot initiative concerning the legal department at City Hall is important for the city's financial health.  Many cities our size and larger don't have City Attorney departments but instead contract out their legal work with specialized law firms, depending on the case.  Emeryville has also contracted out many legal firms for various legal issues in the past and continues to do so.  The Redevelopment Agency has finished the bulk of its work and is likely to shrink in size and as a consequence it is not warranted at this time to carry the kind of overhead we have with our legal department. This ballot initiative would put the issue before Emeryville voters and will permit both pro and con arguments to respond and these will be printed on the ballot.

It's important to resolve this issue.  Signers of the petition for the ballot initiative will remain anonymous to all but the Alameda county registrar.  Please sign this ballot initiative petition. Contact me at (510) 435-1861 or Joan Strasser at (510) 653-3174 and we will make the petition available for you.  Council member Ken Bukowski also can be contacted at 305-0000 and he will bring the petition to you.

-Scott Donahue

 Emeryville resident

Council Member Bukowski's Letter: City Attorney's Office

Any Emeryville elected official that makes a submittal request to the Tattler for publication, we will oblige.  Here then is Council Member Ken Bukowski's unedited  letter to the Tattler, received today:

Memo from Emeryville Council Member Ken Bukowski

       (510)  305-0000

To all:

I am requesting your support to urge the other members of the city council to have the Department of the City Attorney be required to keep hourly records of time spent by his office as well as other attorney's working in his department for every activity the city has to pay for.

As taxpayers in this community it makes sense to impose this requirement as we seek to identify wasteful spending in all city government.  This request is a common practice in the field of law, and the City Attorney & his staff, should be required to be accountable.

I remain disappointed the City Council refuses to consider the option of using outside counsel to perform the functions of the City Attorney's Office.  There is no good reason why the city council should not explore the option of using outside counsel. 

We're paying the City Attorney about $24,000 per month with nine months severance pay...  He earns more than the Oakland City Attorney. We pay the same amount of money as the City of Pittsburg pays for it's contract with an outside law firm of Myers-Nova who handles all their legal work. Their redevelopment agency is TEN TIMES the size of the City of Emeryville's redevelopment project.

When the State took money from redevelopment agencies last year, by a percentage of economic activity, the City of Pittsburg was required to return $128 million dollars to the State, compared to the $2.1 million the city of Emeryville had to pay, to give you some comparison.

The fact the city attorney works directly for the city council is a problem. The City Attorney must satisfy at least three members of the city council to keep his job. This creates a direct personal relationship between the city council members and the person holding the position.  The use of an outside firm prevents the possibility of such relationships.

Employee performance of the city attorney with an outside law firm would be determined by whether the client is satisfied. Such evaluations could occur annually, The question of client satisfaction would definitely include the opinion of the city manager, in an atmosphere where such criticism would be welcome, and not seen as an attack upon another employee of equal status with the city council. The City Manager does not participate in the evaluation of the City Attorney...?  A major flaw in the evaluation process.

The evaluation would also provide for the city council members to be objective where there is no personal relationship with individual city council members. Proper review of legal performance should occur outside of any political consideration. 

Specifically, as long as this city attorney knows that pleasing Nora Davis means he must do things against Ken Bukowski, and others, the system is broken.  Davis' strong level of influence over the City Attorney is a problem which must be recognized. Instead of each council member thinking about issues I raise during evaluation..  They have to decide what happens if anyone decides to support what I'm saying.

Davis will be very displeased........,  Does anyone want to bear the wrath of Nora Davis..?  This is reality.  That is what we have had for a long time. I'm tired of it, and I have to tell people about it.

At this point I'm simply asking for your support for the requirement for the city attorney to keep hourly accounting of all legal services performed. The council will be continuing the evaluation of his performance at the next city council meeting on March 1st.  Now is the time to communicate your support for this idea.

best:

Ken Bukowski

Letter To The Editor: Measure J Poor Public Policy

Unsolicited Letter From Bond Analyst

Measure J Funded With

"VERY Expensive Money",

City "Duplicitous"

The following letter was received by the Tattler from a financial analyst who frequently consults municipalities about bond financing. The writer included a boiler plate schedule of debt service in the form of a non-electronic snail mail attachment that is referenced in the letter. The debt service schedule is not included here but readers may glean what the writer is meaning from the content of the letter below. The letter is verbatim. The writer has requested anonymity.

These types of projects tend to create short-term jobs (a good thing) and give the community an asset well beyond the life of the debt issued to finance it (a good thing). But they also come with maintenance costs that will suck money from either the City or the School’s general fund for years to come (a bad thing).

The project may possibly be promoted as a school bond because a) the voter approval threshold is only 55% (as compared to 66% for the City with general obligation bonds) and b) school bonds are far more likely to pass. I think this is duplicitous and poor public policy.

The cost of the financing is of concern. The school district is issuing zero coupon bonds (also known as capital appreciation bonds or CABs) to finance a portion of the project (See example). There may be multiple reasons why they are using CABs, but typically they are issued to delay the impact of debt service on property tax payers, meaning they won’t have to make any debt service payments until the bonds mature. This delay, however, does not come without a price. Example 1 shows annual debt service costs at any given maturity point for each $1 million repaid to bondholders. On page 1, which is titled “Debt Service Schedule”, the purple column is the amount of principal (i.e. the money the school district will actually receive from the financing) while the blue column is what they’ll pay back. In this example, for the $1 million in debt service paid in 2040, the school district will receive $263,140 today. All told, in this example, the school district will receive $8.94 million in bond proceeds but will pay $21 million in debt service over the life of the CABs.

This is VERY expensive money. If you turn to page 2, I’ve highlighted in yellow the Net Interest Cost of 7.335%. This is essentially the cost of the CABs, even though the interest rate at the time of issuance (or True Interest Cost) is stated as 4.500%. The difference between the Net Interest Cost and the True Interest Cost is the compounding of interest that occurs when a municipality sells CABs (remembering that they aren’t paying anything back until maturity).

By way of comparison, Example 2 is a basic bond structure where the municipality pays principal and interest annually over time. In this example, for the same $8.94 million in bond proceeds the school district receives, they will pay $16.46 million in debt service over the life of the financing. This is about $4.5 million (or 25%) less than the CABs scenario. And here, the True Interest Cost and Net Interest Cost are the same: 4.500%.

You can extrapolate these numbers to reflect the reality of Emeryville’s proposal.

CABs are not “exotic” as the [Tattler] says. They are fairly common and many (if not most) school districts use them to help lessen the impact of property tax increases. The theory is that assessed valuation of the city will grow at a higher rate than the True Interest Cost on the bonds and therefore there will not be the need to raise property taxes in the future to cover the cost of debt service when the CABs begin maturing. Additionally, the school district may have existing bonds maturity when the CABs begin to mature and therefore the property taxes used to pay the old, existing bonds simply start paying the new bonds and therefore no new property taxes are necessary. This theory, though generally true for much of the past 25 years, may not hold today given the state of real estate in California.