State Board Meeting Supervisor’s Report

September 15-17, 2009

Fred Flores, State Supervisor Director

Supervisor Rep Cases Have Increased

This year has had an increase in requests from supervisors for representation. I have been working closely with President Bob Wolf and Rank & File Director Ken Hale. One case is active with legal, another has been resolved and others are pending.

Bargaining

We continue hoping that the CDF Firefighters Bargaining Team will be able to move forward with DPA in the near future. This process continues to be stressed during these economic times. We are hoping once the Rank & File MOU is ratified the supervisors can move forward with a Meet & Confer with DPA. CDF Firefighters is committed and passionate to be inclusive in their bargaining to include supervisors and managers on all extensions and benefits. They are looking to the future of rank and file employees that will promote into supervisor positions.

Impacts of Budget Reductions / Pay Reductions / Furloughs on CAL FIRE

Reductions to the CAL FIRE infrastructure have had a severe effect on the fire services in California. The fire and disaster incidents in California have become more complex over the years with greater risk towards our citizens. Increased population continues to be threatened. Unfortunately, firefighters have lost their lives during these devastating fires. CAL FIRE resources have several challenges between evacuation of residents and curious citizens, rescue & medical aids, structural fire protection and wildland fire suppression. In addition, reductions imposed over the years can be crippling to our operational effectiveness.

Potential Operational Impacts to CAL FIRE

Furloughs to our department will generate more costs, reduced service and will have greater threats to place citizens of California in harm’s way. The retirement of our assistant chiefs and higher will impact our department’s leadership ability. There is the potential retirement of incident commanders from the ten CAL FIRE Incident Command Teams. This will have an impact to the emergency mitigation within California. Battalion chiefs will have a challenge to accept reduced wages and benefits to promote to assistant chiefs for the benefit of the state. There must be a benefit to an employee when they are incurring a promotional change which increases their workload and responsibilities. Our leaders must be afforded a promotion without penalty to them or their families.

CAL FIRE’s infrastructure trends are over 40 years old due to our many years of conserving costs by maintaining the same infrastructure in the CAL FIRE units. This has an extensive impact on current cost factors just to maintain this at marginal operating requirements. There are increased mobile equipment maintenance costs due to an old fleet caused by constant reduction to this funding during years of state short falls. This area needs to remain stable to reduce the high cost of maintaining old infrastructure and mobile equipment.

Where do we go from here?

CAL FIRE needs to maintain the current essential service to mitigate disasters in California and adjoining states during these very difficult fiscal times. We must continue to provide “emergency response” to medicals, rescues, hazardous materials spills, wildland fires, structure fires, commercial fires, floods, earthquakes, watershed threats and other disaster incidents for our citizens. CAL FIRE Incident Command Teams need to remain intact in order to meet the demands of the department’s mission and vision. The recommendations to reduce costs or to furlough our department will generate more costs, possibly reduced service and present greater threats to the citizens of California.

We must be reminded that the cost of fighting the major fires continues to be less than 2% of the total cost lost with commerce, disruption of business days, employee loss time, transportation, stop of tourism, resource impacts and much more. This applies to all disasters in our state. California requires a strong and staffed CAL FIRE to prevent and reduce further revenue losses from disasters to our state with a strong mutual aid program with other fire departments and fire districts. We must continue to support a strong and experience CAL FIRE Department.