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Joyce Clark Unfiltered

For "the rest of the story"

Today marks the 2nd Anniversary of my blog with 181,497 reads. Thank you to all who have taken the time to read it.

Thank goodness the Super Bowl is now over. It feels so-o-o good to be back to normal. Congratulations to the Seahawks and Patriots for a great game. I’m please that my team, the Patriots won.

In my previous blog information on a proposal to relocate the Foothills Branch Library was offered. It is agenda item #1 on the Glendale city council workshop this coming Tuesday, February 3, 2015. In the second agenda item Fire Chief Mark Burdick is seeking approval to pursue an award of a Certificate of Necessity (CON) for the Glendale Fire Department. The third agenda item is a discussion of allowing the mayor’s and council’s support staff to become at-will employees.

What is a CON? It is permission granted by the Arizona Department of Health Services (AZDHS) that allows an entity to provide specific medical services, in this case, permission to medically transport people after a 911 call or on a non-emergency, routine basis. What is the rationale for our fire department’s request? Southwest Ambulance and Professional Medical Transport (both with CONs to operate in Glendale) are subsidiaries of Rural Metro Corporation. Rural Metro is proceeding with a Chapter 11 bankruptcy and court ordered reorganization. American Medical Response, the largest national provider of medical transport, has applied for a CON for all of Maricopa County, including Glendale. After reading 75 pages of an administrative hearing regarding granting a CON to American Medical Response, the hearing officer has recommended approval to the Director of AZDHS. It appears it will be granted.

How does response to a medical emergency in Glendale work now? Someone has, for example, a heart attack. 911 is called and a big Glendale fire truck with paramedics (one is usually Advanced Life Support [ALS] certified) on board arrives. While stabilizing the patient an ambulance is called to transport the patient to a hospital. In our city that is Southwest Ambulance.

If Glendale pursues and is granted its own CON, Glendale can get into the medical transport business in the city. Does Glendale have fully outfitted ambulances now? The answer is no. There would have to be a major, capital investment in fully outfitted ambulances and additional firefighter/paramedics would have to be hired. In the American Medical Response hearing minutes it was stated that a basic ambulance costs about $125,000 and another $75,000 to outfit it properly. It appears each ambulance would cost in the neighborhood of $200,000. Would 5 ambulances be enough to cover Glendale? Just five of them would cost a million dollars and that’s without any Glendale firefighter/paramedics salaries and benefits to be paid for staffing the vehicles. That’s an additional cost that I cannot calculate. In Glendale’s current financial condition these are costs that it cannot afford to take on at this time. It is simply not an absolute necessity.

Everyone is waving the Rural Metro bankruptcy flag predicting dire consequences for medical transport in Glendale. I am not convinced of that. Its subsidiary that serves Glendale, Southwest Ambulance, has been a wonderful partner to Glendale. Rural Metro has been dealing with this bankruptcy for several years and the performance of Southwest Ambulance has not suffered. Southwest committed to leasing out a majority of Glendale’s downtown parking garage’s first floor office space when no one else would. It has donated thousands of dollars to many significant medical awareness issues within Glendale. When the city has needed a donation for nearly any cause it could always count on Southwest Ambulance. Southwest has partnered with Glendale on many innovative projects over the years. Why is Chief Burdick so willing to kick it to the curb now?

It presents quite a dilemma for Councilmember Sammy Chavira, who is a Phoenix firefighter (Phoenix has its own CON and does its own medical transport). Will he abandon his good friend, Martin Nowakowski, former Director of Public Relations for Southwest Ambulance until 2013 and a major advocate/supporter of Sammy’s 2012 run for city council? Or will he be in favor of Glendale Fire Chief Mark Burdick’s request? Burdick works closely with Kara Kalkbrenner, Phoenix’s newly appointed Fire Chief and Chavira’s boss. Hmmm, this should be interesting.

The last agenda item will be discussion of at-will positions for the staff members of the mayor and city council. It is an action long overdue. Under the current system, mayoral and council staff is ultimately responsible to supervisory employees, including the City Manager. Currently the Supervisor of mayoral and council staff is Intergovernmental Director Brent Stoddard. This unusual situation is a result of the removal of the position of council staff supervisor by the Human Resources Department. In some cases, there may be no loyalty to the elected official. In a few instances, council staff has been asked to report on councilmember activity to City Manager staff. It happened when I served on City Council. When an elected official leaves and is replaced, there have been occasions when staff members deemed not to be a good fit with an elected official, have been moved to another equivalent position within the organization but they are not fired.

With an at-will system, the elected official can select and hire his or her own staffer. That person serves at the pleasure of the elected official. There is a strong bond of loyalty. When the elected official leaves the staffer is no longer employed by the city and when a new official comes on board, he or she will hire a new staffer of their choice. This is an action that should occur to preserve the discretion and independence of the elected official.

© Joyce Clark, 2015

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This site contains copyrighted material the use of which is in accordance with Title 17 U.S. C., Section 107. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democratic, scientific and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Section 107 of the US Copyright Law and who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use,’ you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

 

The Tuesday, November 19, 2013 Glendale city council workshop is jam packed and includes a Development Impact Fee update, the Fire Department Budget deficit, special project recommendations and the Ballpark Boulevard extension.

Since the Arizona Legislature changed the way all cities in the state can impose, collect and spend Development Impact Fees Glendale, like many other cities, has developed a new Impact Fee structure. Impact Fees are charged to new developments and the developers typically add these fees into the price of a home, apartment, office, commercial or industrial building. Tischler Bise is the consultant hired to prepare the study on Impact Fees. I would like to know the cost of the study for I assure you, as thorough as it is, it was not cheap.

The consultants divide Glendale into three zones. The East Zone runs the entire length of Glendale, north to south and from 43rd Avenue to 75th Avenue. It is a very large zone and is approximately 42 square miles.  The Loop 101 zone is the smallest running from Northern Avenue to Camelback Road, 75th Avenue to 115 Avenue. It is a very small zone and is approximately 13 square miles. The West Zone is all land within Glendale’s annexation boundaries and is approximately 36 square miles. Although very thorough the consultants provide no rationale for the establishment of the Zones that are essential to the study.

There is concern with the disparity of size of the zones for they comprise a “nexus.” By that is meant that development impact fees are collected and spent within each zone. With the Loop 101 Zone being the smallest there will be less opportunity to collect/spend fees to provide the same quantity and quality of infrastructure as enjoyed by the East Zone. As an equitable issue all land south of Northern Avenue from 43rd Avenue to 115th Avenue should form the Loop 101 Zone. That would remove approx. 12 square miles from the East Zone making it approx. 30 square miles and increasing the Loop 101 Zone to 25 square miles. The West Zone would remain static at 36 square miles.

The balance of the study is impressive. Their facts and figures are well grounded and formulas are used to determine what the new fee structure for state mandated infrastructure should be. Although the Development Impact Fee structure is no longer what Glendale and every other city used previously there is no choice but to work within the new state-mandated regulations. We will not see the kind of Impact Fees that helped to make Glendale what it is today but it is important that we make the best use of them possible. With the exception of the determination of the zone configuration this is exactly what this study does.

The second item of discussion is the fire department’s deficit. There is but one question to ask. Is the fire department being managed effectively by current Fire Chief Burdick? In juxtaposition the Police Department led by Chief Deborah Black is not facing this kind of deficit. What kind of deficit? How about $1,674,887 minus one-time savings netting a deficit of $1,328,070? In addition the on-going, annual deficit of over $800,000  goes to pay for overtime due to the department’s philosophy of “constant staffing.” It’s time for a study to demonstrate which brings more value to citizens – constant staffing which entails an enormous amount of overtime at time and a half pay or the hiring of more personnel eliminating the need for the constant staffing regimen and its requisite overtime pay.

That item will be followed by a presentation and discussion of recommendations that resulted from the half million dollar external audit.  The City Auditor’s and City Attorney’s roles will be part of that discussion as well as the Trust Fund Citizen Boards and departmental internal premiums for risk management.

The last item of discussion will be what to do about Ballpark Boulevard. The city in an agreement with the two baseball teams agreed to extend Ballpark Boulevard north to 99th Avenue and Maryland Avenue. The current, approved concept will cost the city $18 million to acquire land for right-of-way and construction. Mayor Weiers asked that two alternatives be considered that would come in between $6 and $8 million. Both of these alternatives would run adjacent to the city’s airport on either its west or east side. The only problem with the alternatives is that they will not replace the contractually mandated concept of connecting to 99th and Maryland. That will still have to be done. So the question is…does the city construct a stop gap measure costing $6 to $8 million now knowing that down the road it still must spend $18 million per its contract with the City of Phoenix and both baseball teams? The city has no money right now and without any demonstrated urgency it is something that can wait. Neither Phoenix nor the teams are demanding immediate action.

This is not going to be one of the council’s typical one hour or less meetings. The issues are complex and I would hope that council “has done its homework” and is prepared to ask meaningful and relevant questions on all of these complex issues…but then again, it could be wishful thinking.

© Joyce Clark, 2013

FAIR USE NOTICE
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to :http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.