Everyone in El Segundo must defeat the greatest threat facing our city – the firefighters union initiative

Everyone in El Segundo must defeat the greatest threat facing our city – the firefighters union initiative

by Michael D. Robbins
Director, Public Safety Project, PublicSafetyProject.org

January 19, 2011

All El Segundo residents and business owners must work even harder to defeat the greatest threat facing our city and our safety – the firefighters union initiative. If their union initiative passes, we will permanently lose our Paramedic Transport Service, and depend on out-of-town ambulances with increased hospital transport times and fees. This is dangerous for everybody who lives, works, or does business in El Segundo, but it is especially dangerous for the elderly in our city. Almost all of the fire department calls are paramedic calls. El Segundo has few fire, and zero, one, or two major structure fires (with $100,000 in damage or more) per year.

The El Segundo City Council will decide at its February 15, 2011 meeting which election date the very dangerous firefighters union initiative will appear on the ballot for El Segundo voters.
The firefighters union initiative, which was circulated almost entirely by firefighter union members who do not live in the city, will force our city to give up local control over our city fire department and contract with Los Angeles County for a minimum of ten years. The L.A. County Fire Department will be the Employer of Record for all the firefighters and paramedics, and our city will not be able to fire any of them for incompetence or dishonesty.

The only reason the union circulated their initiative petition is to protect and lock in their wildly excessive and unsustainable compensation and pensions by going to the L.A. County Fire Department – and dragging all of us with them. The firefighters union president, Christopher Thomason, had total 2009 compensation of at least $256,131. The “proponent” of the initiative, Bryan Partlow, is the only firefighter (or one of two) living in the city. He is one of the lowest paid firefighters, yet his total 2009 compensation was at least $134,674.
The L.A. County Fire Department does not provide Paramedic Transport Service. They rely on out-of-town private ambulance companies. The L.A. County Fire Department paramedics drive utility pickup trucks that cannot transport an injured person to a hospital. El Segundo will permanently lose its legal grandfather status under state law and court decisions that allow El Segundo to regulate and operate Paramedic Transport Service in the City of El Segundo.

Also, all of the city’s expensive, high quality fire department vehicles, apparatus, and equipment will become the property of the Los Angeles County Fire Department, or will be sold at a significant discount as surplus or for salvage value. If the we wants to regain local control over our fire and paramedic response services (no more paramedic transport service), we will have to wait until the ten-year contract expires, and then spend many millions of dollars at one time to purchase a new fire truck and new fire engines and utility vehicles. This will place a tremendous burden on our city, and we will never regain the most important part of our fire department – our Paramedic Transport Service.

Furthermore, if the dangerous firefighters union initiative is not defeated, the Los Angeles County Fire Department will have no reason or incentive to negotiate with our city in good faith for the level of service, price, or contract terms, because they will know that El Segundo has no choice but to contract with L.A. County.