Council Supports Schipske's Call for Fire Data

The City Council voted 8-0 last night to request the City Manager to provide data on the response times of the fire department pre and post budget cuts. Although the agenda item was submitted last week, the news broke about the problems in the City of Los Angeles and the data their City Council received on response times. Long Beach City Management gave the council the following memo:

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 Although I do not believe what happened in the City of Los Angeles is happening in Long Beach (unreporting of response times) I believe it is important that when the Council makes a policy decision (which three of us opposed), then we need to see the results of that decision. So we need to see if the response rates for fire have increased as a result of the cuts the Mayor proposed and the majority voted to implement. Plain and simple. The cuts either did or did not impact the ability to respond to calls for service within the national fire standards.

 

Related articles

• L.A. fire chief: Response-time changes should have been disclosed

• Schipske Calls for City Manager to Disclose Fire Department Response Times (gerrieschipske.com)
• L.A. fire chief offers new explanation of response times (latimesblogs.latimes.com)