Consideration and Approval of Contract: Cooperative Fire Rate Agreement (CFRA) with AZ State Forestry

Approve the renewal of the CFRA with AZ State Forestry

The CFRA is a long-standing Agreement between the City and AZ State Forestry, renewable every two years.  The current CFRA will expire March 30, 2014.  The CFRA allows the City to participate in inter-agency emergency response outside the City (when assistance is requested by the State/Federal government) and to recover 100% of all equipment and personnel costs associated with such responses.  

All incident response expenses are reimbursed to the City if the Agreement is in-place.  None are reimbursed if the Agreement is not in-place.  Incident frequency, size, and duration are episodic in nature: In CY 2013, nearly $740,000 was reimbursed to the City, while over the past five years, that amount has been in excess of $3 million. 

10.  Develop an ongoing budget process – Reimbursement for all costs incurred on out-of-town emergencies, with some equipment revenue,   above actual operating expenses, being returned to the General Fund. 
11.  Effective governance – budgetary accountability, no-cost training and experience for responders, assisting others in need, building and maintaining effective relationships with our partners.

Previous City Councils have approved the renewal of the CFRA when such action was required. Many members of the current Council were part of the previous approval process (Mar 2012).

1) Approve the renewal of the CFRA
2) Reject the CFRA

The CFRA has existed between the City and AZ State Forestry since the mid 1980’s.  The Agreement is renewed on a biennial basis.  It is the mechanism by which City resources are requested by the State/Federal government and assigned to out-of-area emergency events, and by which the city is reimbursed 100% of all costs related to such events.

The CFRA is a standard State-wide Agreement (format, conditions, terms, etc) between Fire Departments and AZ State Forestry.  It covers local, regional, and national Incident Management Team (IMT) participation, engine, water-tender, City Crew 1, and Single-Resource assignments, including the use of other City personnel and equipment on fire and other all-risk assignments.

Equipment rates remain the same as the 2012 Agreement.  Personnel rates are not directly listed or included in the CFRA, but are reimbursed at the full actual burdened rate, to include any OT costs associated with any additional costs incurred to replace or act for those on assignment.

The entire community benefits from the skills, knowledge, and abilities gained and maintained while employees are assigned to large-scale complex incidents outside of our city: learning elsewhere allows those same employees to effectively engage here when faced with a similar type event. The relationships established and nurtured elsewhere with other agency partners pays dividends when we require help here.  And finally, the positive cash-flow allows us an opportunity to purchase some equipment and supplies at no cost to the city tax-payer, helps off-set the cost of needed training that does cost, and also puts some funds into the City’s General Fund for other use.

None

1) Approve the renewal of the CFRA, allowing continued engagement with other partners and 100% cost-recovery; or 2) Reject the CFRA, reducing the opportunity to acquire large-scale incident no-cost training and experience, restricting the development of inter-agency relationships, and eliminating a positive cash-flow source into the General Fund.