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

New records released by the City Clerk’s office reveal that McCormick was non-compliant to the City’s emergency services contract in the first week of performance.  McCormick was the only evaluated bidder that committed to meeting Torrance’s requirement of an 8 minute response 92% of the time.  City staff cited that commitment by McCormick as a key differentiating factor in scoring McCormick higher than the other evaluated bidders.  If the first week of performance was any indication, however, it appears that McCormick will have a real challenge living up to this commitment.

The data provided by the City included 116 “911” emergency calls received between 03 and 07 December 2014 just after McCormick initiated performance.  Of those 116 calls, McCormick had a response time of above the 8 minute requirement on 16 of them for an on-time response rate of 86.2%.

In 14 of the calls it appears the transport was canceled after dispatch (presumably in transit).  If the call was canceled prior to arrival and before the 8 minute requirement had expired, then I counted it as on time (11 of the 14).  I counted it as late if the call was canceled after 8 minutes and McCormick still had not arrived (3 of the 14).  Even if you factored all these calls as on-time, leaving McCormick with only 13 misses, the on-time response percentage would only bump up to 88.7% – still well below the 92% requirement.

A key factor not known is whether McCormick responded to these calls Code 3 (lights and sirens) or Code 2 (no lights and sirens) as is customary in Torrance. 

The data set also includes 7 calls in which McCormick responded in 7 seconds or less (4 of these showed a response time of 0 seconds).  This is a likely due to a lag time of anywhere from 40 to 90 seconds between when the City received the emergency call and when it was formally dispatched to the ambulance provider. TFD acknowledged that when they scored Gerber (the previous transport provider), they counted from the time the City received the call. Gerber counted from the actual dispatch time resulting in Gerber scoring themselves higher than TFD did.

It appears from the data that McCormick is being scored against the more lenient dispatch time standard.  This essentially would give them an additional 40 to 90 seconds over what Gerber had.  As an indication of how significant the difference can be, McCormick might have an additional 16 late responses if they were scored against the higher standard – which would cause their on-time response percentage to plummet down to 72.4%.

As a reference point, Torrance Fire Department (TFD) claimed that Gerber ambulance was in breach of their contract for failing to meet the response time requirement.  In the notice of default letter submitted against Gerber, TFD cited Gerber’s average response time of 88.9% over nearly a two year period as cause for their default.

Given the numbers provided, it would appear McCormick is also now in default of their contract leaving the City in an awkward position.  Many councilmembers cited Gerber’s non-compliance with the contract as justification for making the award to McCormick.  What should they do now that McCormick also appears to be in breach?

When the contract was awarded to McCormick, many questioned the process and the apparent conflicts of interest that led to the decision.  McCormick’s initial performance now raises the question of whether Torrance residents should also be concerned that they are actually less safe with McCormick providing emergency transport services than they were with Gerber.

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.