City Council Preview - April 5

A lot of the items at this week’s City Council meeting have already been discussed at prior meetings –

• · Campaign Sign Ordinance
• · Community Development Block Grant

But here are a few new ones.

IT SUPPORT

Our IT support company is requesting an increase in their fees based on the increase in “managed devices” from 182 to 249. It’s hard to believe that we have 249 “managed devices” for a City that is basically a contract City and has less than 70 employees. According to the staff report we have 131 Desktop PCs which is 2 PCs for every employee.

IT is not cheap. According to the report, the contract will be $1,183,200 for the next year.

The report indicates that the contractor is doing a good job supporting the IT needs of the City, but I wonder if our “needs” are truly our needs. There is nothing in the report to justify what appears, at first blush, to be an oversupply. Let’s talk about it at the meeting.

OCFA EMERGENCYSERVICE

Nothing is more important than our safety, so we need to look carefully at reports on Police and Fire. The OCFA converted Engine 54, located in Foothill Ranch, from a 3-person Paramedic Assessment Engine to a 4-person Paramedic Engine on Feb 5, 2016. The OCFA believes these changes will provide a number of benefits including greater service delivery, enhanced firefighter safety, and improved Advanced Life Support response times. The OCFA is currently collecting data to understand the effectiveness of the new service delivery model, although the staff provide no data on the other changes in the past.

The change of Engine 54 in Foothill Ranch to a full paramedic unit means the Engine will be doing multiple hospital follow ups per day to either Saddleback, Mission, or the Irvine Hospitals at Sand Canyon / 405 (Kaiser HMO, Hoag.) They will be out of their primary response area for all of that time, and response times in FHR would actually increase during these periods. The net effect is then pulling the Lake Mission Viejo, Portola Hills or Alton / Trabuco engines to respond to FHR during these times, leaving those areas exposed.

It makes me wonder why OCFA shut down a volunteer program a few years ago. Irvine, San Juan, Dana Point, and Yorba Linda still have reserves, as well as the canyons and the unincorporated island of Emerald Bay in North Laguna, yet I’m told Lake Forest does not. Perhaps this would be a good time to revive the Reserve program. Volunteer Reservists provide first responder capabilities while the paid crews are away, allowing qualified EMTs with first aid gear and an AED (reserves) to arrive much sooner than the next station adjacent will arrive.

The staff also says there will be no financial impact. I don’t understand how increased staffing does not lead to a financial impact, but I’m prepared to see how they explain this.

Let’s see what Fire Chief Adams thinks.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dr. Jim Gardner is on the City Council for Lake Forest. You can check him out on LinkedIn and/or Facebook and you can share your thoughts about the City at Lake Forest Town Square on Facebook. His comments are not meant to reflect official City Policy.

Dr. Gardner has office hours every Tuesday from 4 pm to 6 pm at the City Hall. In addition, he holds a Town Hall meeting every quarter. The next meeting will be on April 9 at 2 pm at the Foothill Ranch Public Library.

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