Cupertino responds to civil grand jury report on emergency services

By Matt Wilson
mwilson@community-newspapers.com
Posted: 08/11/2011 11:00:00 PM PDT

The city of Cupertino has responded to three civil grand jury reports focusing on emergency dispatch, fire department response and the rehiring of pensioners. The reports were released in June.
At its Aug. 2 meeting, the city council granted city manager David Knapp authorization to pen response letters to the civil grand jury. Cities are required to agree or disagree with each of the jury's findings and recommendations in the reports. The city had until Sept. 16 to respond.
The grand jury found that in spite of public opinion, there are situations that warrant rehiring pensioners. The grand jury stated that the 15 towns and cities may be inadvertently creating demand to rehire pensioners, because the public sector retirement age is relatively young at roughly age 50 to 55.
The grand jury recommended that cities such as Cupertino continue to pursue a higher retirement age within its public sector unions and associations and make rehiring pensioners a policy decision if they have any desire to end the practice. Cupertino contracts with Santa Clara County and does not have its own fire or police department services.
The city, however, sent a letter agreeing with the recommendations.
In another report, the grand jury found that it is very costly to equip a fire department to report to only the occasional fire.
The report states that the county and its 15 cities have not been active enough in challenging their fire departments
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to adopt changes that are more cost-effective, and that unions are more interested in job preservation than in providing services at reasonable costs.
Also, sending firefighter paramedics and fire-fighting equipment to all non-police emergencies is unnecessarily costly when less expensive paramedics on ambulances have the skills needed to address 96 percent of calls that are not fire related, according to the report.
The grand jury recommended that the county's cities determine the emergency response service they want to achieve and work toward that goal. The grand jury also recommended that cities adopt emergency service facilities and staff or contract to meet demand.
The letter from Cupertino states that the city has already achieved the emergency response it desires.
In its report on emergency dispatch, the grand jury concluded that dispatch consolidation would result in more cost- effective and efficient emergency response and should be implemented throughout the county. In addition, radio equipment has not been standardized and impedes effective county-wide communication and emergency dispatch.
The grand jury recommended that cities with their own dispatch centers and cities such as Cupertino that use county communications for dispatch should consolidate dispatch with neighboring jurisdictions and where appropriate. The grand jury also urged cities to continue working with the Silicon Valley Regional Interoperability Project to achieve county-wide standardization radio technology.
The city agreed with the recommendations and is already a member and contributor to the Silicon Valley Regional Interoperability Project.
For more information about the civil grand jury and to view reports or read city responses, visit www.scscourt.org.



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