Candidate for
Member; Menlo Park Fire Protection District

Recruit a perminate extraordinary Fire Chief

While Menlo Park Fire Protection District has been successful in providing extraordinary emergency services to the community, it has not been successful in maintaining a perminate fire chief for a long duration for some time. It is very important to the organization and to the moral of it's employees that an exceptional leader and manager lead the organization for far longer that one has in the recent past. It is important to develop and to look inside for future leaders as well as other areas for this person.

Improve response times

While in San Mateo County, local fire agencies have removed district boundries with joint dispatching capabilities to improve response times throughout the county, however, because we are from two different counties, this has not occured between the communities of Menlo Fire and Palo Alto Fire. Improving (work in progress) relationships with Palo Alto Fire for automatic aid to each jurisdiction has been ongoing for a number of years with little success. Both agencies set on the ends of their respective counties which requires aid from the North and South respectively outside each county area. Both need each other to improve response times for better service. For the sake of each and every member of both juristictions and with continued effort, boundry lines can and should be removed where the closest fire and/or medic unit can respond to provide the needed care in the fastest possible time.

Improve Disaster Preparedness

With the experience I had while I was employed by the City of Menlo Park as it's disaster preparedness official during the Y2K period at the change of the Millennium. This knowledge was helpful and allowed the present board to initiate the district's highly successful Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) program.

This program is only the first step in preparing our community for managing a major disaster. As observed in hurricane Katrina, local government should be prepared to to handle any disaster that should occur from flooding to earthquakes. Officials from both the fire district and city governments need an intigrated plan for management, communication and application for all agencies involved. It's important to act while the iron is still hot with the memories of the errors that occured from the most recent national disaster.