| | Published March 26th, 2014
| ConFire's Quest for Additional Revenue
| | By Nick Marnell | | |
When the final draft of the Fitch Report was presented to the Board of Supervisors in February, the document offered no ideas for revenue generation for the Contra Costa County Fire Protection District. The report focused mainly on how the struggling district could improve its service model. "As a fire chief, I've looked for revenue sources for 40 years and found none that were sustainable or reliable," said Jim Broman, the Fitch consultant who made the presentation.
ConFire chief Jeff Carman did not accept that message. He recently outlined his ideas for securing additional revenue for the district, his first notion being the implementation of a first responder fee, a fee-for-service program that he proposed to the Board of Supervisors at its March 11 meeting.
A portion of your property tax bill has traditionally been allocated to fire departments to protect just that - property. But fire districts have expanded their service models over the years to include medical calls, technical rescue operations, hazardous materials responses and the like. As long as times were good, there were no issues providing these and other services.
Times are no longer so good, acknowledged Carman, and revenue needs to increase; at least, to offset the expenses of responding to these non-property protection incidents. "We have to find a way to stabilize our revenue streams, so that is my main priority for the district while I am here," he said.
Carman's proposal will enable ConFire to collect a first responder fee for the assessment and treatment of medical patients at the scene. At $416 per incident, to be billed to insurance companies, Carman expects the district will generate over $1 million per year. The insurance companies benefit, he said, because it will cost them less in the long run to have quality care provided early in a medical emergency. Under a similar, but not identical, program, the Moraga-Orinda Fire District budgeted more than $1 million in ambulance fee revenue this fiscal year.
The Board of Supervisors agreed in principle with Carman's proposal, but supervisors Federal Glover and John Gioia asked Carman to perform more due diligence on its implementation. "We want to be sure we are not violating our responsibilities to the California Welfare and Institutions Code," said Gioia, referring to the county's duty to provide health care services to indigent and dependent poor persons and those otherwise incapacitated.
Other ideas Carman discussed included using the ConFire training division to generate revenue. He explained that the cost of running the division could be offset by allowing colleges and other organizations to use the training facility to provide high level fire service education. "We are fortunate enough to have a facility like we do, and many of our neighbors do not," he said. "We could host training classes at our facility and invite our neighbors. They can attend classes close to home, we collect tuition costs and it is a win/win for all."
The chief envisioned a similar situation involving his maintenance facility, providing repair work for neighboring agencies that do not have their own shop. "If we determine we have extra capacity in our shop, we could contract with those neighboring agencies to bring their equipment to us," said Carman. "It would save them travel time and money, and it could support our fleet maintenance program." He also threw out the possibility of performing mobile repairs on other agencies' apparatus, potential for yet more revenue.
"With our areas of expertise and specialty, including our communication center and radio service programs, we can provide a better and more economical service to our co-operators," said Carman. "We all win!" Other than for the first responder fee program, he did not estimate revenue figures.
First comes internal house cleaning, though. ConFire's lead mechanic retired in February, and the district is considering an organizational change in the fleet maintenance division. Lewis Broschard was recently promoted to assistant chief of support services, and one of his first goals is to improve the performance of the district's communications center.
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Lamorinda Weekly, Moraga CA