Federal Dollars Sought to Keep Fire Engine 17

Imagine the following. You wake up in the middle of the night to find your home on fire. You live across the street from a Long Beach Fire Station. You call 9-1-1 and firefighters arrive from across the street to cut holes in the roof but without a Fire Engine, which is the only apparatus that can actually spray water on a fire to put it out. With the fire doubling in size every minute, fire engines come from fire stations further away. Your home is destroyed.

This actually happened in Long Beach across the street from Fire Station 17 in the 2200 block of Argonne Avenue in the predawn hours of Friday Jan. 31, 2014.

Station 17 had a fire engine on scene from its opening on April 21, 1951 until January 2, 2013 – more than 61 years until a former council cited budget reasons to erase Engine 17’s city funding. The 2014 fire and a 2015 special election changed this.

4th District voters elected Daryl Supernaw, who pressed to restore Engine 17. After several years without success, in 2019 city management offered and the council agreed to use part of the city’s Measure A sales tax to temporarily restore Engine 17 through Sept. 2021.

With those budgeted city funds now months from expiring, on March 9, the current council voted 9-0 to override city management resistance and seek a federal grant that, if granted, could tap federal taxpayers to pay half the cost of maintaining Engine 17 through FY25.

There could have been a council fight over how to pay for the other half – roughly $4.8 million ($1.6 million per year in city or other funds for three years) – but that didn’t happen.

The day after city management sent its unsupportive memo, Councilman Supernaw agendized an item joined by Councilmembers Suzie Price, Cindy Allen and Suely Saro that explicitly directed city management to pursue the grant to help retain Engine 17 at Station 17. The vote was 9-0 to do so.

The council action effectively leaves to another day how to pay the other half and presumes FEMA will approve the city’s grant application (a hoped for outcome but not a certainty for now.) It also leaves unasked and unanswered why a Long Beach fire station that had been funded locally for decades has now become dependent on federal dollars.

A March 3, 2021 city management memo argued against pursuing the 2020 FEMA grant on grounds it would require the city to make funding commitments with consequences for other City Hall budgeted spending. “The city could request $4.8 million to cover the cost of 12 FTE entry level firefighters for Engine 17 over three years ... or approximately $1.6 million for each grant performance year (about $900,000 to $1.4 million short of the funding needed each year.).” Management said a paramedic assessment engine costs roughly $3.2 million meaning the grant would cover about 50 percent of the cost if the engine is staffed with budgeted positions.”

Management’s memo continued: “Unfortunately, it is unlikely that the city will be able to comply with the grant’s terms ... [because of] the inability [of the city] to maintain the base staffing level as the city is facing significant structural shortfalls over the next few years.

Even if services can be maintained in FY 22 due to one-time federal relief funds, at some point during the grant period, the structural shortfall will likely require significant service reductions that would impact all departments...”

Four Council members – Daryl Supernaw, Suzie Price, Suely Saro and Cindy Allen – disagreed with management. They agendized an item for the March 9 council meeting directing management to pursue the 2020 FEMA grant. They wrote in pertinent part:

“Located just east of Stearns Park, Station 17 opened on April 21, 1951. For 60 years, Engine 17 served as a critically important component of our city’s fire service. With a response area spanning from the 405 Freeway and Redondo in the N/W to 7th & Bellflower in the S/E, E17’s removal in 2011 left a huge hole in the system. The restoration of E17 in 2019 cut citywide response times by a minute. Within Station 17’s area, response times were cut by a minute and a half.

“EQUITY LENS: “Engine 17’s response area includes the 90804 and 90815 zip codes. 90804 is the most densely populated zip code in Long Beach. E17’s response area also abuts that of Engine 10, one of the busiest engines in the city. E17 provides coverage for E10’s area when Station 10 (located in CD6) is responding to other emergencies. Equally critical is the fact that without E17 in service, E10 is taken out of its own busy area to provide coverage in Station 17’s area.”

Councilman Supernaw’s weekly March 5 newsletter noted: “The map below shows Station 17’s response zones (outlined in red) overlaid on a map of Council District 4. Not only would the loss of E17 create a huge hole in our district, the effects would be felt citywide. Without E17 in the system, response times are increased by a full minute throughout the city.

Times within the Station 17 response zones would be increased by one and a half minutes. Keeping Engine 17 in service is critically important to the safety of our residents.”

How did Long Beach lose Engine 17 in the first place?

Shortly after winning election in 2006, Mayor Bob Foster supported new contract provisions for all three of LB’s major public employee unions (police, fire and non-public safety/IAM) who’d endorsed his candidacy. The new contract provisions didn’t include pension reforms.

Within months (fall 2008), the “Great Recession” began ... and Long Beach City Hall found itself unable to pay for the contracts. Mayor Foster responded by demanding that the unions re-open the contracts and agree to pension changes (which they ultimately did.)

Foster also simultaneously proposed what he described as “proportional budget reductions,” in which every city department would be required to cut its budget in proportion to its General Fund spending. Since police and fire account for the largest proportion of General Fund spending, the “proportional reductions” had a disproportionate impact on police and fire budgets.

In September 2009, the City Council (which included then Councilman Robert Garcia) began adopting a series of annual budgets that significantly cut fire and police budgets (including defunding roughly 20% of LBPD officers.)

On Dec. 17, 2012, then Fire Chief Mike DuRee composed a memo explaining that Fire Engine 17 would be eliminated at Station 17.

In December 2013, with only Councilwoman Gerrie Schipske dissenting, the council voted to incur upfront costs ranging from nearly $1 million to as much as $3+ million, to prepare a “Request for Proposals” to build an entirely new Civic Center. It did so without having issued a Request for Proposals inviting marketplace bids/proposals from firms to seismically retrofit Long Beach’s less than 40-year-old City Hall.

Less than 60 days later on the morning of January 31, 2014, Fire Engine 17 wasn’t available to put out a fire in a home directly across the street from Fire Station 17.

A roughly half decade gap followed until the council used Measure A sales tax dollars to “temporarily” restore Engine 17 from Oct. 2019 through Sept 2021. The Council’s March 9, 2021 vote means if a federal agency approves the City of Long Beach’s request that federal taxpayers pay roughly half the cost, and if Long Beach city management comes up with a way to pay for the other half suitable to a council majority, Long Beach taxpayers will have a fire engine at Fire Station 17 into FY 2025.

Bill Pearl is the publisher of lbreport.com, a local, online news source since August 2000.