City Council - workshop

All right. Thank you, everybody. We're going to call this meeting to order. City Council Special Meeting Agenda, Wednesday, September 16th, 9 a.m. Roll call, please.

Here. Item 1.3, City Clerk's Report on Posting of the Agenda, please.

Okay, we're going to go immediately to public comment. Do we have any public comment this morning?

All right, then we're going to go right to it. Item 3.1, Fire Service Evaluation Study Session, Current State of the Gary Fire Department and Future Service Delivery Options. Staff report, please.

I'll start off with Council Member Ramirez.

Thank you, Mayor. And I have several questions, so I'm looking behind it if you say that's enough. Thank you for your presentation. This was laid out very simply and you articulated it very well. I just have some questions that I have and then questions I get asked. And one of the questions I'm constantly asked by the community or comments that have been made, can you help explain why we have more than one paramedic? Why don't we just go to, well, there's one paramedic and two firefighters. Why is everybody a paramedic? Can you explain that?

Thank you. So on average, with other fire departments in the area, Do we have a higher than average overtime? And is that based on minimum staffing?

Thank you. How often do we rely on mutual aid?

Council Member Ramsey, I'm going to bounce a little bit, and we could always come back. So I'm going to go to Council Member Fugazi.

I really like the map that you showed. That comes from a website, right? GilroyFireDepartment.org? Yes. Who manages that site? I do. So it is a city resource now?

So we have the public data. This is basically similar to citizen rims for the police kind of thing. Yes. Okay. None of us, or I don't know if any of us knew about it. I didn't know about it, and I'm pretty much tied in. I didn't see it linked off of the website from Gilroy either.

It is live. And it doesn't it's hard for me to know that it's actually the city. That's why I asked because there is no real indication on there. Is that an outside company that we had build that?

Because I can tell from the things. It's great. It's a great resource. I love it. And I love the information. I love the interactivity and I'm very familiar with that stuff. So thank you for doing that. The next question I have is A number of cities, so in everything that you were working on and comparing and we're talking about things like survivability and how much a life is worth and all of that, and a lot of cities I've seen now, everything we've compared looking in the model that we have, right, which is, and excuse me, I am not Mr. Firefighter, I understand what these things are all call

It's one of the reasons why many of them are going to this, too, is because of that, the recruiting issues. And I understand we have a vestigial desire to keep things the way they are. I just wonder if given the amount of medical, it's either they're making the wrong choice and we're going to keep with our right choice, or it could be their choice is right for them. But, I mean, exploring what that is and, you know, my belief Correct me if I'm wrong is that there's diminishing returns right in terms of your survivability with costs, right? So you can start raising your costs a lot and you just

So it's kind of a trade-off on what level of service... Well, there's a trade-off, obviously, like I said, in costs to survivability that happens all the time. And you're trying to find what that number is. I know it sounds very... coarse and morbid maybe to discuss that way but it really has to be looked that way and in terms of yeah I mean my my reality is growing up and seeing the show emergency and you know seeing those guys go out and they didn't have as many you know calls and maybe not as many medical calls but just with the numbers that we see here it just something is not making sense

I'm going to jump to Council Member Klein next.

Real quick. You mentioned about certification, you know, going from 8 to, what, 88? And talking about training, you know, three hours a day and whatnot. Looking at, we have structures being built higher, bigger, taller. And needing training for that type of building, that type of structure fire, what are we doing in terms of finding a training facility or looking at a training facility so we can incorporate those types of things and just acclimate ourselves to that?

What's the number as far as estimated budget?

I'm going to jump to council member Marks next. Before you ask your question, just a reminder to council, I probably should have said this early on, is that we're going to handle this like a typical council meeting. After the questions are done, we're going to go to public comment, and then that's when we can start some deliberations amongst ourselves and brainstorming and that type of thing. Go ahead.

All right. This is just a clarification. County, you said, was going to cost per year $23 million, correct? Correct. Who pays, or let me ask you this, does the city of Gilroy pay that $23 million to county?

All right, so that's what I thought. I wanted a clarification for the public because If we're only investing $16.8 million, my question would be why would we want to invest more to another agency when we could be putting it into ourselves? But I think I know why. Because it's better benefits for the firefighters going with county. So that's something that needs to be talked about in deliberation. Also, how many calls are relegated to the homeless in that 5,000 number that you gave us?

MS. All right, because that's important to know, too, if it's something in management that we can do to lessen the number. All right, thank you. MR.

COMMISSIONER BRACCO. On the north end of town, Do we use county fire most of the time there out of their San Ysidro station?

And is the Treehaven station, is it staffed all the time now?

Thank you. You have another question? Okay.

Just three more. Just real quick. So you made reference to the seismic retrofits in the two stations. Is there a backup plan? So, you know, by that I mean

And you alluded to the fact that we might not get those, a response from that station if something were to happen. But moving beyond that, and we've passed the initial emergency and we realize we cannot utilize that station, do we have another and to house those staff members and apparatus and all that kind of stuff?

I'm asking that because catastrophic earthquake in this area is a reality.

If we transitioned to one of these other alternatives, is there a guarantee that our firefighters would staff the stations? No.

So conceivably, CAL FIRE could say, okay, thank you so much. You're going to be stationed in Bakersfield.

OK. And then just trying to understand this, when you talked about the annexation, That fifty four to ninety seven percent that you had on the screen is that percentage roughly between those numbers Get into our general fund would be then paid out That's a really good question fifty four percent is exactly how the the South Santa Clara Fire Protection District

But until that time, that That deficit in the South Santa Clara Fire District is being paid for by where? Just the overall surplus of dollars that they have from other areas?

Thank you. And then I have another question, a little bit separate. Back to annexation, though. Safe to say, if you said this in the report, sorry if I didn't get it, but I did hear you stress many times 4, 4, 4, 4, so I was afraid to ask, but if we went to a fifth station, safe to say it would be on the east side of 101?

Based on that, if there was a study that said we'd go to a fifth station, and if we decided to have a conversation about annexation. Does the county fire station at Mastin help with that?

Okay. Thank you. Okay, we'll go to Klein, then to Fugacci, and then we'll go to public comment.

Looking at whether it's contracted to county or annexed, what would happen if it's either one of those, what would happen with the fire district down here? You have the, you know, they're currently here. Would that be absorbed into the big picture, or would that still be functioning on its own?

So that would just be absorbed in the big, with the annexation, or with the contract?

They just are providing service in the people Well in the annexation of the properties then you have two aging stations. They would take that burden on to yes Yeah, so that burden would ship the city and

So right, you know, yes, that's part of the discussion As I go to forgot see as you said back on the model if you reallocate those assets like a firehouse they also have to paint it and cut the grass and Yeah. They also have to paint it and cut the grass. Or no more grass. Grass is out. They have to paint it and cut the shrubs. Yeah. Because you have to convert them all. The shrubbery, yeah. Go ahead, Fugazi. Then we'll go to public comment.

Do you feel that the Los Altos annexation is really a good comparison to be used with Gilroy? Because in studying it, it looks like there's a lot of differences between what their situation was, and then moving to go to annexation, it seems way different than our situation.

Okay. And you had said about with contracts that generally as a chief you'd want to have like a 10- or 20-year contract or what have you. But Morgan Hill's contract wasn't that long with CAL FIRE, was it?

And with the contracts, obviously you can wait for them to expire, choose to do something different. Correct. The city takes on some risk because there's some unknown depending on the length of it. But with the annexation model, you're done. You can't go back on it pretty much. Isn't that correct?

Thank you, everybody, for the great questions. We're going to go to public comment.

Hold on, Doug. One second. We're going to get your mic.

Thank you. I'm going to start off with Council Member Hilton.

Thank you. So I'm glad to finally get this discussion started so we can all start dropping some stuff on the table. You know, one thing that really grounds me that I'm really focused on is obviously a good delivery model for the residents of Gilroy and the future residents of Gilroy. And at the same time, you know, ensuring that, you know, we have a healthy place for that individuals want to come to work, that they they want to be a part of this fire service and they want to provide the fire and EMS services here to Gilroy. But as someone who this coming January is going to be the most senior

Why don't I just go all the way to the end and move this way since everybody's hand went up at the same time, thanks.

Chief, so if you contract with someone for fire service, the city would still be responsible for the equipment and the fire stations? Correct. And then if you go with the annexation, It would be off of our, off of us completely.

So under annexation, would we still have some kind of like a contract to govern... Who's responsible for what? You know, say, like, an example is our ambulances. We're supposed to have them down here, but they're not sometimes. What can we do if we went with annexation and all of a sudden our firehouses are empty and our trucks are in San Jose?

So I got to respond to that a little bit. I mean, we're sitting right next to a city administrator who has plenty of years of experience with this. In other cities, Saratoga, Cupertino, Los Gatos that did that. And whether he can speak to it or someone else can actually speak to that relationship of what it's like.

Well, we really don't have a representative at the county.

And at the same time, too, you also have an administrative level position assigned, basically, to have that relationship with Matt through us or through whoever that council is. There's somebody assigned there where you have that constant back and forth. Just imagine it on a different scale. It's no different than the Mosquito Vector Control or the Gilroy Library District, right? It's like, if the Gilroy Library shut down, I would expect Council Member Bracco to come back and be like, hey, you guys, they're going to shut this down. but you still are here and there's providing services. That's

So I think it's actually part of this conversation they're having too, which is while we are part of Santa Clara County, making these comparisons to these cities up there is IT'S ALMOST FARCICAL FOR ME BECAUSE THE DOLLARS IN PROPERTY TAX PER CAPITA UP THERE, ALONG WITH MANY OTHER THINGS, WE ALL KNOW THAT WE ARE THE REDHEADED STEPCHILD OF THE COUNTY NO MATTER WHAT. AND WE CAN SAY THAT THIS IS A DIFFERENT DIVISION OF THIS OR THAT, AND I REALLY DON'T NECESSARILY NEED TO UNDERSTAND HOW IT WORKS. ALL I KNOW IS WHEN THE COUNTY IS IN FRONT OF ANYTHING, IT'S SOMETHING WRONG. THEY'RE OUT OF MONEY, THEY

But it has nothing to do with services for.

Sure, sure. In the county, they're a completely separate. Except we would have zero control. They're an independent district. So if you let, just let me, let me continue, cuz I'll listen to it all from you in a second. The Los Altos thing is certainly interesting in all of this, but when you look, as the Chief said, the CalPERS situation, the amount of assets that we'd have to give up, the amount of control that we'd have to give up, all of these different things that add on top of that, it takes a serious, deep look for us. And I think when I go back to what the City Administrator said a litt

Yes, I have a few comments. Council Member Hilton, you talked about workers coming to Gilroy to a healthy place to work. However, the county isn't going to remodel our stations. City of Gilroy will, and we would have to absorb that cost. Well, you're talking about, well, then you explain, what do you mean by coming to work in a healthy place? What does that mean to you? Because to me, it means coming to a station that's remodeled and, you know.

Correct. And have the city of Gilroy done that?

And they're not probably going to because that's going to cost a lot of money because we've already heard the county is not going to pay for that.

What are you saying? Because that's not.

What I'm saying is don't mislead the people in thinking that if we go to county, all of a sudden.

Go to county through contract or annexation?

Both. They're not going to pay for the remodeling.

If you go to county through annexation, we give up everything that we have and the county is responsible for it all. We transfer the property over.

They're supposed to be responsible. That doesn't mean it's actually going to happen.

Okay, let's move on because I don't believe that. I can't wait. Okay, and then we talked about, okay, you said earlier that When we talked about this a year or two ago, we were going to focus on looking at these models. Focusing and adopting it are two different things. To me, when we focus on something, we are learning about it. And what I'm hearing today does not make me want to jump at all because I've got a lot of questions that I don't think we're going to come out on the better end of this. This needs to be studied very carefully. You know, especially who is taking on the financial respo

I have a question for Council Member Furgati. Can you expand a little bit on your idea of a service model? So that was what you said earlier about even your idea about the way we do medical calls.

Yeah, again, I'm the farthest thing from the expert, which may be in some ways really helps because I'm just looking at it from a real common sense perspective, which says we have this many EMS calls. We have people who we have to have trained to do multiple things. We have fire engines going out on EMS calls. For me, it just seems strange. And then when I went out and did some investigation, I see that there are changes happening You know, quite rapidly, you might say, in a lot of other cities where they're creating these hybrid models to have, you know, EMS, paramedics, whatever, you know, s

I LIKE THE IDEA OF LOOKING AT A DIFFERENT SERVICE MODEL IDEA HERE AS PART OF THE FUTURE EXPLANATION. I THINK I SAW THE SAME NEWS REPORT ABOUT WHAT THEY'RE DOING IN EUROPE. And I'm not sure that we're going to, I'm ready to see, sorry, you guys on a bunch of BMW, Euro, touring bikes, they're really cool. I don't think we're quite there yet, but it goes along with what Council Member Ramirez asked about, Council Member Fregati asked about, is now would be the time that we can look at tweaking the service model. At the same time, I have absolutely no problem of asking for further conversation and

It's not really a statements question. Maybe Harjo is the one to answer this. When we're looking at these four stations and these assets and whatnot, I mean, a rough figure, what are we talking about in valuation here? Is this $200 million? Is this $100 million? Is it $50 million? Well, no, but this doesn't take into account the property and everything else. So, I mean, it's just like where are we in our mind on this? Yeah.

I don't really understand all of those different intricacies. I just know what I read about what Palo Alto did, right, and other things. So that's...

I'M GOING TO KEEP GOING THIS WAY, AND I'LL GET BACK TO YOU, COUNCILMEMBER BRACCO. ONE LAST COMMENT ON FACILITIES. THIS IS WHY I WANT TO HAVE THE STUDY, BECAUSE WE DON'T KNOW. YOU MENTIONED, YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT CHESTNUT. YOU, CHIEF, SORRY.

YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT CHESTNUT, AND YOU CALLED IT NOSTALGIC.

WHEN I WENT THERE, I WAS HAVING FLASHBACKS IN MY FRAT HOUSE. So I appreciate what you guys are, you know, you guys have pride in it, I can tell, but it is very nostalgic. And I'm not suggesting by going to the county that you're going to get an automatic remodel, but we have to have this conversation based on the aging and the deferred maintenance that we have on all of our facilities in Gilroy. I cannot imagine why we can't have this conversation to see what we would get out of it. So I'm going to go to my left and keep going, and then I'll go back to Bracco.

Yeah, and same thing. And the reason why Los Altos is being used as an example is go ahead and strip out all the numbers. It's the process that the chief was trying to mention to you, that others and myself were trying to mention to you, to draw it to you. So when you're wondering, like, what is annexation? You have questions after this or whatever. Like, you can go and read the staff reports from LAFCO. Read the staff reports from Los Altos. Watch the YouTube video from LAFCO. so you can see what it means and how it sounds and how everything is transferred, irregardless of numbers. And I do w

So I appreciate, first of all, I appreciate our current firefighters wanting to move perhaps to an annexation because of the salaries and benefits that go with that. I don't fault them for that at all. So I'm going to just throw that out there right now. And if we decide to move in a direction where we maintain control I think that we need to really give attention to that and how we can bring that up to parity. I do have the same concerns that Council Member Fugazi and Council Member Marks have. I ran on local control because once we give up local control, we do not get it back. And that bring

BEING PART OF COUNCIL AND THE SIDE LETTER THAT WAS PUT FORWARD A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO, TO HAVE THIS DISCUSSION, I'M REALLY HAPPY TO HEAR WHAT WE'VE BEEN TALKING ABOUT TODAY. I KNOW WE TALKED ABOUT THIS YESTERDAY. me and Councilmember Hilton, just the different models. And it's been talked about for almost two generations, we've been talking about the issues, the challenges. We talked about remodeling fire stations, but in my experience, I just did, two years ago, San Carlos replaced an existing aging fire station. FIRE STATION, NEIGHBORHOOD FIRE STATION, WITH A BRAND NEW ONE. SO WHEN YOU TALK A

Thank you. I'm going to jump back to Council Member Bracco, and we're going to try to wrap this up. We're at the two-hour timeline.

Yeah, I agree with a lot you said, Mr. Mayor. This deserves more conversation, but I want to see... hard facts. You know, what's it going to cost, you know, to go ahead and reach out to the county, get a price. What's it going to cost? What are we going to have to do to the stations? You know, find out exactly what it's going to take, what it's going to cost, what we can expect. And I think we need to reach out to, as we've seen with this data center, we need to reach out to the community. because I don't think they're gonna be very happy about it, or they may be, hopefully they will. And what

I mean, I want to say just outright I am completely against annexation. I don't even think we should go explore the idea. I don't know how many other council members feel that way. I think you should probably get a straw poll on that to see whether or not it even bears out. The whole idea of giving up all of our assets, all of our control, future costs, future large sums of our property tax, depending on how it's structured, All of it sounds like a super, super bad idea. I want to add also that the chief had talked about how an organization taking on a contract wants to take on a contract for

Yes, my final comment is I don't think we're ready to make this decision now without a lot more studying and a lot more facts. For me to agree to this, I want to see the dollar and cents. And I also have problems with giving up local control because once you give it up, you don't get it back. And those are just my thoughts.

Um, you know what, real briefly that I completely understand the local control thing, but you know, I want to, I want to hear how you're proven what you've done with local control. Um, and to me, the proof has been in our budgets, our work plans, our studies. We've been studying this for as long as Brock has been on the council. He says, um, I'm getting frustrated with it. It's been six years of sitting here talking about it and planning on it. Um, and, uh, you know, proof, Show what you've done with your local control, even if it's just you yourself. That's what I've been trying to do, is to

Thank you councilmember Ramirez So I appreciate the fact that you guys have been studying it for 21 years I haven't only been sitting here two years and now we're faced with it. I need to have the answers I need to have the information I would like to have it expedited so that we don't continue this conversation for the next 21 years and But I am certainly not ready to say, let's go annexation or let's do this. I need to have the information as robust as it can be and as expedited. And that's where I feel.

Council Member Klein, we're giving you direction, correct? Yeah. In that sense. So this is our opportunity to do that. So I'm all for that. Let's get going.

Okay, so I think what I'm hearing here is we do want to give direction regarding a service model. I'm going to let Matt wrap it up, but we do want to give direction and we want feedback on a service model other than what we use, right? As well as I do believe that I am hearing, even from you, you want more information on annexation. Great idea. And I'm hearing that from the left as well. So, so far... City Administrator Morley. We do have some things that we would like and you can wrap it up for us.

One more comment from Klein? We will do it the same format, study session, instead of a council meeting as far as nighttime. And we do the same approach. I prefer this because it gives you the chance to have a good, solid conversation.

And so as part of this, you're going to be reaching out to these organizations to get firm numbers. That's what you're hearing. Yes. Good.

Thank you. Five-minute break before we go on to the next topic. Thank you very much.

A call. How about now? Can you hear me now? Okay. All right. Well, welcome back to the meeting. We're going to turn it over, go directly right to our two staff members, Derek and John. I'm not sure who's going first, but take it away.

Just one little question. So do you anticipate any concern with the Amazon being there next to it, those increasing because of that? No, not at all. Thank you.

Can you speak a little closer, please? Sorry. Thank you.

Can you drill deeper to get under that contamination?

Further development though of the area would potentially reduce that too, right? Because there'd be less farmland that would be percolating down the nitrates and phosphates that go into the soil from the fertilization, right?

Question on that one. It shows two lots there, right? Is that correct? that there's actually two lots in that space?

To copper, okay, because I was just going by the picture here.

So do you determine that with, like, a camera pig or something like that?

I have a question. Are there redundancies in all of that line? So how do you fit in a new piece if the wastewater never stops coming?

THAT MEANS WEST OF SANTA THERESA THAT WE WERE GOING TO DO BEFORE IS NOT GOING TO BE DONE UNLESS WE GET THE FUNDS Correct.

John, can I ask you a question? Sure. I've noticed they put the fencing or the walls up And they're doing all the work that they're supposed to be doing adjacent to our property, in essence?

But it won't impact us then? Not impacting us. For the future? Okay. Not an issue at all. That was a question that we had about that. and what they would do or wouldn't do. It's all taken care of.

If you could hang on one second. I have one other question. You did have sidewalk repair on there, right?

And I'm sorry if I'm confused with all the sidewalk repair stuff in general, but back in April of last year, I put in for the sidewalk repair on the southwest corner, for instance, of 1st and Monterey. And it still is an ad a issue and I don't understand how if we're paying for sidewalk repair We don't get priority in some of these areas of walkway And I appreciate us doing all the new stuff, but maybe just a quick explanation I will I will tell you this we're planning to come in January to talk sidewalk program and sidewalk prioritization and sidewalk liability issue

I WILL START WITH COUNCIL MEMBER MARKS AND RAMIREZ, BECAUSE THEY MENTIONED THEY WANT TO GET OUT OF HERE BY 12.

JOHN, JUST REAL QUICK, WHERE ARE THE CHARGING STATIONS AT THE PUBLIC LIBRARY GOING TO BE PUT IN?

Just a quick thank you. Great presentation.

Oh, yeah. Council Member Hilton. Yeah, please.

Yeah, I want to give my thanks to you also, John, for our monthly meetings that we've had ever since you've been here. This specific CIP and whether they're unfunded or funded, to me, I've always looked at them as like the hopes and dreams of Gilroy residents, right, or council members or staff. It's a place that doesn't need to exist just because it doesn't have funds attached to it, right? And so to me, that's important. I was around on the Bike and Ped Commission when we created that. So I just appreciate that part. And also, Derek, you just mentioned it. You guys are already trying to figu

I was with Councilmember Hilton. Same thing. We were part of the change in getting this split of public works to utilities. And so to see this process and see how it's really the fruit of it, and it's really moving along in a really great way. Staff has really come behind it and putting things together. And Derek, you coming on board, it's great. Really appreciate the job you're doing. And this is a great report, both of you and your staff. Great job. Thank you. Appreciate you.

Quick question for Derek. Yes. Could you talk a little bit more about the piece of equipment that denitrifies the water that you talked about at the well number eight? So is that temporary? Does it do it on an ongoing basis or does it shut it down completely until personnel comes?

That's pretty interesting. And then I have a question for John, or this might even be for Council. One thing that I didn't see on the list of CIP, whether funded or unfunded, but it was a conversation that I always heard even before I was a candidate or mayor, is this pump track. It seemed like the community, there was a lot of conversation in this community about a pump track for a long time, and I don't see that on there, and I wish it was.

Is there an appropriate time then? Would that be maybe next spring when we're talking about funding?

Yeah, and I'll just piggyback off that. There's two of us up here that are going to be here with you next year, and we both have been hearing the same thing. We both want to see it, not only for the community, but but I do know that that's the same exact way that pickleball arose too, right? There was no charter project for pickleball, and that became the common theme where even people just wanted to say the word pickleball, even though it had nothing to do with the conversation. So yeah, I want to hint that too, that even though it lives, It lives inside the sports park master plan also, righ

Thank you. Thanks. Looks like that's about it. Yeah, that's right. Right on time. Thank you very much. Thank you. We've got public comment. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Public comment. I have no speakers. Okay. Thank you very much. That adjourned. Meeting adjourned. 12.01. Thank you.