Cayucos Fire to ask voters for money to hire permanent staff

Staffing woes have plagued the Cayucos Fire Department for months, but the agency is hoping residents will approve a tax increase to allow it to hire permanent firefighters.

Only months ago, it had considered dissolving entirely and contracting fire and medical services with Cal Fire. But now the department, which historically has been staffed by paid on-call volunteers, has opted to ask voters to approve an increase to its existing special fire tax to hire full-time firefighters and engineers.

Measure C-16, now on the June 7 primary election ballot, would raise the town’s special fire tax to $125 per unit (a single-family residence is four units), or $500 per household per year, to fund the change. The current assessment is $100 for a single-family residence.

The department serves the community of roughly 2,600 people and responds to more than 400 calls for service each year.

In the interim, the department’s fire commission is hiring temporary staff through June 30 using about $90,000 in savings from a late fire season and from paying less to contract with Cal Fire last year.

The department ideally operates with a staff of about 20 on-call firefighters. However, several from that pool have left recently, leaving the department short. To help, 12 additional on-call firefighters were hired temporarily from the Atascadero and Templeton fire departments as well as Fort Hunter Liggett.

Mark Walton, vice president of the Cayucos Firefighters Association, said that attracting and keeping paid on-call personnel — technically volunteers, by state standards — has become increasingly difficult in recent years. The department had been able to manage since its creation in 1948, but the problem worsened this past fall with the loss of several firefighters.

The staffing problem isn’t unique to Cayucos. Small community fire departments across the country have experienced similar woes, according to several local fire officials. Higher costs of living and increasingly rigorous requirements for time and training — a minimum of 100 hours of training to qualify as a volunteer, according to state standards — lead those who qualify for the position to seek paid full-time careers elsewhere.

The department had become unsustainable by October, with only 11 on-call positions filled and a budget of roughly $500,000, about half of which goes to contract with Cal Fire during the fire off-season. Its budget is currently paid by property taxes and the special fire tax.

That month, the department’s fire commissioners proposed dissolving the department entirely and contracting solely with Cal Fire, which already maintains a fire station in Cayucos. In that scenario, Cal Fire would assume emergency responsibilities and all costs for providing services that exceeded income from property taxes and the special fire tax. Those costs would be paid through the county general fund.

But the association prefers that Cayucos maintain local control over its fire services, and fire commissioners directed staff to write a proposal for transitioning the department from volunteer on-call to full-time. That included a budget and transition plan, which were completed, fact-checked by a third party and approved by the commission in February.

In drafting the proposal, department staff compared budgets of other fire departments, drafted a strategic plan and determined that a full-time fire department needed a budget of more than $1 million to be functional. If passed, the measure would fund department operations for at least 10 years without need for another increase, according to Walton.

“It’s not cheap to run a fire department,” Walton said. “But residents will get the knowledge that they’ve retained local control of their fire department and have guaranteed that a full-time paid staff is there to respond to their calls in the community 24 hours a day.”

The fire commission will meet in May to re-evaluate the effectiveness of the temporary staffing as and to discuss other options should the ballot measure fail.

“The community likes their fire department and they like that they have local people showing up to their calls. We’re members of the community, too,” Walton said. “I believe (voters) are going to smile favorably upon us.”

The department does not currently have a website to post information on the measure, though they have recently purchased the domain.

On March 23, the department will host a community outreach meeting from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Cayucos Veterans Memorial Lions Hall to answer questions about the measure and the future of the department. Two subsequent meetings will be held in April and May, though the dates have not yet been announced.

Vote-by-mail ballots begin going out to residents on May 9.

This story was originally published March 17, 2016 at 5:17 PM with the headline "Cayucos Fire to ask voters for money to hire permanent staff."