By DAVID ROSS
The last time the VC fire board talked about a weed abatement program, it filled the bay of the Lake Wohlford fire station with hundreds of irate voters.
That was in 1996. Since then the Paradise fire has happened.
The district has never had a weed abatement ordinance, but because the County is adopting one for unincorporated areas, that are not within existing fire districts, or fire districts who choose to adopt the ordinance, the VC district is looking at the idea again.
Fire Marshal Joy Justis told the board, “We have always felt that we needed adequate funding to do it. We would need another staffing person to do a good weed abatement program.”
The last time the board discussed the issue, the public was against the idea, she said. “But public opinion may be changing.”
She noted that a woman who came to the office recently had held her personally responsible for not enforcing weed abatement, and thus contributing to the recent fires.
She added, “Would a weed abatement program have prevented the fire? There’s so much territory that this is not going to address. I don’t see where the weed abatement program would have prevented it.”
Chief Chuck Maner, who commands all CDF units in San Diego County said that if such a program had been in effect that more homes might have survived, although it wouldn’t have prevented the fire from spreading.
“We’re not going to solve this problem by a weed abatement program,” director Dan Thornton commented.
Maner added that Countywide, “It would take a complete rethinking of everything to completely stop the fire. You would almost not be able to use the property. There might be property in the district where you would not be able to build because they wouldn’t be able to protect it. There are parcels that simply can’t be protected.”
“Those who care about their property will clear it,” said director Mel Schuler. “Just because they pass an ordinance doesn’t mean that we can afford to fund it. “
Thornton noted that a lot of flammable property in town is dedicated open space and you can’t touch it.
“That goes back to a dedicated approach to where you are not encroaching on a habitat area or a national wilderness,” said Maner.
Schuler added that many people have a misconception about what plants are allowed in the 100 feet of protective space that’s supposed to be maintained.
“It doesn’t say you can’t have anything for 100 feet, it just says that you can’t have weeds.”
Michelle Schied, who heads up the local fire relief efforts, and Mary Meade, who helped found the local CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) volunteered to use their groups to scout out areas and look for violators.”
“It’s one thing when a fireman drives on your property and it’s another thing when a civilian drives on your property,” commented Schuler.
Schied and Meade said they believed volunteers should only look at property from the street.
“We don’t have the manpower or the money to shotgun this but we do have the ability to look at some of the larger parcels,” said Thornton.
“We need to educate the community about the ordinance,” said Schuler. “and tell the landowners that we have the right to head in this direction.”
This might motivate some people to clear around their property in anticipation of it becoming a legal requirement.
VC Fire Chief Kevin O’Leary advised, “I would not recommend adoption before we know how we are going to enforce it. We can identity, but enforcement could be cumbersome.”
The board directed the chief to bring back information on private companies that do weed abatement and enforcement.
Looking at a complaint only procedure might be a good first step, he said. “Right now the only thing that Joy can do is say ‘We recommend that you do this.’ ” he said.
By DAVID ROSS
The VC Municipal Water District recently completed a survey of how it does business with an eye towards improving productivity and cutting costs.
It wants to increase efficiency without losing the common touch which gets consistently high marks in customer satisfaction surveys.
The multi-week review was called “process evaluation.” It was conducted by a team that included department heads and key workers.
“The good news here is that our business practices are very sound,” Gen. Mgr. Gary Arant told the water board at the March 15 meeting.
It’s rare to see anything except dust bunnies in the seats at the water board’s bi-weekly meetings, but this day about 20 district employees attended.
Board Pres. Gary Broomell looked at the group and quipped “Is anything getting done?”
Arant commented, “The folks you see here today are the folks who worked on this project. They set out on the process to look at a number of core processes, including meter reading, employment recruitment, meter installation, capital project designs, automated cash receipt processing and customer service scheduling.”
District Engineer Patric Jewell and finance director Bill Jeffrey looked at the process of installing new meters.
They analyzed it from the perspective of how many steps are necessary, what could be eliminated, and what could be combined with other processes.
They made one recommendation: eliminating the need for customers to provide proof of ownership of parcels getting service.
“We are seeing more subdivisions . . .” said Arant, “The proof is not necessary in most cases. It can take time trying to get the documents. It holds up the process. Do we need to question whether they own the property.
“Why would someone who doesn’t have an interest in a property invests $7,000 or $8,000 in a property?” he asked rhetorically. “Maybe at one time, when the community was more rural, perhaps someone might try to put a meter on the wrong property. But that doesn’t happen today.”
In another red tape cutting recommendation, staff suggested that meter approval be moved down from the district engineer a few rungs.
They also recommended developing a computerized meter application process. This would allow departments to share information, and eliminate duplicate forms.
Also discussed was the possibility of increasing the time between meter readings.
Right now this happens monthly. Big ag customers can accrue huge bills in a month. But the committee looked at whether residential customer meters could be read every other month.
It concluded that this might make sense in the future, but the continued dominance of large ag meters, and larger residential sites doesn’t make it practical yet.
Nevertheless, with 800-900 new residential meters going in each year, the trend is heavily toward domestic use.
A downside of reading meters bi-monthly is that they lose more money to people who don’t pay their bills.
Currently it loses .03% to bad debts.
“The meters are in often remote locations. A monthly check up shows us what the conditions are,” said Arant.
Director Merle Aleshire suggested reading bi-monthly but billing monthly. Jeffrey said that meter usage varies widely month to month, even for residential customers, who often have extensive landscaping.
The team also analyzed why it takes so long from the moment a position is noticed in the newspapers until the position is filled.
“I guess quality takes time,” concluded Arant.
One challenge to filling positions is that employees often have hybrid positions, with multiple tasks.
“It takes the amount of time that it takes because we are very careful about screening and background checking,” he concluded.
The team also looked at automated cash receipt processing, including outsourcing and buying a machine to do it in-house.
They concluded that such machines don’t pay for themselves over time, and that the personal touch is lost with using an outside company to process payments.
The group recommended no change, but to look at the issue again in a few years.
Also examined was the installation and servicing of meters.
The team obtained quotes from contractors, who wanted, on average, about four times what the district spends doing the job.
“We think we’re very cost competitive with the private sector,” said Arant. “I think we are providing a real service to the customers and recovering our real costs.”
Aleshire said this provides a lesson for those who think it’s always cheaper to use the private sector. “This isn’t even close,” he said.
Wally Grabbe reported that the district could save money by designing more of its capital projects in-house.
They looked at four projects that were done outside and compared the costs for doing them with a department dedicated to that. The cost savings were $114,000.
“We could do them better and cheaper in-house,” said Grabbe, adding that there will always be a need to hire outside consultants for specialty contracts.
“But for the majority of pipeline work we could see it coming in-house,” he said.
Jewell said this year they should focus on the pipeline replacement that VCMWD will be doing in concert with the widening of VC Road and focus on a dedicated design department next year.”
“My feeling is that when we are putting together a budget for ‘05-’06 we will come to you on this,” Arant said.
Aleshire asked if there isn’t a risk to the district since outside designers do projects every day.
Jewell said that contractors don’t do these kinds of projects that much. Often they have to be brought up to speed first.
He added, “You don’t want to go through the process of building a team unless you know that you’ve got eight or ten years of work, and then you need someone to run it like a consulting business, not have them off doing administrative work.”
“I feel very strongly that we have to be extremely careful how we do this, that we don’t get too big, without getting caught short,” said Broomell.
Soon the multi-million dollar capital improvement program will be in place.
“The economy is driving us, but if that goes away we still have miles of aging pipeline that have to be taken care of,” said Arant.
Finally, the team talked about customer service scheduling.
“People are amazed that they can call here and get service the same day, whereas if you call Cox or SDG&E they schedule you for sometime later that week,” said Arant.
“As we transition from more agriculture to more residential, those customers need more care and TLC. But in doing the analysis we found that our customer service people are doing some of the things that other utilities are doing, but on a more shorter time frame. I’d say at this time the pendulum is still on the side of customer satisfaction.”
Once again, this was something that Arant said should be looked at periodically as the district grows up.,
The team also recommended looking at radio dispatching and GPS monitoring of district vehicles so they can see where the trucks are and dispatch them to customers based on proximity.
“ They are a little pricey right now but the price should come down,” he said.
The review of customer service and business practices is doubly important, said Aleshire, commending staff on the study. “If our costs go up we pass it on to the customers and there really isn’t a profit incentive. It’s doubly important to look at ways to cut costs.”
Konyn dairy narrowly escaped a devastating fire Wednesday night.
According to dairy owner John Konyn flames leapt up 80 or 90 feet high when a capped wheel loaded tractor caught on fire about 8 p.m., possibly from an electrical short.
“One of the night crew noticed that it was smoldering, smelled smoke and looked for it,” Konyn told The Roadrunner.
The crewman’s nose led him to the tractor, which was parked under the eaves of a commodity barn.
The tractor is worth about $100,000 Konyn estimated.
Konyn’s workers kept spraying water on the roof to keep the blaze from spreading to the barn.
Firefighters arrived within about ten minutes, said Konyn.
“They did a great job. It was very professionally done,” he added.
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