Candidate for
Board Member; Menlo Park Fire Protection District

I am a technocrat. I have a pragmatic political philosophy.

I have years of training in electronics, fire alarm, telecommunications, wildlands firefighting, foremanship, solar PV, renewables and the Hollywood arts, on top of a liberal arts degree in English and Political Science and previous experience on the Fire Board. So I take a seasoned and scientific approach to politics.

During my first term in office I realized that the problem with having a majority of financial wizards and business executives on the Board is that they can be totally blind to political problems about to smack the Board and the country in the face. Far too often, they have such a close eye on the bottom line that they make matters worse out of machismo or totally ignore issues that they can't wrap their minds around.

Out of the top five threats to the District, two have been neglected, two have been made worse by Board member actions and only one has been addressed adequately (and is routinely addressed at all political levels and in the building codes).

The first issue that has been neglected is unnecessary risks during firefighter "training". The Fire District has mutual aid agreements that put our structure fire trained firefighters into Task Force convoys to southern California brush fires.

The worst thing a Director can do, is to make things worse by publicly creating an unreasonably high set of crew expectations that can easily result in the loss of a fire engine that costs more than a half million dollars. With three or four firefighters on board that engine, the risk the District takes on their safe return is at least $7 million of public funds.

The Board members must not usurp the power of the Fire Chief, who has done his own risk/benefits assessment and is very well aware that it costs far less to replace a dead firefighter than to pay long term disability for a burned firefighter and months of overtime to his replacement at time and a half. The Novato Fire District Chief found this out the hard way on the Cedar Fire in 2002 when Captain McDonald was severely burned and Engineer Rucker burned to death.

To send a highly trained crew to save a half million dollar house from fire is one thing. To send the same crew to save 79 cents of brush from burning (that needs to burn) when the flame lengths exceed 75 feet, makes no sense whatsoever, when the training benefits are marginal at best. Menlo Park Firefighters don't paint their own fire houses. To create a mandate that they're going to cut hand line at the head of a brush fire whipped by high winds in southern California is utterly rediculous. The bottom line is that real politicians don't treat firefighters like tin soldiers. That is common sense not political science.

The second threat to the Fire District (an issue that has long been neglected) doesn't even originate from within the District. Burning eucalyptus groves will throw burning embers 7 miles down wind, right into the heart of the pine need covered, wood shingle roofed neighborhoods of the District. The Board monitors the performance of the Fire Chief and the Chief needs to be a consumate negotiator with other Districts and the San Mateo County Parks Department, which owns land swathed in eucalyptus. There is a billion dollars of real estate in the District, at risk so it is a real issue that needs attention. The eucalyptus needs to be removed because it raises the District's ISO ratings, puts our crews and residents at risk and leads directly to the third threat to the District.

Flooding is the evil twin brother of wildfire and San Francisquito Creek is the District's achilles heel. All it will take is a thousand acre wild fire in the upper watershed and the land will be stripped of its ability to soak up and slow the waters of a cloudburst on its way to the Creek. Fire professionals know from computer modeling that they could lose 7,000 acres in the first hour of a worst case wildfire.

It would be easy for an un-monitored fire chief (the Fire Boss) to succumb to political pressure and put a fire engine in the driveway of every McMansion in the hills, while neglecting to put a fire line as quickly as possible around the fire. When a heavy rain is coupled with a high tide, flooding can be expected the next winter as the creek slops over its natural and man made levees. I get tired just thinking about the huge logs and driftwood that could cause a massive log jam underneath the Pope-Chaucer Street Bridge. Flooding is the third multi-million dollar threat to the District.

The solution to flooding is to encourage the MPFD Chief to help address the vegetation management problem on public and private land in the upper watershed. The flood management projects in progress in the middle and lower stretches of the Creek will be too little, too late and are far too expensive. Federal help is decades away. The District needs a Fire Chief who is a philsophical visionary and can afford to admit that some things are beyond his control. The District needs a moral beacon who can be proactive and advocate a network of low fuel zones in the hills, across public and private land, that puts a framework in place to control a wildfire, should the need arise. This has already been done in Marin County. Why is San Mateo County two decades behind?

I believe in the Shelter-In-Place policies promoted by the Australian government. I don't believe in herding cats and I don't believe mandatory evacuations will work for the residents of the Walsh Road neighborhood. A good place for the Chief to start is by joining the fire professionals and other politicians who have endorsed "The Cannonball Express". See the link entitled "Endorsements" at http://www.canonbal.org This is an educational video for adults. Any fool can teach children about fire safety who will probably live in some other state when they're old enough to vote and buy homes.

The fourth threat to the District is out of control spending on wages, benefits, new fire stations and legal bills. The current Board has made matters worse on all of these issues. I will help the District get back on track.

I have a conservative voting record. I stood alone and voted against giving myself a raise during my first term in office. I stood alone and held the line against spiraling pension costs and unfunded, accrued liability of over $1.7 million in June of 2002 by voting against a resolution that grandfathered in the District's earliest firefighters to the current health and benefits package. This vote did not make me popular with labor and is one reason I do not enjoy the luxury of labor support today.

The active duty firefighters deserve a labor contract. When the Chief gives them a medical package that helps 20% of them and hurts another 20% of them, the union reps get ticked off. All I can say is, The Chief giveth and the Chief taketh away. My hunch is that District property tax revenues are still rising with the 2% momentum of 1978's Proposition 13 and should rise for the next four years or until the economy recovers.

So the District can afford a small raise and better benefits and can expect that a solid middle class income will enable the firefighters to live near enough to the District to man the 3 pieces of equipment in the reserve engine fleet in the event of a major ember storm. (see #2 above). To maintain the current state of affairs is penny wise and pound foolish, not to mention what it does to sink morale and to the attitudes of Battalion Chiefs, who might otherwise aspire to be the next Fire Chief. A lawsuit by the Firefighters' union against my colleagues on the Board won't stop me from advocating a small raise to pre-empt action by PERB (the Public Employees Relationship Board)and halt this madness. I don't buy into the argument that low firefighter turnover in the District is reason enough to pay mediocre salaries.

The bottom line is brinksmanship over labor negotiations is bad for the fire protection business and legal bills are a waste of tax money. Arbitration and legal bills represent a house divided and a refusal or inability by the Directors to use the powers vested in the Board. So throw the nearest available rascal out of office and vote for a Kennedy.

A responsible Board member works to channel the frustration of middle management towards the Chief in constructive ways. A responsible Board member builds political capital for personal pet projects (like video projects) by supporting the Fire Chief. Building up a pocket full of IOU's is one reason I regularly interviewed the officer corps, the Station Captains, the office staff and the rank and file, regarding the performance of the Chief, during my first term in office. Offering to spend political capital is just horse trading and shouldn't be confused with bribery.

The District plans to spend about $30 million on rebuilding two fire stations and constructing a training tower. My base of political support is in East Palo Alto, so I'm an advocate of solar power, grid independence and temporary emergency public access to Station II on University Avenue in the event of a major flood. The firefighters retirement dollars through CalPers and Page Mill Properties, nearly succeeded in moving my apartment building into Menlo Park and making me homeless. Fire exclusion policies and official neglect threaten to flood me out of my home every winter. There is gonna be somewhere for me to go to warm up and call home when I wade out of my apartment in the middle of the night and launch my canoe in the babbling brook that used to be Euclid Avenue. I've made temporary emergency public access to Station II an issue and the Board needs to respond or get off at the next stop.

Station II should take priority in construction because two suburban homes behind the fire station that are owned by the Fire District, sit empty and derelict and lower property values in the whole neighborhood. If the Station rebuilding project is gonna sit on a back burner for a couple of years then at least the lots should be cleared and the land turned into a pocket econo-park that can help sop up some flood water.

The single threat to the District that has been addressed adequately is earthquake. Not earthquake and fire. Just earthquake. The catch is that most of the residents of the District live in homes made of nails and wood, which flex beautifully during tremors. So I have no complaints on this issue.

As I said, I am a technocrat and have a very pragmatic political philosophy. Builders in the construction trades find a way to get it done. Technocrats find a way towards compromise and political progress.

I will appreciate your comments and criticisms in the GuestBook at http://www.canonbal.org

Your vote will be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,

Steve Kennedy Candidate for MPFD Board & Technocrat