Supervisor doubts city will save on new fire dept.

By Kevin Jeffries
District 1 County Supervisor

Kevin Jeffries

While I’m sure the county (and state) would love to have them come back into the larger organization someday, recently the City of Canyon Lake opted-out of the State/County/multi-city cooperative fire protection program and instead decided to establish its own city fire department.

They are very proud of the new department they have assembled with fully paid staff, a minimum of three-person staffing at all times (which includes paramedic firefighters) and a robust Volunteer Reserve program to augment the full-time professionals.

When all the start-up costs and ongoing costs are tallied up, I’m not certain it will actually save the city any money compared to the previous contract with the county and state (however the State Cal Fire contract price is increasing by roughly $20 million this year to the county and contracting cities), but they will enjoy direct local control over staffing and their budget.

Cloud Seeding

With nearly 20 years of drought impacting our county and region, an old idea to “augment” Mother Nature is back on the table.

The Santa Ana Watershed Project Authority (a bunch of water districts working together) has been investigating the science and history of “Cloud Seeding.” The science reportedly says such efforts can increase rainfall by 5-10%. Lots of details are pending. Stay tuned.

Where are the Workers?

I have been meeting with County Department Heads for several months to gauge how things are going, both under the leadership of our new County CEO and in this new social-economic reality of retirements and the competitive employment environment.

The good news is, our new CEO is building strong support from the troops, cooperating agencies, and labor leaders, with his open-door, dig-deep efforts into how to improve services, customer service, and still be cost effective.

The bad news is, the county is having trouble attracting and retaining new employees because of competing wage and benefit offers from others (both public and private sector). With roughly 23,000 employees, there are many challenges keeping everyone rowing the same direction toward serving the public.

And while the message from the CEO can get distorted as it filters down the food chain, I feel confident that despite a few of those who are retired-on-the-job, or those who are resistant to change, your county government is truly working to improve our communities (yes, despite all the challenges we have in California with 39 million residents).

If you are looking for a new career and want to work near home, please take a look at the many job listings in nearly every department at rc-hr.com/Find-A-Job/Job-Searching/County-Job-Openings