National firefighting industry standards call for one fire station for every 1.5 mile radius, and one ladder truck for every 2 mile radius. Alameda is 4 miles long; we need two stations and 1 ladder truck.

If our city did just three things—-reduce four fire stations to two, mothballed two of our three ladder trucks, and cut 15 of our 20 fire captains (who earn on average $217/K/year [$3.25M/year alone!])-—it would make Measure C’s relatively paltry $1.8m tax revenue per year irrelevant. 

Instead, the City has acted in opposition to that independent evaluation. Today, we have 92 station personnel, four open fire stations, 20 captains, and plans for six new facilities requiring additional staffing. The AFD’s overstaffing currently costs Alameda Citizens $4M+ annually. Measure C’s projected $11M cost for fire facilities will actually be doubled by the bond costs. We are being asked for $22M for fire facilities we don’t need.

According to the City’s Fiscal Sustainability Committee, actual City debt was almost $12M in 2009, despite the passing of the Measure P property tax in 2008.

In 2011, debt spiked 250% to $4.4M, and another 24% since then, to $5.1M, making actual debt today north of $15M. It was deceptive or shockingly uninformed of Vice Mayor Bonta to tell people that the City’s debt is decreasing each year and soon the City will be debt-free.

2011 city worker earnings skyrocketed $4.8M above 2010. 30% of fire and police earn $200K – $400K. 88% take home over $150K. Additionally, there are 66 retired workers drawing annual pensions over $100k.

Measure C does three things:

1) Suggests, but does not guarantee, city improvements (Carnegie Library, 50m pool, lighted fields)

2) Allocates 50% of the tax revenue to offload 90% of our annual city-vehicle costs from the General Fund, to offset continued overstaffing and exorbitant worker pay, and

3) Allocates the other 50% to pay for bonds to build fire stations we don’t need, to prioritize firefighting when only 25% of AFD calls are for fire responses. These costs will only continue to spike as we hire new staff .

Why are firefighters going house to house to campaign for Measure C? Why does the firefighters’ union pump nearly $50K each year into our local elections? Is it because they can afford to? Six fire staff earn over $240/K per year, 34 earn over $200K, and the rest mostly earn over $150K. Is it because the AFD’s high staff-to-call ratio makes it so easy?  Are firefighters campaigning for their own security or the security of the Citizens of Alameda?  The ICMA found the AFD lacked performance management and measurements. Despite our talented personnel, the AFD is responsible for a string of failures in recent years: they didn’t protect our public and environmental health from toxic and regulated substances (friable asbestos and crude oil), they didn’t  rescue Raymond Zack one year ago, and they have engaged in other behavior that has incurred several lawsuits against the City.

In the future, a well-written sales tax measure could be a great idea. But today, there is no justification to impose a 30-year sales tax to fund an excess of fire facilities.

Alameda needs fiscal responsibility focused on necessary services. We demand that the City stop wasting our hard-earned money and get to work for the Citizens of Alameda.

Get informed, read the facts (www.AlamedaNoOnC.com) and join me—June 5^th—vote NO on Measure C.

Moreover, few residents and none of the city leadership/management are alarmed at the financial risk the fire services contracts put us at, or the abnormally high number of fire fighters per capita we have, or the low number of police officers per capita that we have. I don’t have the numbers, but haven’t you noticed? I could be wrong but I used to see them regularly whenever I went out, but I rarely see an APD cruiser anymore, do you?

City leadership is intent on making bad decisions on significant, way too significant, issues and the majority of residents prefer having their heads in the sand and heavily resent having it pulled out even momentarily. Many are rightfully up in arms about the landswap, but seriously?  That’s more important than the risks to our individual, public and environmental safety and health? I think not! Like the hospital and the healthcare district, people would prefer to believe everything is copacetic. I assure you, it is not. The facts are glaring.

I’m tapping out, folks. Why? Because the city leadership and management are entrenched, haughty, deaf, and worse.

That and I actually have productive things that I can do with my time. You  know, the type of activities that actually accomplish something because the people you’re working with make sense and give a damn for all the right reasons? Yeah, that. Actually, anything could be categorized as more productive than being civically engaged in Alameda in 2011.

No amount of civic engagement and dialog is going to do a damn thing here. The only thing that is going to fix Alameda, and I quote another Alamedan here, is to “vote the bastards out”. He was talking about the mayor and city council.

And consider this:

Any organization will naturally evolve towards the reduction of risk. The only time it does not is when there is either ignorance (lack of information or inability to think things through) or corruption. We know, evidence shows, that the directions the AHD board’s majority leadership are taking us are increasing our risk (medically, financially). We also know that the facts are available to make better decisions and those in charge have the mental capacity to comprehend those facts and understand the increased—unacceptable by regular business and healthcare conventions—risks their decisions are creating (and for which leaves us [Alameda residents] high & dry, left holding the debt they created.)

It follows then, does it not?, that: we can safely conclude that there is corruption in the AHD board and Alameda Hospital’s leadership and management.

Write the misbehaving Alameda Healthcare District board. Tell them to shape up or ship out:

Jordan Battani, President: JBattani@alamedahospital.org

Robert Deutsch, M.D., 1st Vice President: RDeutsch@alamedahospital.org

J. Michael McCormick, Treasurer: Mmccormick@alamedahospital.org

Steward Chen, D.C., 2nd Vice President: SChen@alamedahospital.org

And support Mr. Elliot Gorelick’s work on the AHD board. His evidence-based discussions—the first rational discussions ever at the AHD that I can tell—are significant towards helping us understand what’s really going on. And what’s been going on since the inception of the AHD in 2002 (and the hospital by itself before that), is not on the up and up.  Not even close. Never has been apparently. (You’ll remember the gaming of the emergency medical systems [ambulance] protocols since the early 1980s through last year [2010!] to ensure revenue-bringing acute cases be brought to the hospital….despite the fact that other hospitals were medically the correct choice and contemporary medical standard for care all of those years!)

Elliott Gorelick, Secretary: EGorelick@alamedahospital.org

Bookmark and read regularly: Mr. Gorelick’s blog is Notes from the Hospital

We are a small unaffiliated group of Alameda residents who wrote, signed, and sent a request for an investigation to California State Attorney General (AG) Kamala Harris. We are unrelated by campaigns or any politics but are united in a single purpose: we have a right to expect fire services to rescue and protect us and we have a right to expect our city management to ensure this.

It seems simple, yet our city has been failing us in this regard for years—we have been subjected to a series of extreme city-wide exposures to highly toxic and regulated substances (asbestos and crude oil) and now these failings have culminated in the death of Raymond Zack.

Why?  Moreover, what or whom is next?!

Our fire services have politicized the issue, and rather than take our complaints seriously, our mayor exacerbated the situation: without a recruitment process, she placed a retired captain unqualified to lead at the helm of our fire services of a city of 74,000 residents. This contradicts everything we know about how fire and public management skills, rank, ICS (Incident Command System), and recent experience matter when it comes to public safety services. We brought our concerns to fire and city management and leadership. When those proved unresponsive, we felt it was necessary for the safety of this community to escalate it and bring these issues to the attention of AG Harris.

Signed: Horst Breuer (former Economic Development Commission Chair), Greg de Haan, Adam Gillitt (2010 city council candidate), Denise Lai, Mark Linde, Karin Lucas (attorney, former city council member), Rosemary McNally,  Liz Williams.

There is no group of local activists called Raising Hell for Good. There is no RHG acronym.  Raising Hell is merely my blog. D’oh.

Letter to the State AG: The group of people who wrote and signed a request for an investigation into the city corruption to CA AG Kamala Harris are a group of friends who have HAD IT and thought it appropriate to engage the state AG and expedite a letter thereto. The signers are unaffiliated with my blog; I  just happen to be one of the signers; and the letter was sent quite a while ago, not last week. Our primary issue is that we have a right as residents to expect our fire services to at least meet contemporary standards in the industry of firefighting and actually, oh, rescue us and protect us and our environment, and we gave proof that we have been receiving substandard fire response and performance in the City of Alameda repeatedly, year after year, that is correlated deaths in years past, recent extreme toxic pollution to individual, public, and environmental health, and culminating in the death of Mr. Zack. It’s gotten worse, not better. We are not safe, people have died, and we need help because we have repeatedly asked for help from fire management, city management, the county DA, the county grand jury, and all have been unresponsive.

Dom Weaver (local fire union president) wants you to think that all those who signed this letter are all DeHaan supporters. He’s trying to get you to believe that there’s a politically split faction at play here. That couldn’t be further from the truth. … I myself did not support DeHaan in 2010. And I have no idea who each of the signers did support. We did not come together because we are politically aligned in any way. We came together because we fear for our safety and the safety of others in our city. And rightfully so! We came together because we could not sit here and do nothing; we could not NOT do something because fire services failures in our city have been escalating the harm to us year over year. What type of harm will we see and suffer from the next AFD failure?!

Dom Weaver (IAFF Local 689 President) thinks the Letter to state AG Harris is a political action. Okay, so let’s follow that line of thinking. Being polluted by 50,000 square feet of extremely toxic friable asbestos contaminating our children, families, land and water was very real. Recurring for years, if not decades,  pollution to our lungs, air and water with extremely toxic crude oil was very real. The unnecessary death of Mr. Zack was very real. The placement of a retired captain and prior IAFF Local 689 President to the top management position, and without any recruitment process whatsoever, is the very real; this puts all of us at increased risk from the very real fact that Acting Interim Chief D’Orazi has zero fire or public management degrees, certificates or experience, and he’s coming out of retirement after 5 years (usually a disqualifier for fire management positions). Rank and chain of command in fire and police services organizations are key to our safety, is it not? We-the-residents as well as our firefighters are the ones put at risk whenever those at the helm are unqualified for the position. Bringing these wholly unacceptable events AFD failures, and the AFD’s substandard management and responses/performances to the attention of those in charge is not political. It’s our obligation as residents to seek help when all else fails and from those who have the authority to do something about the problems.

BUT, since Mr. Weaver, a firefighter himself, perceives these complaints about very real AFD failures to be political in nature, then it would follow, would it not?, that the IAFF Local 689′s failures to perform technical, water, and toxic rescues in recent years have in and of themselves been political acts. (!)  This is something that is quite unbelievable to even consider, yet everything appears to indicate that this is true, does it not? And this is why we asked for AG Kamala Harris’ help; we need an expert investigation into the causes of the continued failures of our fires services and solutions therefor. It has been shown that we are not safe and that fire responses have exacerbated harm to us, not protected us. We have a right to be safe. And if those in charge won’t do their jobs to protect us, we have a right to have that investigated and our safety restored.

Questions: why hasn’t the city and the AFD be ALL OVER these series of distinct and extreme failures doing everything possible to prevent each type from happening in the future? Why wouldn’t the IAFF Local 689? (If Mr. Zack had not died, things still would be business as usual; despite the hailing of the Grijalva report as significant, it has done little to change anything.) Why wouldn’t the mayor, city manager, and IAFF Local 689 want to do a proper recruitment for a qualified fire chief? Why would they place a retired captain at the helm of our fire services? Why would none of them evaluate and consider a move to County Fire when that would provide us with significantly improved ability to serve and protect and save our city millions per year?  I want to know the answers to these questions; don’t you?

It’s a known fact that organizations and humans tend to evolve to lower their risk.  The only thing that would sustain unacceptable levels of risk within any organization is either ignorance or corruption. Since everyone tells me that those in charge of this city and her agencies are smart (even when they do dumb things), then we have to assume the latter, corruption, right?

We are not a ship of fools. I’m also, personally, am not fooled by the firetrucks that have headed west past my house, full sirens and lights, just for the one block, going nowhere. For five years, all firetrucks head east and only east down my street and only when there is an event on my street. Why have fire vehicles recently then, gone blazing headed west past my house, then turn off all their sound/lights and quietly zigzag over to Buena Vista Avenue? I’ll leave speculation to the reader.

Human Being Extraordinaire: Dee Berry. You’ll just have to watch last night’s council meeting….there are no words. Mr. Zack was a “gentle giant” who would never be violent or dangerous and moreover, would—because of his extremely strong Catholic faith—never consider suicide.  He was doing exactly what he was reported to say he was doing on Memorial Day: praying. And he’d done something similar before: APD had previously brought him home one morning from Crown Beach when he’d sat on the beach overnight praying….

Humble Pie: APD Chief Noonan as evidenced about 2/3rds the way into KTVU Channel 2 News coverage of last night’s meeting. Thank you, Chief, for your humility and your apologies.

Effective: City Manager Russo acknowledging the evidence in the Grijalva Report that points to a hostile and dysfunctional relationship between the city’s sister first responder agencies: the AFD and the APD. Both agencies must have been chastised and been given an ultimatum by CM Russo to fix this as both Chief Noonan and Acting Interim Chief D’Orazi went to great lengths to mention interdepartmental programs and training. Also effective: CM Russo correctly took notes listing the questions posed by residents speaking at the podium and returned to those questions later, having Chief Grijalva answer them.

Overall: Despite the almost missing—it is so minimal—emphasis in the Grijalva report on improved procedures and protocols, it appears that the AFD and the APD have been and will be focusing on bringing their P&Ps up to date and improving Incident Command System familiarity and capabilities particularly where mutual aid and multiple agency responses are required. (OTOH, the AFD’s emphasis on being self-sufficient seemed to contradict this last night.)

Doing his job: Council Member DeHaan asking good questions. God know, no other council member was! Thank You to Mr. DeHaan for this, for taking his job sincerely and truly representing we-the-people’s interests and concerns. Why is every other other council members failing us in this regard?

Teamwork: CM Russo coined a new term, Team Alameda. I hope that term becomes common parlance and the meaning fully integrated into our political and social culture.

THE SAD

Hall of Shame: Mayor Marie Gilmore sounding like she has no clue how to lead the discussion last night.  She is a kissing-babies mayor, not a thought and critical-discussion leader. When the meeting got to the point where Grijalva would answer the questions posed by residents, Mayor Gilmore had no clue what to do: she hadn’t taken a single note about the important questions that concerned residents took their time to bring to her attention during this meeting! CM Russo stepped in & saved that day. But then, OMG, the one thing Dee Berry requested last night of Mayor Gilmore—to please remove the term ‘suicidal’ and ‘suicide’ from any descriptions of Raymond Zack—went completely ignored. For shame. How hard would it have been to tell this woman that these terms would be removed from the Grijalva Report and to instruct CM Russo and Chief Grijalva to do so? After what Ms. Berry has been through at our hands and how extremely gracious she was last night, why on earth would Mayor Gilmore not respond to her one simple request?!  This incomprehensible incompetence and insensitivity displayed by our mayor, her single most embarrassing act to date, absolutely breaks my heart. Given the gracious and heart breaking and wrenching talks that Ms. Berry and her friend gave last night, there is no excuse for this omission. Mayor Gilmore’s lip service about caring has been fully negated by this single unbelievably insensitive and unnecessary act of omission last night. Mayor Gilmore should be ashamed, and she should today instruct any reference of Mr. Zack as suicidal be removed from every city record and report, and make a press release stating she has done so and why it’s important to properly characterizing Mr. Zack. The problem for the city is this: the first responders’ performance that day looks even worse if Mr. Zack was not suicidal (that has been the key to the oft proferred excuse for failing to do their job: the man was dangerous to the first responders and he was suicidal; the first responders couldn’t be put at risk [pure bullshit!]). So sorry this makes you look bad; the city needs to man up! Final, but petty, note: Mayor Gilmore doesn’t understand the word ‘proactive’….the work done by both the AFD and APD to fix what’s broke is reactive to an extreme failure and a full-scale CYA.

Telling me that I make the firefighters look bad: Dom Weaver, IAFF Local 689 President (fire union).  The FF’s have done this all on their own. Every firefighter knows what needs to be done with a toxic fire. Every firefighter knows how important the incident command system is. Every firefighter knows how to walk out into calm, warm water and talk to a potential victim. As APD Chief Noonan said last night, one of the primary things that first responders do is talk to people; this is not news nor is it a skill or experience they do not have, firefighters included.

THE UGLY

Wrong headed: that the AFD still doesn’t get that using the Alameda County Sitstat report is important.  The AFD knew about the County SitStat report (list of all rescue equipment available in the region for rescues via mutual aid) but never used the information it contained on Memorial Day. Missing last night was any mention of the AFD valuing and using this critical document on a daily basis; rather, Acting Chief D’Orazi talked about how the AFD has enough equipment to be self-sufficient now; Council Member Tam reiterated this prideful self-sufficiency line that is contradicted by every other part of the discussions last night and by the Grijalva Report itself. Wasn’t that this the big issue in the first place? That we cannot be self-sufficient for every emergency response and our firefighters need to know how to engage and rely on other agencies when need be?  The APD, OTOH, stated quite clearly that it now integrates the daily updated County SitState report into working knowledge every day.

Spin: CM Russo’s questions posed to Chief Grijalva. Mr. Russo asks why Grijalva characterizes Mr. Zack as suicidal. Grijalva says that’s how the call came into county dispatch. Mr. Russo fails to take this to the logical next step: why did the first responder mischaracterize Mr. Zack as suicidal? What information did he use to arrive at this conclusion? With Ms. Berry right there in the audience, and after her gracious single request to strike ‘suicidal’ from the characterizations of her son, why would Mr. Russo reinforce a conclusion that Mr. Zack was suicidal? Hasn’t the woman been through enough? Why not get at the heart of the matter, man up, and find a way to suggest that the first responder may have misconstrued the facts? For everything indicates that this may be true. Why not throw Ms. Berry that bone? And Grijalva’s Report gets facts other wrong too. Russo asks about the effect of water being quite a bit warmer than Chief Grijalva reported it to be: wouldn’t that increase the survivability window for Mr. Zack? Well, yes it would. Then Mr. Russo moves on to the next question. HUH?  The corollary to the corrected fact, that the water was in the 60s and not in the 50s, is this: warmer water makes it even less of a risk to our first responders; they had even more reason to simply wade out there. Mr. Russo goes on to ignore the evidence presented last night by Rosemary McNally that the water was lapping the shores and not the 1 to 3 foot waves that Chief Grijalva reports. This is further evidence that the environmental conditions that day posed no threat to first responders. Why did Chief Grijalva get these facts so wrong? Why was it important to use facts to indicate significant risk factors existed for the first responders when in fact the environment posed very little risk at all? CM Russo fails us miserably here; that he has an agenda, is self-evident.

Black Out: still no answer to the single most significant cause of the failure that contributed to Zack’s death. What we still do not know after last night—and apparently Gilmore, Grijalva, Russo, D’Orazi and Weaver are in collusion on this because the omission is so glaring and consistently ignored by each of them—-is why the firefighters never conducted their funded, scheduled rescue-swimmer training in 2009. And what happened to the $27,000 allocated for that training?  We should know these things. Why don’t we? Grijalva says he was able to discover nothing about this. Why not?  Why did Mr. Russo accept Grijalva’s report as complete and thorough?

Mortal Sin: I know for a fact that the Alameda Fire Department paramedic on scene at the negligent homicide of Raymond Zack failed, and failed miserably (it’s in the docs the city published): he failed to keep the equipment on his ambulance in working order. That’s right: the equipment that is used to resuscitate victims had dead batteries. It is interesting, is it not?, that the Grijalva report ignores any AFD EMS activity. It wasn’t in the purview of his tasks, he said. Why not? We’re talking about a wrongful death at the hands of our first responders! Worse: when Council Member DeHaan asked him point blank if the EMS staff onsite that day had all the equipment they needed to resuscitate Mr. Zack, Chief Grijalva answered YES.

Summary: systems, organizations, and groups of people naturally evolve towards optimization. That’s a fact. The only time we do not is when there is ignorance or corruption that skews the outcome, veers us away from optimization. Mayor Gilmore, CM Russo, Chief Grijalva, Acting Fire Chief D’Orazi, and IAFF Local 689 President Weaver are not ignorant nor are they ignorant of the facts and which questions should be posed and answered.

I’m not making anyone look bad here (don’t Shoot the Messenger); people make themselves look bad. Res ipsa loquitur (the thing speaks for itself).

If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention. If you’ve read this far, there are no excuses.

Caveat to those who want to throw me under the bus for saying what I see: I’ve never said that calling a thing or an act bad is the same thing as calling the person bad. For instance, in CM Russo’s case, he clearly has an agenda to conceal facts here in order to protect the firefighters. This is a disservice to the public and to himself. At the same time his throw down to AFD and APD to fix what’s wrong with the interdepartmental culture is excellent. CM Russo’s powerful personality clearly got action from D’Orazi and Noonan here, action that will make a clear difference in the future IF all of the intents alluded to become reality. Lena Tam, OTOH, seemed focused on throwing the police under the bus and praising the fire services no matter what. Note to Dom Weaver: anything you can do to better represent the Alameda firefighters to the public would be effective towards a better dialog. We know the firefighters are well-trained, that they have the skills and tools to do their job. We know they are heartbroken when they don’t get to do their job well and someone suffers and/or dies (FISC firefighter death, Raymond Zack death). What we don’t know is why they did not protect themselves and us from toxic asbestos and crude oil?  Or why they didn’t follow through with the rescue swimmer training. And mostly why one of yours and one of ours had to die? Without the facts, we cannot trust you which means the firefighters are poorly represented (I doubt very seriously they wish to hide behind the smoke & mirrors that conceal the facts) and the public cannot work with you to optimize public safety services.

The Grijalva Report is a sham. … Haven’t we been subjected to enough at the hands of AFD failures (and city failures to manage AFD)?!?!?  Given the quality (poor) of the report, the deliberate smoke/mirror that it contains to put us off the scent of what’s really wrong at the AFD….it looks like tonight’s meeting is—like so many meetings before this—to instruct us on what went wrong, ignore us when we point out the obvious failings of this report and of the AFD (and years of failed city leadership and management), and send us home us with our tails between our legs.

Grijalva’s report contains inconsistencies, contradictions, constructions that mislead the reader, vague references, discoveries with zero support documents (allusions to facts that were ‘discovered’ with no documentation or sources for those ideas), and a lot of cherry-picked cut-and-paste from various documents, one with a really sketchy header, to show how the Alameda Fire Department failed because they had to: their “unfamiliarity” with the situation wherein a “suicidal” man might drown caused their inability to perform. HUH? Battalion Chief Zombeck said in the news that he himself (on scene that day) had all the skills to rescue Zack if only his management and protocols would have allowed him to get wet!   ….and the report get worse from there….

I am extremely disappointed in City Manager Russo. That fact that CM Russo approved this output from Chief Grijalva tells me volumes. Apparently he has gotten his $20K worth (and please, read between those lines dear reader) because he has published it and scheduled a public city council meeting to discuss it. Apparently CM Russo expects us to accept this pablum as a serious attempt at fixing what’s wrong at the AFD. HUH?

Join me. Tomorrow night (Tuesday, 10/11).  6:30p in front of city hall. We will no longer tolerate the level of risk that city leadership & management are subjecting us to from the ongoing failures at the fire department!

Tell City Manager Russo that the single most important issue facing us is the delinquent and dangerous problems at the AFD and years of our city’s own failed management of the AFD.

The only solution to update, improve and provide fire services *at a price we can afford* is by moving city fire to Alameda County Fire Department.  

~~~~~~~~~~~~

WHAT WE KNOW about the Zack Assisted Suicide  and the Report titled The Crown Beach Incident”

Raymond Zack was despondent, calm & harmless (a kiteboarder circled him), and in distress (he had both arms above his head). Mr. Zack was standing in 5.25 feet of water give or take, and the water was 61 degrees F with no swells.

Grijalva’s report says Zack was threatening and dangerous (wrong), standing in rough water  with swells of 1 to 3 feet (wrong) that was cold, a 54 degrees F (wrong), and hundreds of yards out from shore (wrong again):  the bystander who retrieved the floating, unconscious Zack only had to go out 40 or 50 yards (per Grijalva’s report).

Per Grijalva’s report, the most successful efforts at protecting despondent people putting their lives at risk (deliberately or not), is to engage them in dialog with a trained negotiation. The Wade Out proved that Mr. Zack could have heard someone onshore speaking from a bullhorn and that women 60 years old can wade out there safely with no protective gear whatsoever! Yet our APD did not initiate any verbal communication with Mr. Zack. None. Didn’t put one foot in the water or even try to use a bullhorn.

But the APD did initiate a request for mutual aid before they even arrived on scene that day and then when on scene, tried to engage several other agencies. And our infamous Alameda Fire Department?  They initiated not one single call for mutual aid.  << Did you read that?!  Incident Command System requires that firefighters initiate more than one call for mutual aid within the first few minutes of establishing on-scene command.

Etc. Etc. Etc. I don’t have time to finish my critique of this inane report.

ALAMEDA COUNTY FIRE CHIEF SHELDON GILBERT

This man should be our fire chief.  Alameda (city) Fire Department has proven failed management is the single biggest issue over many years; that problem simply is not going away. And certainly, it’s not going away when Gilmore puts a fire captain (not a chief) at the helm of our city’s fire services!

So what’s so great about Chief Gilbert? Well all the other fire chiefs of all 58 counties in California think he’s a big deal. Visionary. Extraordinary.

- ALAMEDA COUNTY FIRE CHIEF GILBERT NAMED 2011 CHIEF OF THE YEAR -

“Chief Gilbert’s demonstration of creativity, dynamic leadership in challenging economic times and sound vision has benefited the California fire service as a whole,” said CFCA President and ACFD Deputy Chief, Demetrious Shaffer.

Chief Gilbert has demonstrated “exemplary performance in training and education, fire service leadership and management, fire prevention, and community involvement.”

Chief Gilbert has “made a significant impact on the California fire service’s ability to meet the unique risks and challenges that are present within California.”

Note to Russo: Move AFD TO Alamada County Fire Department post haste!  You’ll have an extra $2.5M+ for the city budget and improved fire services that meet and exceed contemporary standards through Chief Gilbert’s extraordinary leadership. And make the City of Alameda more attractive to the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!

But their focus these days is spending our tax dollars in ways that doesn’t benefit most of us…..but does appear to benefit one particular board member and his practice: Dr. Deutsch.

The closed session meeting tomorrow morning…. is apparently to further discuss expansion businesses focused on the geriatric patient population and, in particular, long term care.

Yes, we all know that long-term care can be (emphasis on ‘can’) a profitable thing right now. But so is URGENT CARE.  ALL Alamedans can use urgent care, and would benefit from this far more than keeping a mediocre Emergency Department open, particularly since 80% or so of the cases, perhaps more, seen at the ED are urgent care cases….yet those going there are paying ED prices.  RIDIC.

Alameda Healthcare District Board Member Elliott Gorelick has asked that the “reports for August financials be available before next Wednesday’s special meeting so that the adherence (or lack of adherence) to the 2011/12 budget can be evaluated as part of the process of assessing the credibility of the plans that will be presented in closed session.”  They haven’t been made available. Which means they probably do not meet the criteria for fiduciary responsibility, again. When will they? And who in this city thinks the way our tax dollars are used and the strategies of the District makes sense?!

So here’s tomorrow’s meeting. If you have a mind, go speak it—give them a piece of it—before they go into closed session early tomorrow morning:

~~~~~~~~

City of Alameda Health Care District Special Board Meeting

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

7:30a: Closed Session

9:00a: Open Session

Location: Alameda Hospital (2 East Board Room)

~~~~~~~~

There’s no Public Comment section on the meeting’s agenda, but they have to allow the public to comment before they go into any closed session, so go for it.  Please.

One cannot but think that the recent extreme and unnecessary failures of our AFD (FISC, Crude Oil, Zack) will impact the lab’s decision to locate in Alameda.

One cannot but think the substandard management at the AFD would be an issue for the LBNL. It seems to me that the fact that Mayor Gilmore replaced a qualified chief with an unqualified one would be a red flag for the LBNL team looking at Alameda. Our AFD Interim Fire Chief D’Orazi lacks the qualifications to be a chief officer: see for yourself: the qualifying documents for the AFD management are here.  And doesn’t that mean D’Orazi’s title should be Acting Interim Fire Chief?

And worse:  the two qualified assistant chiefs at AFD recently departed: Fisher and Vogelsang. … Fisher (unexpectedly retired) and Vogelsang (left, no explanation?) were the two assistant chiefs, you know, the kind who took competitive exams to get the job and have the training, experience, and state certifications to be a chief officer?  Yeah, that kind. The kind that matters say to, oh, a national laboratory looking for a new location.

A move to County Fire would better serve all Alamedans and our city AND be attractive to LBNL:

1. At a minimum save the city 10%, likely more (economies of scale, you know, for the ACFD)

2. Immediately provide a properly qualified, organized, and visionary management team

3. Bring the AFD performance standards up to snuff. (Yeah, no more  being told that breathing in friable asbestos and crude oil fumes, and god knows what next!, isn’t toxic! Or that shallow/calm water is too dangerous for firefighters!)

4. Immediately integrate lab-specific response protocols and procedures into the AFD GOBs.  Why?  ACFD has been servicing Lawrence Berkeley National Lab since 2002, and Lawrence Livermore Lab since 2007.

So let’s go people; sign The Petition online here.

To sign a hardcopy, email me privately at: raisinghellforgood (at) gmail (dot) com