Receive status update on Yolo County Fire Protection Districts Long Term Sustainability Effort and provide Board direction. (No general fund impact) (Rinde/Sabatini)

The Long-Term Fire Sustainability effort began in 2018 and has since continued exploring options to improve the long-term sustainability of the County’s 15 rural fire protection districts ("FPDs"). Of these 15 districts, 11 provide direct fire services while the other 4 are considered as contract districts and contract with their neighboring City. Ten (10) of the districts are dependent to the Board of Supervisors, while five (5) are independent special districts. Where the fire districts are dependent, the Board of Supervisors is the governing board of the Fire District and is responsible for the governance decisions made. However, in most instances, the Board of Supervisors has historically delegated much of its authority to a Fire Commission for the district who make key decisions for the district on behalf of the Board. That delegation of authority may be revisited by the Board of Supervisors if and when there is cause to do so. See table below.

The County through this initial effort produced a report, "Yolo County Fire Protection Districts: A Review of Challenges and Strategic Approaches".  The report is provided as Attachment A to this staff report and was presented to the Board of Supervisors at the July 23, 2019 Board meeting (Item #59). It is important to note that the challenges facing Yolo County FPDs are not necessarily unique to Yolo County and mirror the challenges being faced in the delivery of fire protection services at both the state and national level.  That report shared the challenges that were facing the Yolo County rural FPDs which are bulleted below but further encapsulated in that report. The primary challenges are:

After the release of this report, the County formed the Yolo County Fire Protection Sustainability Board Ad Hoc Committee, consisting of District 3 Supervisor Sandy and District 5 Supervisor Barajas. Representatives of the Yolo County Fire Chiefs Association ("YCFCA") are also members of the committee.  The goal of the ad hoc committee is to work collaboratively with the YCFCA to develop a suite of options and implementation strategies to ensure the long-term sustainability of the fire protection services in Yolo County.  The desired outcomes of this effort are as follows: 

The Subcommittee has brought several updates to the Board over the past several years, however it was hampered in its efforts initially by the COVID-19 pandemic and the related progress was slowed during 2020. Efforts toward fire sustainability were reinitiated during 2021 to find agreeable and implementable solutions. County staff brought its last update to the Board of Supervisors on August 31, 2021 which included several interim recommendations while county staff worked with fire districts on development of a long-term sustainability plan and awaited completion of the 2021/2022 Yolo Local Agency Formation Commission ("LAFCo") municipal services review ("MSR"). 

The County Administrator, along with the Board of Supervisors, requested that LAFCo accelerate its Municipal Service Review in Spring of 2021. That request was based off the notion that many districts had not implemented efficiencies and recommendations that were identified in the 2016 LAFCo report which would help to guide efforts to improve fire services in the County, as well as prior versions of a County fire sustainability plan were met with resistance. There was the recognition at the time of making the request to LAFCo that their report may not be the sole solution to achieving fire sustainability. As a result, the County realized we would need to help to partner and utilize tools available (and possibly funding) in order to facilitate implementation of the recommendations and achieve the desired improvements.

LAFCo released their initial FPD governance overview for the LAFCo Commission's direction on March 31, 2022 and LAFCo is expected to take up approval of the final MSRs for each district in late June or early July 2022. A LAFCo informational overview, provided in March 2022 as part of the draft MSRs, concluded that the Fire Districts are fragmented and could be improved primarily by adopting shared governance, whether that be through execution of Joint Operations Agreements (“JOA”) or through formal legal consolidation if districts are unwilling to undertake a JOA. This is the most significant recommendation contained in the draft report and several of the districts were cited in previous MSR's as needing to pursue shared governance which have not been implemented. (Note: Capay Valley and Esparto FPDs have already executed a JOA between their districts.)
 
In order to bring the 15 fire districts into an efficient grouping for consideration of JOAs or consolidation, it made sense to identify different service areas of the County where cooperation of existing resources would be most logical to address service needs. Thus, after significant study of the issues, the County is proposed to be broken up into five key zones where enhanced cooperation is needed. A map of draft/proposed service areas is provided as Attachment E to this staff report and the areas are described in the table below.

This approach of grouping fire districts into areas provides a framework for encouraging collaboration through JOAs (voluntary collaboration) or potential consolidations (typically externally initiated). The County is in a unique position to aid the LAFCo effort to ensure momentum continues after the LAFCo report and foster cooperation. The reason is that ten of the fire districts are under the control over the Board of Supervisors as dependent fire districts. While the Board has historically delegated much of its powers to a fire commission, it has the ability to alter or remove delegated authorities as needed to encourage JOA or consolidation. While the five independent districts have elected commissioners and include Clarksburg, Elkhorn, Madison, Yolo, and Zamora, the County has the ability to initiate proceedings for consolidation for those independently elected districts and may want to consider doing so if these districts do not seek voluntary cooperation or do not pursue fiscal measures to ensure sustainable operations. 

The County has also set aside a contingency fund in the FY 2021/22 budget of $550,000 which is expected to be carried forward to FY 2022/23. At the direction of the Board, staff could begin to work to identify ways to utilize this set aside funding to encourage JOAs and possible reorganizations. In addition, the County set aside $300,000 of funding to aid in the commissioning of the Proposition 218 studies to improve fire service revenues.

Staff plan to present to the Board the five different areas and key draft recommendations that are under consideration by LAFCo. Staff request Board direction on whether the County is prepared to have staff engage in more formal collaborations with LAFCo on ways that the County can assist in implementing recommendations from the LAFCo study.
 
Staff would then come back to the Board of Supervisors targeted in July after LAFCo Board approval to adopt the LAFCo report as the guiding document for improvement of the Fire Districts. If there is support for more formal collaboration, County staff then plan to bring back actions to the Board to aid implementation of these recommendations. These would likely focus on returning to the Board with one area at a time (i.e., area by area) focusing on the area with the most pressing needs and then following with areas with lesser needs. Based on current estimates, each area may be spaced out by 3-6 months, but the County would continue work on 218 studies concurrently. If there is Board support, actions could be brought back for the first and highest priority area as part of that July meeting as staff feel it is critical to keep momentum.

Should the County not support the LAFCo effort and adopt that as our guiding plan, County staff would continue to lack an approved plan to guide our efforts and would need to work toward developing a separate County Fire Sustainability plan. Prior iterations of County plans were not accepted by the Districts or the County Board for various reasons.

Staff has collaborated with the Yolo County Fire Protection Sustainability Board Ad Hoc Subcommittee, the Yolo County Fire Chief's Association, staff from Department of Financial Services and the Yolo County Office of Emergency Services, and several peer jurisdictions