From:
To: City Council
Subject: Questions to the City Council and Fire Ad Hoc committee for Sept 26, 2023 meeting Date: Tuesday, September 26, 2023 1:58:54 PM
Good Day Fire Ad Hoc Committee, City Council and City Management, Below please find a few initial questions and comments I have about tonight’s meeting:
1. In the title of the agenda, as well as in the fire ad hoc’s report, it speaks of having a town hall.
To me this means an ability for members of the public to be able to communicate to its government bodies with a potential back and forth as questions happen during a normal conversation. As I further read in the agenda the Town Hall is not happening and that the public will only have 2 minutes to make comments. I have many questions but do not want to ask all of them here and have limited to just a few.
I am sure many of them will be answered
as well as new ones will come up at the meeting. This is why having an actual town hall meeting would have been so important.
a. Why is the town hall not happening?
b. How can the public get a space to be in conversation with its local government versus just be spoken at?
2. The matrix report only states two items were updated on its cover page, but there was a list of inaccuracies in the report and after a brief view there still are inaccuracies including the current cover page.
a. How can you still use this document as a reference with it being inaccurate?
3. Under the Next Steps: part of the report it references at the end that the city council needs to have a closed session for FLSA review. This does not affect a person, but people in general, so I do not see the need for a closed session.
a. Why does this need to be a closed session?
4. In the slide show on The Why-Sebastopol Fire Dept.
It states that the volunteer pool is
trending down. The department has recently added 16 new volunteers. a. Is this information now outdated or did the statistics come from a national data base? b. Has there been time to see how these new volunteers are going to affect the statistics?
5. In the slide show on Reorganization with neighboring fire district. Process explained Second
from the bottom it speaks of Governance.
a. What does this statement mean?
b. Does the council and the public understand if consolidation happens the city loses all authority over how the fire department is run because it falls under a different authority or board of directors?
6. In the slide show on What are the options? It states an estimated 2.5 mil. a. According to the Delivery of Services Options chart the consolidation with Goldridge would be 2.7 mil, should this slide be updated to reflect this information?
7. Since the beginning of the idea of consolidation Goldridge Fire has become a drastically different organization with an assumed change in its culture. a. Has the Ad Hoc committee, city management, or council considered these changes in Goldridge’s infrastructure?
b. Is so what are those considerations?
Thank you in advance for addressing these questions.
Shawn-Paul