2:15pm | Whoever coined the phrase “Things are tough all over” might as well have been talking about fiscal Long Beach in the second decade of the 21st century, as recent budgetary problems have cut into city services across the board.
Along with those regarding police, nothing captures the imagination — as in bringing about nightmares — of Long Beach residents like cuts to the Long Beach Fire Department.
And with good reason. To rehire a metaphor employed by Deputy Fire Chief Jeff Reeb in a previous story, each piece removed from the chessboard is one fewer piece of firefighting goodness that can come to your rescue.
On October 1, Fire Department Station 14, which resides in Councilmember Gary DeLong’s 3rd District, became one of those lost pieces. Though it remains open, it is now home only to a two-person paramedic unit, thus becoming a fire station without any firefighting capability.
Some residents place the blame for this squarely on DeLong’s shoulders, saying he ought to have been on board with a plan offered by a trio of his council cohort to use some of the $18.4 million surplus in the Uplands Oil Fund to at least hold the line on cuts such as Station 14 has suffered, especially considering the recent years have already brought similar cuts to public safety.
“Three years in a row Station 14 was cut,” says Jody Storey, whose husband Kirk was an engineer at Station 14. “I feel like [DeLong] is not fighting for his district, as far as fire protection. … [Station 14] was built in 1986. Since then we’ve added many, many homes in that area. So it’s serving more homes now than it was when it was first built. … Last year [i.e., Fiscal 2011] we lost our [fire] engine, and this year [i.e., Fiscal 2012] we’ve lost a truck that still had four firefighters.”
An objection voiced 3rd District denizens is that DeLong has intentionally misdirected concerned residents from the issue at hand. Storey, for example, recalls that at a summertime community meeting on the subject at Lowell Elementary School DeLong asserted that the October 1 cut would return Station 14 to its 2007 level. “He says that we’re going back to the same service we had in 2007, and that is not true: in 2007 we had an engine there,” says Storey. “This year the truck is gone, and in 2007 when the truck came, we had an engine. … He continually says that [service will return to the 2007 level], and that’s a flat-out lie.”
While DeLong says he never made such a claim, longtime resident Russ Putnam was left with another negative impression from the same meeting: that DeLong took advantage of the fact that most people do not know the difference between a fire truck and a fire engine to obfuscate the reality of the situation. “It was absolutely incredible,” Putnam says. “I just sat there with my mouth open. He was using these terms … to confuse the people that he’s representing, the people in his own district.”
Beth Barnes, meanwhile, reports that DeLong deflected her concerns in a different manner: by recognizing that some of her information came from her friend Storey and insinuating that Storey’s motivations have been less than pure. “He called me back [i.e., in response to an e-mail she had sent,] and said something along the lines of, ‘Our hands are tied; there’s nothing we can do.’ And then he said something that really struck a chord with me. He said, ‘I take it you’re getting all your information from Jody Storey.'”
And while Barnes says she can’t quote verbatim what DeLong said next, she clearly recalls the implication: that Storey’s interest was related only to her husband’s employment status, “because they want more money.”
Storey bristles at such a suggestion. “Now [DeLong] is kind of getting personal about it, saying that I’m so upset about it because my husband worked there,” she says. “Well, my husband’s retiring. [The point is,] I have no fire engine at my fire station. We have no truck, we have no engine. … [DeLong] is very adamant that he’s not going to spend any [Uplands] money on that because … he wants [the surplus] for one-time projects and doesn’t want it to fund personnel. I understand his position, and I disagree strongly with it.”
For his part, DeLong says it’s important to keep in view that cuts had to be made all over the City — and not just to the fire department. “I’d ask [people who have complaints about fire department cuts], ‘What would you like us to cut?'” he says. “‘Would you like us to cut parks, or police, or public works, or what?’ It’s not necessarily helpful [simply] to say you don’t want the fire department to be cut. What would be helpful is if they said what specifically they’d like to be cut instead.”
DeLong reports that some of his constituents are not keeping the big, citywide picture in mind, instead suggesting that the cuts should simply be made to affect some other part of the city. “[But] the fire chief [was] telling us is that the one of the cuts that would have the least impact of service is to Station 14,” DeLong says. “It’s disappointing that [3rd District residents] would say for us to [make cuts] somewhere else in the city, when the fire department says this is the place where it would have the least impact. I think we need to look at the city as a whole.”
Assistant Chief Mike Duree reports that because the truck at Station 14 was the most recent departmental resource put in place, it was the first to go when budgetary issues mandated departmental cutbacks.
Duree also says that based on computer modeling, the department does not expect the cutback to Station 14 to preclude the department from meeting the response standard set by the National Fire Protection Association. “We still expect that Stations 4, 8, or 22 will still be able to respond within six minutes 90 percent of the time to Station 14’s geographic area,” Duree says. “That’s our expectation. Will we achieve it all the time? No, because they’re running calls in their own respective geographic districts, as well.”
Duree acknowledges, of course, that the removal of the equipment may very well negatively impact the department’s response time, quoting (to the best of his recollection) Chief Alan Patalano as estimating (based on computer modeling with data from the previous year) that response to a call to Station 14’s service area will be, on average, one minute 23 seconds slower than when Station 14 had a firefighting apparatus.
“The reductions the Fire Department has made are designed to minimize impacts, where possible, and provide sufficient fire protection to all areas of the City,” Patalano writes in an October 7 e-mail to Barnes. “In addition, the Fire Department will closely monitor the system and makes changes, as necessary, should an area be identified as being severely impacted as a result of the reductions.”
“The chief, the assistant chief, Mr. DeLong, they can all tell us that the trucks are still going to come,” says Storey. “But there’s no way there won’t be a delay. No way. And they aren’t stating that fact. … I respect the chief. All the cuts that he’s had to make, he’s been given a budget. I realize he works for the city manager and the city council, and he’s only doing what he’s been told to do.”
If anyone has undersold the impact of Fiscal 2012 cuts, DeLong certainly does not undersell the budgetary problems looming on the horizon.
“As each year goes, the cuts are becoming more and more difficult to make, and are becoming more impactful,” DeLong says. “All of the people concerned about the cuts to Fiscal Year 2012, they should be really concerned about 2013 and 2014.”
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