Orinda Emergency Services Task Force
Report to the Community on the State of Emergency Services
Presented to the Orinda City Council
September 18, 2012
Bailey Lee, Bob Mills, Diana Stephens, Dick James, Joan Daoro, John Shelling, Sandy Gross, Steve Cohn, Vince Maiorana
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On June 7, 2011 a petition signed by over 200 Orinda residents was given to the Orinda City Council “requesting the formation of a citizen’s emergency services task force so Orinda could understand how MOFD was serving the community and what it costs.”
During the course of that meeting, Councilmember Amy Worth, reporting on a year-long series of Tri-Agency (Orinda, Moraga and MOFD) meetings that she was Orinda’s representative to, stated: “the issues identified by residents need to continue to be discussed openly, and she could support a citizen’s task force to explore some of the issues.”
The rest of the Council refused to act. Mayor Victoria Smith put a spike into the request by telling the residents: “that the petition requesting a subcommittee and public involvement in the process be directed to the MOFD Board as it was under their purview.” In other words, examining the service provide by MOFD to the residents of Orinda, which had not been examined over the 14 years since the Council asked the voters to form MOFD, was no longer the City Council’s job.
A group of residents then took it upon themselves to create the requested task force and over the course of a year produced a 90-page report on the topics of district organization, incidents served, operational costs, tax funding, and financial stability.
They presented the report to the Orinda City Council at their September 18, 2012 meeting. The record shows the receipt of the report was not acknowledged; the report was never discussed by the Council (but it was later discussed by MOFD), and thus the content of the report was never entered into the public record. Again, all information regarding MOFD service and cost of that service to the residents of Orinda was spiked.
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