Torrance City Council – A Town Hall Style Conversation About Local Politics

The ability of the those seeking the recently awarded emergency services contract to meet the required response time of 8 minutes 92% of the time appeared to be a key distinguishing factor in the evaluation process.  City officials claimed the previous transport provider, Gerber Ambulance, was in breach of their contract for their failure to meet the requirement.  In support of McCormick, the eventual winner of the contract, the City staff report noted that McCormick was the only bidder that agreed to meet to the requested response times. McCormick’s ability to meet that commitment, however, has since been the subject of intense debate.

Shortly after McCormick initiated performance allegations surfaced that McCormick had a response time of over 20 minutes on at least one occasion.  Such a slow response, if verified, would certainly lead one to question whether McCormick could live up to its promises.  To determine the truth of the matter, I submitted a public records request with the City on 08 December 2014. That request sought that the City provide records indicating the emergency response times for McCormick ambulance for all 911 emergency calls received between 02 December and 07 December 2014 in which transport was provided through their company.

The California Public Records Act requires that municipalities respond to requests for public records within 10 days. The Act does allow for an extension of up to 14 days in “unusual circumstances” defined as follows:

(1) The need to collect the requested records from field facilities that are separate from the office processing the request.

(2) The need to search for, collect, and appropriately examine voluminous amount of separate and distinct records that are demanded in a single request.

(3) The need for consultation, which shall be conducted with all practicable speed, with another agency having substantial interest in the determination of the request or among two or more components of the agency having substantial subject matter interest therein.

(4) The need to compile data, to write programming language or a computer program, or to construct a computer report to extract data.

Ten days after submitting my request, I received a message from City employee Joe Huld notifying me that they would need additional time to respond and that they would do so on or before 01/01/15 (the 14 additional days afforded by the Act). When pressed for what the “unusual circumstance” was that caused the delay, Mr. Huld stated in an e-mail that they needed “additional time to assure that we have collected all the responsive documents and that they are all public record.”

As of the moment of this writing, I have not heard anything further from the City and it is my understanding they are now in violation of the California Public Records Act for failing to adhere to my request.  I find the City’s lack of transparency on this issue very unnerving.  I believe this is an important public safety matter and the lack of response as well as the cryptic justification for the delay only serve to increase suspicions with regard to this issue.

In contrast, the City of Rancho Palos Verdes (who also happens to utilize McCormick) publicizes the response times on their website.  Rancho Palos Verdes holds McCormick to a 8 minute and 59 second response time versus the 8 minute Torrance requirement.  Yet, even with this more lenient requirement, records reflect that McCormick was only able to comply 85.4%, 87.2%, and 84.9% of the time in three recent months.  This performance is well below the 92% of the time required by Torrance and also well below the percentages that Gerber was able to meet in Torrance.

The City was more than happy to make Gerber’s response times available at the City Clerk’s office for anyone to inspect.  With that in mind, they should follow Rancho Palos Verdes lead and do the same with McCormick’s response times.  I believe that is the only way to live up to the increased transparency so many of the candidates promised in the recent election.

At a recent Council meeting Councilman Tim Goodrich made a point to remind voters that he ran on a “back to basics” platform which he defined as fixing streets and sidewalks and “getting back to the core government services.”  He then went on to say that improving roads was the # 1 issue facing Torrance noting that the pavement condition index of Torrance roads is 58 – well below the ideal standard of 80.

How ironic then that the very next week the Council would take on Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) – a cause championed and brought forward by the very same Goodrich. There is much room for reasonable minds to differ on the advance of a CCA, but one thing for certain is that implementing a CCA within Torrance is about as far from the “Back to Basics” approach that Goodrich supposedly believes in as you can possibly imagine.

Similar to the Affordable Care Act, the formation of a CCA is one of those issues that ignite firebrands from both the left and the right.  In that heated atmosphere, the debate often gets bogged down in the rhetorical quagmire of capitalism versus socialism and conservatism versus progressivism.

Narratives describing less than scrupulous benefactors on both sides of the issue further complicate the debate.  On one hand you have the large monopolistic investor owned utilities (IOU’s) that have continued to gouge consumers through cozy relationships with politicians and government regulators.  On the other side there exist enterprising green energy scammers orchestrating the CCA’s to line their pockets at taxpayer expense.

Given these two extremes, and the compelling evidence that can be presented by both sides, it is easy for the regular trusting taxpayer that just wants to power his home at an affordable price while not contributing to the earth’s demise feeling stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place.

So what is a CCA exactly?  Essentially it is a government created and controlled middle-man that brokers energy contracts on behalf of consumers.  Instead of paying Southern California Edison (SCE) directly Torrance residents would pay the CCA.  The CCA would then leverage the buying power gained by pooling consumers to purchase energy contracts.  The hope is that the CCA would then use this buying power to purchase energy contracts at an affordable price from sources that provide cleaner energy than SCE would normally offer.

The choice part of a CCA is that instead of just paying the one rate afforded by SCE, consumers could choose from various cleaner options to meet their energy needs.    Marin Clean Energy (MCE), a CCA touted in the City staff report as a successful model, offers consumers three choices: Light Green (50% renewable), Deep Green (100% renewable), or Sol Shares (100% through local solar farm).  As to be expected, the greener options typically would cost the consumer significantly more.  In the MCE plan, the Sol Shares rates are 30% higher than the rates paid by those that choose the Deep Green option.

The promise of the CCA is alluring.  Proponents claim that it will bring cleaner energy to communities at more affordable rates.  As a government run not-for-profit, instead of paying dividends to shareholders like IOU’s they claim the CCA will be able to reinvest profits into developing local green energy sources that could provide jobs and power to local communities.

One of the downsides is that if the CCA is not successful that taxpayers will likely be caught holding the bag.  In a cautionary tale, the staff report indicates that the CCA in San Francisco was suspended after expending $4.1 million dollars.  Another report indicated that in the SF example electricity rates were set to increase by nearly 5 times.

There are other, possibly greater, causes for alarm.  With our current model, we supposedly have government regulators working on our behalf to ensure entities like SCE are not behaving badly.  Whether those regulators are doing a good job is definitely a question up for debate, but with a CCA it is not clear what regulation, if any, they would have.  Rates under a CCA would not be regulated by a government agency; instead they would be set by the CCA’s Board of Directors – which typically is comprised of locally elected officials.  In addition, how are we to know whether the energy purchased by a CCA is actually cleaner? And who’s to keep the CCA from paying their directors and consultants outlandish salaries and benefits?

Those are exactly the concerns raised by one energy expert with regard to the MCE CCA.  In startling allegations, energy expert Jim Phelps has claimed that MCE has actually cost consumers more while providing energy that is less clean than PG&E (the local IOU) was providing.  According to his analysis, the primary beneficiaries of MCE, which has 22 employees according to the City staff report, appears to be the directors and consultants of the organization that are bilking taxpayers out of millions of dollars a year.

I am sympathetic to the need to provide increased energy options for the consumer, but perhaps unlike Goodrich I actually do believe that the best thing for Torrance right now is a “Back to Basics” approach to city government.  That’s why I oppose Community Choice.  With an uncertain economy, a strained City budget, and roads still in disrepair now is not the time to embark upon a risky government run enterprise that strays so far from a core city government service.

On this issue, I found a memo released by Shaun Elliot, one of the leading proponents of CCA’s and the Director of LEAN Energy US, very convincing.  In that memo, he claimed that AB 2145 would “cripple CCA in California by requiring local programs to be opt-in vs. opt-out.”  If the primary threat to an initiative called Community Choice is that people would have to actually “choose” it over their current IOU Company, then taxpayers should take heed that maybe it is not a program that people should let a few politicians choose for them.

When my youngest daughter was 7 months old she started choking.  My wife, who is a trained medical professional as a registered nurse, could not help her dislodge the obstruction and called 911.  I am deeply grateful for the first responders from Torrance Fire Department (TFD) and Gerber ambulance that arrived that day to help my family.  All of our first responders do deserve a lot of credit and gratitude for how they serve our community each and every day.  That said, it was a terrifying experience for our family, and in those situations you realize just how much every second counts.

I had always assumed, as I would imagine so do most of the residents of Torrance, that when you call 911 because your baby girl is choking that the ambulance is coming lights blazing to render aid.  That’s why I was absolutely shocked to recently discover that is not necessarily the case in Torrance.

The patient record for my daughter reveals that Gerber ambulance had a box on the form indicating whether they had to stage at the incident. Staging is when Gerber would park a block or two away from the scene awaiting for the TFD to arrive. The form also indicates whether Gerber was called to the scene “Code 2” (no lights or sirens – obeying all traffic laws) or “Code 3” (lights and sirens). Typically, Code 2 is designated for non-life threatening events while Code 3 is for life threatening situations.  In Torrance, however, it’s standard for the transport provider to be called Code 2 irrespective of the life threatening nature of the call.

In my daughter’s case the ambulance did not stage as they arrived after TFD, but as is the norm they were called Code 2 to the scene.  Thank God my daughter is fine and all turned out okay for us, but I am troubled to think that in the panic of that situation that an ambulance could have been sitting around the corner waiting for TFD to arrive, or that life saving treatment could have arrived sooner had the ambulance been called Code 3 instead of Code 2.

I raised some of these issues that I believe delay patient emergency care at the Council meeting last week and I was very pleased to receive a direct response from the City Clerk’s office this morning. I commend City Council and staff for providing a timely and transparent response to my inquiry. The City response found here stated that the staging practice was discontinued several years ago in an effort to “improve our overall service to the community.” I am left wondering why this seemingly misguided policy was ever standard practice, but I am pleased to hear it is no longer in effect. In the same response, however, the City did confirm that the practice of calling the transport ambulance Code 2 remains in place.

I believe this presents a significant public safety concern. Yes, the TFD responds Code 3 to all emergencies, but depending on the location of the emergency it’s still possible that the ambulance transport provider could get to the scene more quickly due to their initial proximity to the incident.  In fact, it was not uncommon for the Gerber ambulances to arrive first on scene even though they responded Code 2.  In those situations, a Code 2 response by the transport provider inhibits the patient from being reached by trained first responders as quickly as they otherwise could be if the ambulance were to be called Code 3.

In conversations with Gerber personnel, some have revealed that the TFD was sometimes slow to call them thereby delaying their response to the scene.  If this were true, this practice could also delay patient care.

I can’t speak for all other residents of Torrance, but I know that if the same incident happened again with my daughter, or any other life threatening incident occurred with someone I care about, that I would want the nearest trained first responders coming as quickly as they could, whether they were TFD personnel or a private transport company such as Gerber or McCormick.

In raising this issue with the Council, I remember that many of them promised to make public safety their top priority during the recent election. As evidence of that I recall receiving a mailer from one of the Public Safety Departments advocating on behalf of their endorsed candidates. That mailer, which I kept, included the following statements:

“Pat Furey knows that public safety is of the utmost importance”

“Heidi Ashcraft is dedicated to ensure the safety and security of our residents”

“Keeping the citizens of Torrance safe is Geoff’s first priority”

“A vote for Tim is a vote for public safety”

“Mike will keep public safety his top priority and give first responders the tools needed to keep Torrance safe”

Based on these statements, I am hopeful that the current Council will be mindful of their commitment to public safety they made during the past election and do what they can to correct what appears to be a wrongheaded policy that is not in the best interests of the public.  In an emergency every second counts, and if there is anything we can do to get aid to those in need more quickly, then we should do it.  After all, for someone it could literally mean the difference between life and death.