Agenda Item # 11.2 - Jeff Clet | Received 11/20/2023Good Evening Honorable Mayor and Members of the City Council.
My name is Jeff Clet and I was the permanent Gilroy Fire Chief from 2002-2004
when we completed the First comprehensive Fire Standards of Coverage Master
Plan in 2002 which recommended that the City open a 3rd Fire Station in the
North West Quad area. As a result, the fire department recommended and the
City Council approved a 2-person Alternative Service Model (ASM) at the Sunrise
Fire Station site using a mobile home to provide service while the fire station was
constructed. The new station was completed in April, 2004.
Also back in 2002, the study reviewed the planned development known as the
Glen Loma Development and it concluded a need for a future 4th fire station
would be required to serve the Glen Loma Development project as well as the
larger Santa Teresa area and a Development Agreement was created in
2003-2004 which resulted in a formal agreement for the developer to provide a
specific one acre site and a turn -key fire station at no cost to the City using the
site size and the station design of the Sunrise Fire Station as the template.
The Development Agreement established a pre -determined number of building
permits based on the predicted number housing units and people that would live
in the newly developed area and the predicted emergency calls for service that
would result creating the need for the new fire station. According to the
Agreement, once the permit number was reached the fire station would be
required to be constructed. In 2015, the developer notified the City that it
estimated that the Development Agreement permit trigger would be reached
sometime in 2016 and that they needed to get started on the design of the new
fire station in order to be in compliance with the Agreement based on the belief
that they would be at the maximum number of permits sometime in 2016 and
would need at least a year to build the new fire station.
However, in 2016, the City decided to delay the new fire station construction and
instead, initiated and voluntarily increased the number of building permits that the
City would issue prior to the requirement that the fire station be constructed by
the developer. However, the revised agreement did not include any retraction
protection or provision for the City to require the Developer to initiate the
construction of the fire station if the City were to later determine that it wanted to
return to the original number of permits . This allowed the developer to receive
substantially more building permits with no consideration or provision to revert
back to the original Agreement if any conditions were to change. This was a
major oversight by the City.
In 2018, I was hired by the City to be the Interim Fire Chief and was immediately
tasked with updating the 2002 Standards of Coverage Master Plan as part of a
fire service review of the entire South County area including Gilroy and the Glen
Loma - Santa Teresa area to assess the service level and make formal
recommendations to the City Council.
The 2018 report was very clear, the Santa Teresa area was receiving
substantially slower service than the other areas of the City and a Pilot Project
was proposed to the City Council called an "Alternate Service Model" or ASM.
This was the same approach that was used to provide service in the North West
Quad area prior to the completion of the Sunrise Fire Station.
This service model was based on the use of small non -fire engine vehicle staffed
with only two -person working on over -time and stationed in a temporary trailer to
determine if the model could improve the EMS service level. This model was an
interim step to improve EMS response time while the City created a plan to build
and staff the planned Santa Teresa Fire Station.
In 2019 the fire fighters agreed in good faith that the ASM staffing model
requiring them to work overtime to staff the ASM pilot program and if after review,
the City elected to keep the ASM program, which it did, that permanent staffing
would be hired and the City would migrate into a staffing model that would
include 3-full time, 24-hour personnel and a fire engine, housed in a temporary
fire station. That was four years ago!
I ask the City Council to:
1) develop an aggressive timeline for the staffing of a 24-hr. full service
Fire Engine and;
2) construction and completion of the permanent Santa Teresa Fire
Station.
This request is consistent with the City Council Strategic Goal to "Ensure
Neighborhoods Benefit Equally from City Services". The Community and the
Fire Fighters deserve nothing less.
Respectively,
Jeff Clet
Former City of Gilroy Fire Chief