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Menlo Fire Chief Harold Schapelhouman has recommended that the fire board reject several of the findings and three recommendations in a recent critical San Mateo County Civil Grand Jury report about the district. Discussing how the district should respond to the report is on the agenda for the Menlo Park Fire Protection District’s board meeting on Tuesday, Aug. 21.
The meeting starts at 7 p.m. in the classroom at the district’s fire station at 300 Middlefield Road.
The district has until Oct. 10 to respond to the 10 recommended actions and 19 findings in the report, titled “Menlo Park Fire Protection District: Ready for Growth?”
As all public agencies must do when they are subjects of grand jury reports, the district has 60 days to file a response approved by its governing board. If the district disagrees with any of the findings or plans not to follow recommendations in the report, it must explain why.
Schapelhouman has recommended that the district disagree with eight of the report’s findings and three of its recommended actions, but his report does not give any reasons for his recommendations.
Findings
Two findings the chief recommends disagreeing with concern a report by consulting firm Citygate, approved by the fire board in February 2017. Schapelhouman says the district should disagree with the finding that the Citygate report recommended the district look for a new location for its Atherton fire station before making a final decision on the location of the Atherton and North Fair Oaks stations. (That Citygate recommendation can be found on page 13, number 3, of its report.) He also endorses disagreeing with the finding that “notwithstanding the Citygate recommendation” to move the station, the district purchased a home next door to the station “reportedly to eventually expand the station.”
The chief also urges the district to disagree with a finding that because the district does not have “a strategic plan, associated financial analysis, and land acquisition plan” it “was unable to persuade” the jurisdictions it covers (Menlo Park, East Palo Alto, Atherton and adjacent unincorporated areas) “to adopt impact fees on new residential and commercial developments.”
Three other findings the chief recommends rejecting have to do with the district getting money from Facebook. The grand jury report says by soliciting or accepting donations from a business “subject to inspection and regulation” by district employees, the fire district “has created the possible appearance of favorable treatment or disparate application of rules or laws.”
The final two findings Schapelhouman recommends the district disagree with concern accreditation. One says the district has not “progressed beyond the first phase of the accreditation process since 2011.”
A second says the district’s “management and governance structure has not demonstrated the ability to balance ongoing emergency response responsibilities with administrative and planning functions” and that has proved an impediment “to completing a strategic plan and achieving accreditation.”
The fire district must also respond to each of the report’s 10 recommended actions, with one of four options:
• A promise to implement the recommended action with a timetable for doing so.
• A report on how the recommended action has already been implemented.
• A promise to take up to six months to further study a recommended action, before making a decision on implementing it.
• An explanation of why the recommended action “is not warranted or reasonable” and won’t be implemented.
Recommended actions
Schapelhouman’s report says the district should reject three of the grand jury’s 10 recommended actions.
The fire chief recommends disagreeing with the recommendation to talk to officials in the jurisdictions it covers “to evaluate if impact fees on new development are necessary to adequately fund District operations in future years.” That recommendation was to be implemented by the end of this year.
He also disagreed that the district should commit to completing the Commission on Fire Accreditation International accreditation process by the end of 2019.
Schapelhouman also recommends that the district disagree with the grand jury recommendation that it should adopt a policy “not to pursue or accept donations from any private entity over which it exercises any official powers, such as building or plan inspection, or enforcement of any law or regulation” by the end of 2018.
Among the actions Schapelhouman recommends the district implement is one asking the district to review the Citygate report about the location of the Atherton fire station and “re-examine the basis for purchasing the Atherton property” by June 30, 2019.
The other grand jury actions that Schapelhouman recommends agreement with are:
• Prepare an updated fire station location and land acquisition plan encompassing the entire district by June 30, 2019.
• Ensure that the district’s administrative functions operate effectively regardless of competing short-term priorities caused by emergency response operations, including the establishment of an ongoing management process to track progress and results of agency goals and objectives relating to general organizational and operational programs by June 30, 2019.
• Review the consultant recommendations relative to the location of Station 3 and re-examine the basis for purchasing the Atherton property by June 30, 2019.
• If impact fees are determined to be necessary to fund district operations in future years, the district should initiate an effort to satisfy local government requirements, such as an independent analysis of the district’s fiscal condition, to implement an impact fee program, by Dec. 31, 2019.
• Once the district has been accredited, annually budget sufficient funds to cover all costs associated with maintaining accreditation, including staff resources, training, and consultant services, by June 30, 2020.
• Expand its website to include a description of special districts in general and the Menlo Park Fire Protection District in particular by June 30, 2019.
Capital improvement priorities
Also on the meeting agenda is a discussion of possibly changing the district’s priorities for building new fire stations and other capital improvements.
In June, Schapelhouman asked the board to approve a budget, funding strategy and design direction for a new fire station on the 2 acres the district now owns at 300 Middlefield Road in Menlo Park.
After the board balked at the up to $70 million cost, the chief has come back with new priorities for the district’s capital improvements.
His new recommended priorities, which did not include costs, are:
• Priority one – upgrading the warehouse the district recently purchased in East Palo Alto so the district can rent approximately 10,000 square feet of it to the federal government’s Urban Search and Rescue Task Force for $10,000 a month.
• Priority two – removing the pool, upgrading the home and possibly building a new structure on the district’s 28 Almendral Ave. property in Atherton.
• Priority three – building a new training tower, meeting rooms and emergency operations center at 300 Middlefield Road, and moving a historic home the district owns on Santa Margarita Avenue to the site.
• Priority four – building a new fire station on Alameda de las Pulgas. The proposal is for a two-story station with 10 bedrooms to sleep 11 firefighters.
•Priority five – upgrade the district’s Chilco Avenue station to allow one additional firefighter.
•Priority six – explore the relocation of the district’s North Fair Oaks fire station.
•Priority seven – build a new fire station at 300 Middlefield Road.
See earlier story:
Grand jury says Menlo fire district is not prepared to deal with growth
On balance, I have agreed with 11 of 19 findings and 7 of 10 recommendations and I would frame our respectful disagreement with the other Civil Grand Jury items on “context”, which will first be discussed with the elected Fire Board, who has the ultimate say in this matter.
That’s an improvement of our initial June 2018 preliminary interaction with the Civil Grand Jury’s “Facts and Findings” where I recommended, and the Board agreed, that we were in agreement on 13 of 18 statements of “fact” and 6 of 21 statements of “findings”. We essentially helped them with their final report.
The Civil Grand Jury spent a year looking at almost every aspect of the Fire Districts Operations. We provided them with timely information, responded to numerous public records requests and spent over a hundred hours of staff time in interviews and researching and finding documents for them.
Overall, the issues in this report are important, but in the big picture analysis of the Fire District, the Civil Grand Jury noted that the District excels in its Core Mission of protecting and responding to the emergency needs of the communities we serve daily. That’s important but rarely mentioned.
We agree and acknowledge that in many areas, as listed, there is room for improvement and we are already working towards some of those areas, However, in other areas, I will simply recommend that we respectfully not agree. As the Fire Chief, and after 37 years of working in this organization day in and day out I can’t recommend to the Fire Board that we agree with some of the findings and facts, as listed, and i will discuss why in a public meeting with the elected Fire Board that will be available for our residents to watch, if they are interested, on YouTube by going to our website at Menlofire.org.
Harold Schapelhouman, Fire Chief
The Grand Jury report says by accepting money directly from Facebook the District has “has created the possible appearance of favorable treatment or disparate application of rules or laws.”
This language is way too mild. A public agency cannot accept money from an entity when it enforces rules and laws against it. On its face it is wrong for the District, or any other government agency to accept money directly from Facebook. Elected leaders vote to tax a new development and then allocate those taxes to meet public needs created by the development. The public then holds those elected leaders accountable.
Public agencies routinely negotiate impact fees with developers.
For example, Menlo Park negotiated significant impact fees for the city from the Gateway Project and then told the Fire District to do the same.