City Council — May 5, 2026

Roll call, please.

Yes Mayor Pro Tem, the city council met in closed session tonight to discuss the one labor negotiation item on the agenda. I'll just finish this and then you can do roll call sorry. No reportable action was taken by the council. Okay thank you. Can we have a roll call please?

by day that your actions may become beautiful prayers. Turn towards God and seek always to do that which is right and noble. Enrich the poor, raise the fallen, comfort the sorrowful, bring healing to the sick, Reassure the fearful. Rescue the oppressed. Bring hope to the hopeless. Shelter the destitute. Strive day by day that your actions may become beautiful prayers."

And my final one, as I was driving here tonight, I was glad I had because it's a prayer for humankind and it's a difficult time right now so I'd like to say this one in closing. O thou kind Lord, thou has created all humanity from the same stock Thou hast agreed that all shall belong to the same household. In thy holy presence we are all servants. And all mankind are sheltered beneath thy tabernacle. All have gathered together at thy table of bounty, all are illumined through the light of thy providence.

O God, thou art kind to all, thou hast provided for all, dost shelter all, conferrest life upon all. Thou hast endowed each and all with talents and faculties, and all are submerged in the ocean of thy mercy. O Thou kind Lord, unite all. Let the religions agree and make the nations one so that they may see each other as one family and one whole earth as one home. May they all live together in perfect harmony.

O God, raise aloft the banner of Thy oneness with mankind. O God, establish the most great peace. Cement thou, O God, the hearts together. O Thou kind Father, gladden our hearts through the fragrance of Thy love. Brighten our eyes through the light of Thy guidance. Delight our ears with the melody of Thy word and shelter us all in the stronghold of Thy providence.

Thou art the mighty and powerful, Thou art the forgiving, Thou art the one who overlooketh the shortcomings of all mankind." And I'd like to thank you for this opportunity and thank you all for serving this community

Please join me in the pledge.

for which it stands, one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for

all. Presentation on Cannabis Prevention Project from Friday Night Live Lompoc Senior High Chapter

Good evening, members of the council. I'm Linnea Miguel. I am a junior at Lompoc High School and I'm president of this group.

I am Jocelyn Rios and I am secretary and I'm a senior at Lompoc High School.

I Am Ava Adams. I' m a junior and I Am vice president of this club. I'M Elizabeth and I AM a representative of FNL.

I'm Adriana and I'm a sophomore at Lompoc High School, and I'm representative

of this class. Today we'll be presenting our cannabis project to all of you guys.

So first, a little bit about our club. We are a statewide youth-led program operating across California with Friday Night Life Partnership. Our main focus areas are substance use prevention, mental health awareness, And a positive community change. Our Lompoc High Chapter is student-run, so we pick the issues with adult advisors' guidance and tonight we'll share three things our student survey, our social media campaign and our dispensary interview

We surveyed 581 Lompoc students this 2025 to 2026 school year. We got responses from every grade and we received the most feedback from our 9th and 10th grade students. We asked our peers about peer perception, personal exposure, health attitudes, and how students could support each other.

71% said that cannabis is bad for their health, so most students already know the risks. 88% would support a friend who chose not to use. 84% would help someone experiencing drug poisoning. But 42% feel peer pressure to use. 29% have seen peers under the influence on campus. and 44% say stress relief is the number one reason why people use. The main takeaway from this was that students want to do the right thing, they just need the support in managing stress and peer pressure.

We design and post prevention content on our Instagram every month All posts cover health risks and information informed decision making. We feel this works best because teens spend hours on social media every day, and our peer voices are the most persuasive ones. Our message encounters the pro-cannabis content students already see online. Our biggest quote is made by students for students because peer voices matter most.

So we interviewed a local dispensary to understand how the system actually works. Every customer must show ID and the point of sale system flags fakes, you must be 21 years old or older for recreational and 18 years older with a medical card. California's metric system tracks every product. Each item has a certificate of analysis, cameras and security are required. The owner is concerned legalization has normalized for youth and is willing to work with schools.

Their words are just because it's legal doesn't mean that you should use it

Before we close out this presentation, we want to mention one more thing. An organization called Get It Right from the Start, an FNL partner, scores every California city that allows cannabis sales on how well their local rules protect youth and public health. Things like marketing restrictions, smoke-free air, and where dispensaries can be located.

The statewide average is only 22 out of 100, and Lompoc scored a 6. We'd like to invite the council to visit at where Lompoc lands and considers whether the best practices from higher scoring cities like Pomona at 60 points that could strengthen our local protections. th

So just to recap, tonight we were able to share our survey, our social media campaign and our dispensary interview.

We're proud of this work and we're committed to continuing prevention efforts in Lompoc.

Thank

you for your time and welcome

any questions.

Thank you.

City manager's report.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem Garbutt. I wanted to educate everybody it is pretty exciting that we submitted for direct appropriations from the federal government. We were awarded $375,000 for a backup generation system for the Dewey Center to help us during emergencies. That was from Homeland Security. I want to thank Stephen Valle and all the admin staff for all the work they put into this I think we've got about 2.4 that we've got so far, and we have another one that was approved by Carbajal's office for $3 million to renovate an upgrade store or water plant. So I'll keep you posted on that but some good news for our city.

That's all I have sir.

Thank you. Okay moving onto the consent calendar. Public comment on the consent calendar? I'll look for a motion to accept if anybody does not have any removals or questions.

I'll make that motion to

accept. All right, I'll second. It's been moved and seconded by Ball we will go ahead and vote. All right, consent's passed. Thank you and we'll go ahead and go with staff presentations now. Fire department staff to present an overview of the city fire departments operation staffing capabilities and performance.

Okay, good evening Council and public. My name is Kevin Shea and I'm proudly serving as your Interim Fire Chief. I've been serving in this capacity for about one month but I've been a firefighter for Lompoc for 18 1⁄2 years. Eager to have this discussion tonight to give you an in-depth look at your department's capabilities and limitations so thank you for this opportunity and I look forward to positive discussion following the presentation.

All right, the purpose for tonight is to first provide a clear picture of your department's operations, staffing capabilities and performance. We're going to take an honest look at what we accomplish every day but also where our system is strained. Ultimately, we understand the system. We are managing it responsibly. And we're going to be transparent about where it sits under pressure.

So tonight, we're going to break this down into seven categories. And we're going to take a detailed look at operations, how we deliver service on a daily basis, our deployment model and our overall call volume. We'll dive into staffing, take a look at our staffing levels or vacancies in our daily staffing model. We'll talk about our capabilities and then outline what types of emergencies we are equipped to handle and where we rely on outside resources Take a look at our performance and how quickly and reliably we can respond to incidents.

And then our equipment and infrastructure, review our apparatus, review our vehicles, fire stations, and how they support our operations. We'll dive into fire prevention and risk reduction and cover the work that we do to prevent emergencies before they happen including inspections, plan review, and public education. And lastly, we'll take a look at our workforce impact And that's a look at current staffing and how workload conditions are affecting our personnel.

We'll evaluate each one of these independently and on a scale from 1 to 5, where 1 would be critical and 5 is optimal. We'll then bring them all together and provide an overall assessment of how the department is functioning. So starting with operations, we run a busy system but on a limited margin. We respond to approximately 5300 emergency incidents annually across the two stations which make our two fire stations two of the busiest in Santa Barbara County.

Our minimum staffing of nine personnel allows us to meet the daily demand but it doesn't provide for depth of simultaneous or expanded incidents. We consistently meet the needs of the community, but we're doing so with a relatively lean deployment model. We operate as an all-risk fire department and what that means is the all risk term is standard in the fire service. It reflects what the community expects from us.

It includes fire suppression, emergency medical response, rescues, hazardous situations, whatever. Whatever the call is, the fire department will respond. Delivering that type of, that level of service requires training. The ability to scale resources quickly, scale up when the incidents get more complex and scale down when the incident doesn't support the response.

Currently we're able to consistently meet those expectations so our operations are rated strong but with sustained reliance on overtime. Staffing is the area that most directly influences all the other parts of the system. We currently have four vacancies with two additional upcoming, one of those is a retirement and one is a resignation of a firefighter that I just received yesterday to go to another local fire department.

Here's an example of where those four vacancies currently fall within our organizational chart What you see here is at the very top, the fire chief position is vacant. That was vacated by Chief Fallon about a month ago and then we have three vacancies in our engineer rank which aren't the entry level firefighter. It's a promotional step above the firefighter rank which requires additional training or qualifications which I'll explain in just a minute.

Like I said, every day we have nine firefighters responding within the city limits. And this is what it looks like. One battalion chief, two captains, three engineers and three firefighters. The battalion chiefs are your shift commanders. They oversee all fire department operations within the city 24 hours a day seven days a week. Your captains are your company level supervisors, your initial incident commanders and the daily supervisors of the fire stations.

Engineers are the equipment driver operators, and they ensure that the apparatus and equipment are maintained and ready to respond at all times. And firefighters are the powerhouse of the fire company, the ones at the end of the fire hose, the first to provide medical aid, and the hands-on problem solvers. Every day, nine personnel, no exceptions. Shown here is our standard deployment model. The equipment you see here is the battalion chief, two type one fire engines, engine 51 and 52, and our two-person rescue squad, rescue 51. On each of the engines, you have a captain, an engineer, and a firefighter. And on rescue 51, you have an engineer and a firefighter.

Like I said, we currently have four vacancies, five vacancies and one additional upcoming. We've just completed a hiring process and we do have an academy, an in-house fire academy scheduled to begin in two weeks which is a big step towards rebuilding our staffing levels but there's inherent delay between hiring and having fully trained personnel available for deployment so in the meantime, we're relying on overtime to maintain minimum staffing That includes both voluntary and at times forced overtime.

You'll see the term brownout referenced here, and that simply means temporarily taking a unit out of service due to staffing limitations but still maintaining that position and equipment for future use. In our case this impacts Rescue 51 When we don't have enough personnel to safely staff all units, we prioritize maintaining engine companies and overall system coverage.

That can result in the rescue being browned out for that shift. This will occur when staffing levels are impacted by vacancies, by time off or window available qualified personnel are available to maintain minimum staffing on all the other apparatus. This isn't necessarily caused by one issue but it's a result of limited staffing flexibility over time. A brownout is a deliberate and a managed decision, not a system failure.

The brownouts allow us to maintain our core response across the city without overextending other resources. However, when these adjustments happen more often or for longer periods they add strain to the system so we remain focused on prioritizing the most critical services and maintaining effective response even with constrained staffing. We find that brownouts are not the problem, but they're an indicator of limited staffing flexibility.

Staffing scores in the at-risk category due to the impacts of chronic vacancies and our reliance on overtime. Capabilities. We have a broad set of capabilities consistent with an all risk fire department including fire suppression, emergency medical response, technical rescue support. But there are certain specialty resources such as a ladder truck and hazmat teams that we no longer offer internally.

For many years our department was able to provide these resources internally but for over five years we've had to rely on mutual aid for these services. Our capabilities remained stable but limited On the performance end, our current median response time is 4 minutes and 51 seconds which reflects consistent and reliable service delivery. The four minutes and 51 seconds is in compliance with our master plan stated goal of five minutes.

And our turnout times and travel times remain within those expected ranges and the overall system reliability is strong. It's important to note that the level of performance that's being maintained through the effort, or the performance that's being maintained is through the effort and commitment of personnel rather than excess capacity in the system. And what I mean by that is that although our performance is showing strong it's not because there's excess. It's not because we have extra slack in the system. It' s because of the commitment of the personnel daily, not because we have additional room.

Despite system limitations our performance is strong Okay, for equipment. We've made significant progress in our apparatus replacement planning. A new fire engine is in progress. Our new Rescue 51 is currently being built and our new command vehicle is nearing completion and almost ready for delivery. At the same time we do have additional apparatus approaching the end of service life which we're planning for.

Overall this is an area where we are being proactive and positioning the department well for the future with the help of finance and city staff. Infrastructure should not come as a surprise. It's been a topic that's come across this council for many years. Both fire stations are currently operating near maximum capacity with no room for expansion within their current footprint.

In addition, the age and design of both stations pose limitations in terms of safety and standards of the modern fire service needs. Although this doesn't impact our daily response directly, it does influence the long-term planning and department's ability to evolve bringing us into the at risk category for infrastructure. Fire prevention and risk reduction is a critical part of what we do. It's where we have the greatest opportunity to reduce emergencies before they happen. This includes inspections, plan reviews, permitting, fire investigations, public education and coordination on hazard mitigation.

It also provides direct support to the suppression crews by identifying risks and ensuring compliance with fire and life safety codes. This entire function is currently managed by one person, our Fire Marshal. And in comparable departments these responsibilities are typically shared across multiple staff including inspectors and support personnel. Given our fire marshal's workload, we focus on higher risk occupancies and essential functions to maximize the impact.

But staffing limits our ability to be able to operate at full capacity leaving our Fire Prevention Division although important, at risk. Sustained reliance on overtime creates a cycle That includes increased fatigue, reduced recovery time and a higher risk of injury or error. Eventually this can also impact morale and retention. Forced overtime which is overtime that isn't voluntary it's days that our firefighters are told that they must report to work is not unique to our department but it's something that we monitor very closely because if its impact on long-term sustainability The chart that you see here is a direct representative of the forced, not voluntary but forced overtime for the Lompoc Fire Department over the last four years.

You'll notice there is not a spike or a recent increase but it's sustained demand that has been stressing the department for years. To help illustrate how this sustained demand occurs, this slide shows a cycle that we're currently operating within. It starts with vacancies when positions are unfilled the remaining personnel are required to cover those gaps.

This leads to increased reliance on overtime including both voluntary and forced overtime to maintain our minimum staffing. As overtime becomes more frequent fatigue begins to build and our personnel are working longer hours with reduced recovery time between shifts Over time, that fatigue can contribute to burnout. It can decrease morale and ultimately attrition which through transfers, retirements or other departures feeds back into vacancies and continues that cycle.

What that cycle represents is not just a concept but it translates into very real day-to-day impacts on how the system operates and how our personnel are working. at the center of the impact is sustained reliance on overtime to maintain minimum staffing. That ensures we continue to meet service expectations, but it also means we're relying on extended work hours as part of normal operations.

As that continues over time, it leads to increased fatigue from extended work hours with more frequent shifts and less time in between them, recovery time becomes reduced which is an important factor in both performance and overall well-being. From an operational standpoint, fatigue and reduced recovery can increase the risk of injury, errors, and decrease effectiveness.

And over time these conditions can place a strain on morale and retention which ties back into the cycle that we just discussed. So what you're seeing here is how that cycle moves from staffing levels into real impacts on the personnel and ultimately the system itself. Individually, we can manage all these things. But when they occur together and consistently over time, they begin to define the overall condition of the system. Which is why I described the system today as stable but strained.

Stable means we are consistently meeting the needs of the community. But strained means we are doing so with increased pressure on staffing, workload, and infrastructure. This is not a point of failure, but it's an early indicator that attention will be needed moving forward. To summarize, this slide brings together both the strengths of the department and the areas that we're seeing ongoing pressure.

Overall, the department continues to perform at a high level with strong daily operations, reliable response, and committed personnel supported by ongoing equipment improvements. At the same time, ongoing staffing shortages, reliance on overtime facility limitations and workforce fatigue are increasing strain on the system. While the department continues to meet the needs of the community every day that is a direct result of the people doing the work.

Our personnel are the reason the system is functioning at the level it is today At the same time, our current staffing levels and workload are not sustainable in the long term. Without adjustments over time these pressures will continue to influence service reliability. To keep your fire department performing at a high level we need to address what's increasing that strain.

So the question moving forward is not whether the system works today, it's how we ensure it continues to work reliably into the future. And that will be guided by continued discussion around priorities, resources and long-term planning. Thank you for your time I look forward to working together and I'm available to answer any questions you might have.

Any questions? Council Member Ball

I'm going to try to get through these pretty quickly if I can, but I've been here on City Council for just past five years. When I first got here this was the same issue that I heard on day one of staffing issues so it's frustrating to me to hear that we're still... We've missed something. In five years, we haven't figured out how to turn the corner to get longevity back in our department to reduce some of this strain. So I'm gonna ask you a couple questions. Feel free to give me your best answer if you can.

Would it be fair to say if we paid our fire department, our firefighters, engineers, captains and so forth, if we paid them per call they would probably be amongst the highest paid firefighters in the county?

I would agree with that. I'd probably want to look at the numbers, but yes,

they

are definitely the busiest in

the county. So again, I'm trying to make the point here is that we have basically the hardest working fire department in the county based on our call volume. 100%. So thank you for that. Again, I want the community to understand that this isn't... Our department doesn't have the luxury to stand around and wait for a random call and kind of just hang out and play pool all day, right? Yeah.

I did want to ask about the brownout issue. I know that's come up before and it's kind of a new term for some of us here. I know in terms of our long-term planning from way back, we probably should have had a third engine and lots of different things but... We have this brownout issue with Rescue 51. So in the worst case scenario, if there's a scene where both engines had to respond to a very important call and there was a health call on the other side of town but Rescue 51 was browned out is there a chance that response time could go through the roof because you don't have staffing or Thank you very much.

But what our rescue provides is the versatility to handle those calls on our own. The rescue as a third unit is available to break and to navigate that sort of situation that you just described, and keep our response performance in our master plan's data goals. So yes... On days when the rescue is browned out, our versatility is significantly reduced. But one thing I do want to just keep in mind and I'll reiterate this probably multiple times, is that although the rescue was browned out we do not decrease our personnel numbers below nine.

Our personnel are redistributed to the engines based on training and qualifications. So essentially we're short on the operators for the rescue which ultimately leads to its brownout

So I totally get that and appreciate the clarity. You could have the same staff that arrive at a worst case scenario, bad crash at Central and 8th Street. Definitely need several injuries lots of stuff going on if the rescue is browned out all of your staff is just stuck on those two engines and again we're relying on mutual aid getting to health emergency call in the south side of town as quickly as possible.

So that's very frustrating to me to hear that we've allowed whatever the issue is, that we can't maintain and keep staff and retain them and keep them healthy both physically and mentally. That we're this close to actually having a situation where we cannot provide the level of service that we are supposed to provide our community for fire services as a council member It just frustrates me that having gone through COVID and ARPA money and balanced budgets and $8 million in reserves, that we haven't fixed this issue.

Maybe you could speak to this or someone else can. What's the average length of employment for our fire department? Meaning we used to have people that retired here they'd stay 20-30 years it doesn't seem like that's happening right now.

Over the past few years, we've had attrition in the higher recs which has ultimately led to a reduced average service year for your staff. I may be mistaken, perhaps the labor group knows this fact. But I believe it's around 10 years of service is the average for your fire department which is very young.

Yeah.

Ten years of service average.

So there might be a bonus that we've got a lot of young people and but maybe they're working a bunch of overtime getting burnout even more quickly and they have so much less experience with our department than someone that's been around 15, 20, 25 years.

That's correct. I had a conversation the other day and a good point was brought to me that in the fairy tale of fire service career, your career is 10 years as a firefighter, 10 years as an engineer, and 10 years as a captain. And sometimes those that have other aspirations will pursue a chief officer position. In our situation we are leaning so hard onto our personnel to encourage them to promote What would take someone 20 years to do in less than 10? So our personnel are stepping up to that demand. We have people actively training and working for the engineer position so we can prevent the rescue from being browned out. Our personnel are taking that initiative, which is encouraging. But like I said, we are putting that influence on them much earlier in their career than they may have expected.

Thank you for that. I kind of want to go, maybe a symptom of the brownout or at least for staffing issues is a lot of times through mutual aid even at the state level we when we have the staff we send out a strike team to go and support fires in the Palisades or wherever there's a fire. When we don't have enough staff we just don't have the luxury of sending out a strike team at all right? I mean we just can't.

Our primary responsibility is their service levels within the city first

So talk to me about when we don't have enough staff that we can send out and be reimbursed from the state for not only the people that go out and fight the fires, but for the backfield, the people that have to be maybe force hired to work here. We get some sort of revenue from that, and that has been helpful. Can you articulate a little bit about that helpfulness? And if we don�t have that, we never get to do that, how does that affect our department?

Our cooperation with the California mutual aid system does do exactly those things. When we deploy a unit to go provide aid somewhere else within the state, whether it's fires happening in Northern California or Southern California with the Palisades and the Eaton fires, The entire deployment is covered by state resources. So that means the personnel that are being deployed are covered, the personnel backfill because they vacated their position to be deployed is covered.

There's an equipment recuperation that we get and there's also an admin fee on top of that that we get also. So to answer your question, yes. It's one of the very and one of the only ways essentially that the fire department brings revenue to this city. And by doing so we're able to provide our equipment. One of the ways that revenues has been used is for our brush truck and for the rescue, for example.

Those equipment purchases were made due to some funding as part of those deployments

Thank you for that. I've got a couple other things, and I'm not sure you can answer this maybe somebody from the staff would be willing to do it But something I learned pretty early on is the, you know what are the impacts of forced hires? I think most people if they don't know how it works you might assume like oh my gosh firefighters are killing it. They're crushing it man and they're working all this overtime must be rolling in it right and sure maybe there's some benefit to that but I learned from talking and no offense to our firefighters I learned from talking to your wives about some of the impacts of forced hiring. So, can you educate me and a few of us on what is a forced hire? And maybe we can hear from somebody about what are those impacts on the family side of things.

If my wife was here she'd love to tell you but I can speak on that and that is the fire service operates differently than most occupations where holidays are off Special occasions and things like that might be missed occasionally, but for the most part a force hire means when I may be scheduled for as off-duty one day. But due to our staffing, the battalion chief will call and say hey firefighter whoever, I'm sorry but in 48 hours I need you to report for duty. And they need to come in and they have no option other than to report for duty otherwise there would be considered noncompliant right?

So ultimately what it means, the impact of that is straight. It's strain on the family, not just the firefighter themselves but their family. And ultimately we can look at that and say oh whatever it doesn't matter they're getting paid for that so who cares? There is an impact that goes beyond that right and that's the fatigue and the decreased morale that comes with it. So when we're looking at numbers where $7,500 to $8,300 of forced overtime exist within our 24-person agency.

That's tremendous. Ultimately those are the way I look at it is those are opportunities for additional positions or something to the element of reducing that strain would be my goal to ultimately looking to find a solution moving forward.

Thank you for that. And if anyone wants to, from the department, raise your hand if you missed maybe a kid's birthday or date night or something that you had planned for. We've got lots of hands going up over there. Okay? So again this is a very special job. We're very fortunate to have our firefighters and our whole staff there but I think these impacts don't necessarily... You guys don't necessarily go out and tell the community How much it sucks to not be able to be there for your family or to plan something, or to keep your wife happy. So those things resonate with me and it frustrates me that we have a system here where someone could go work in a different community that has much lower call volume, be paid more and not even be forced hired but spend a lot more time with their family and be happy And we still have this issue after five years of me hearing the same story.

So I'm going to switch just a little bit. I kind of want to ask staff, I don't know if Dean wants to take this or anyone else but I think I'm a little bit frustrated in that. I've heard that everything is pretty peachy. It's going okay. We're not going to reduce service levels but I think that's such a top level... Of course they're gonna show up. Of course they're gonna strive to get to the calls on time and all those things Is there a plan? Is there some sort of way that we can start addressing this realistically?

It's obviously not working because this many vacancies on a consistent basis means people aren't happy to stay here. They're happy to go somewhere else, so I'm looking at you guys. What are we going to do about this? What's our options?

Well, one thing we're doing is we're hiring three. Hopefully we can have another one onboarding To try and get ahead of this, I think maybe me and Kevin need to try and be more proactive. And when we have vacancies or anticipate vacancies start putting those recruitments out earlier so we don't have as many vacancies. Some of the things like what San Diego did is they actually added more staff so they won't have as much overtime basically. We could do that here too. That's something that I've been talking to Fallon and Kevin about is Reducing the number of, how much overtime we have and adding more staff so they won't have so many forced overhires in overtime. Because I know what it's like, I know it's tough when you do a lot of overtime.

I appreciate the guys and the hard effort. And I know we are in a tough spot, but I don't know what to tell you. We added Rescue, it increased our cost 38% that year. There's only so much money that goes around and sometimes I'm the bad guy because I have to tell people no because we don't have the money. But we do need to come up with a solution. I agree with you. I'm hearing this over and over and we have been trying to come up with different ways to combat this And I just hope that the firefighters, you know, take this challenge and sign up for their task books and do engineering because I really appreciate what they do. I want them to be happy too.

Sure. And I mean, I think I agree with you in general but I think just saying that we need to do a better job of predicting vacancies is just understanding that the system isn't keeping the staff happy and they want to go work somewhere else because they get more time off or bump in pay And I again, I'm going to hammer you a little bit on this. It's like 7000 forced that has to come with some sort of cost. Obviously it's overtime so the city is finding away and check in the box to pay.

Overtime to a limited staff to do the job. So again, if it means we've got to add a couple of positions and we've got to realistically prioritize their competitive pay or give them some sort of reason to stick with it here. That has to be considered versus just, hey let's go hire more firefighters. Because every single time we do that the average amount of time that we have a person on staff just keeps dropping until before we know it. We have a whole staff that is average from five years working in Lompoc. That's lack of experience they don't know where everything is they haven't been fully trained That puts us at a disadvantage. So I'm hoping this isn't just, you know, kick the can down the road type of discussion where yeah they have some issues they just keep winging it.

This is a priority our job as a city is to provide public safety. It's one of the top Wine items that we have in terms of governance and providing to our community. And I'm hearing more and more often that these force hires are creating fatigue, which is creating mental health issues, which is creating burnout, which is destroying families and causing everyone to just want to go work somewhere else.

We have to do something different, so I won't keep talking because I'm very frustrated that this is the same. We're not even talking about a new department. We're not talking about a fire station that will probably fall down if we have an earthquake. We're not talking about any big picture planning. We just need to figure out how to retain and treat our firefighters better considering they are the busiest in the county.

Thank you.

That was an excellent presentation. I have more specific questions. Do you have a statistic on the brownout? Is it 10% or 50% or...

So at this point, there are two phases to the brownout plan. Currently we are in phase one where ultimately Even if we were to brown the rescue out, we don't have the firefighters available to disperse appropriately to the engines. So in phase one, we are relying heavily on forced overtime to keep the rescue in service. Since the plan started where it was activated over probably I think it's probably been two months now, it's been less than 10 times that the rescue has been ground out.

However, when we move into phase two that's the point to which we have underfilled the positions with firefighters and we're working on training and ensuring the qualifications are there. When they're there, the rescue will be in service. But when they're not, we are under-filled with firefighters that aren't qualified to operate that vehicle. So in that case, the firefighters will be redistributed to four and four on the engines. And that is going to be occurring more frequently once our newest recruits have completed their training.

So just for my clarity, you're budgeted so many slots, I'll say. When you threw that org chart up and you showed three or four vacancies, if those were full would you be at full staffing as budgeted?

I'm trying to get to where the issues are in my head.

I don't have enough clarity. A few weeks ago, I talked to someone and I got the image that The issue you were experiencing was a vacuum in the mid-level or adequately trained, not necessarily the number of bodies. Then I saw the overtime chart and that looks like I don't know, four full-time bodies. You just say it's 2,000 a year and you're paying time and a half or double time or whatever, 7500 guys quickly becomes 8,000 which is for full-time guys. So I'm trying to understand is the issue kind of a midlevel vacuum that's occurring?

Or is it we just don't have enough guys? Or is it both? Is that a fair question?

It's very fair and in fact I was hoping that you would ask because I wanted to spend a little more time on this organizational chart. Because it is accurate to say that the higher level positions that have been vacated throughout the last 10-15 years has caused that trickle down effect Ultimately at the point where we're not able to fill those positions. We're in a situation right now, myself for example I typically sit as a battalion chief but I've moved up into the interim fire chief role which now leaves that position vacant and so we've appointed someone in that position. So ultimately we're trying to plug the holes as we move up the organizational chart but at this point we've plugged all those holes and our vacancies have settled at the engineer rank The best that we can do in getting those filled is getting our personnel trained and equipped to take that position.

That's happening right now so ultimately it's It's a trickle-down effect that's been the case for years. And it's not that we're just losing new firefighters, we've lost firefighters with seniority and through rank which has put us in the current situation we are right now. I hope that answers your question.