Fire staff face-off

Dubbing it “a classic confrontation between two titans of Glendale politics — the fire union and the homeowners’ associations,” former Pasadena Police Chief and longtime Glendale citizen-activist Bruce Philpott finally earned a face-to-face showdown with the Glendale Fire Department (GFD) at Glendale’s City Council chambers.

The focus of the May 27 debate was Philpott’s call for a staffing reduction in the city’s fire crews from the current four-member teams to three, a move he claimed would save the city $15 million annually without compromising safety and effectiveness.

But standing before the council as a crowd of about 20 like-minded city residents and 10 uniformed firemen looked on, Philpott ultimately came up short in the debate, failing to swing a third council member his way from the five-member board, thus bringing what he considered a disappointing conclusion to his months-long battle.

“It’s definitely disappointing to see this outcome, but we’ve had some solid victories as well,” Philpott said afterwards. “Changing the department’s exercise policies, for instance, will guarantee saving more lives.”

Philpott was referring to another facet of his critique of the GFD, in which he spotlighted numerous firehouses that allowed their firefighting teams to exercise in parks up to several miles away from their stations. Examining logs of fire calls and response times, Philpott argued that the extra time involved in driving back to stations and changing uniforms before finally rolling out to a call wasted precious minutes of “golden time” that could make the difference between life and death.

The attention Philpott drew to that policy caused a shift in department regulations, which now state that firefighters must stay within a one-block radius of their firehouses while exercising. While Philpott hopes that that change in policy will lead to similar changes at other departments nationwide, he had hoped to have an even bigger impact with his crew-size crusade.

Last week’s meeting was a special session called because the council wanted to hear and digest Philpott’s multi-layered arguments in one fell swoop, having limited his prior testimony on the issues to five-minute summaries delivered at 12 consecutive weekly meetings.

Among those engaging in heated debate after Philpott’s 30-minute presentation were fire union President Captain Chris Stavros and Glendale Fire Chief Harold Scoggins — both of whom claimed that an outsider like Philpott, who had a lengthy career in the Pasadena Police Department before eventually becoming its chief in the late 1980s, could never understand the intricacies of a fire department’s needs.

“To Philpott, it’s all about the financial issues,” argued Stavros. “He never once seems to talk about caring for the wellbeing of the firemen as people who need to be protected.”

“I believe Mr. Philpott lacks an understanding of what it takes for different fire operations or emergency medical calls. It’s hard to understand without actual experience on crews, and yet he comes in with a different business model to solve them,” Scoggins said in a phone interview.
“If you look as an outsider, it’s easy to question why not three men instead of four. But talk to the experts and look at studies such as ones done in Austin [Texas] and Providence [Rhode Island], and they’ll show there’s far less injuries as well as far more productivity with four men versus three.
“If you don’t know intimately how we work, you won’t understand,” added Scoggins. “That’s like me telling police how to do staff when my experience is in fire.”

Ultimately, no official vote was cast at the meeting, but Councilmen Frank Quintero, Dave Weaver and Ara Najarian supported the firefighters’ union position that four-member teams are a necessity, while Councilmen John Drayman and Bob Yousefian opposed the union’s stance.

Philpott is taking that close result to heart and is already stating that many of his supporters will turn their attention squarely to the City Council elections next year in an attempt to replace at least one of the three who opposed their position.

“We’re not going to simply walk away from this issue because it’s too powerful and has stimulated too many people in the community. They understand the swelling costs associated with personnel benefits that have for the first time in my memory of 35 years living here [resulted in] not being able to balance a budget for next fiscal year,” said Philpott. “The council is still $9 million short [of a balanced budget, required by the Glendale city charter]. People here in the community, a growing number of them, are advocating for cost-effective services.

“They simply see services being reduced while the cost of government is going up,” he said. “That is not consistent with good solid management at the local level. This is going to lead to cutbacks in other city services to make up that shortfall. They’re going to cut library hours, positions from various city departments — or at least discuss those by June 10, when there’s a final discussion of the city budget,” Philpott added. “Last year, of the 50 highest wage earners in Glendale, 36 were firefighters. People are looking at the data and it doesn’t jibe with them.”