County Fire Dept. Warns 268 Employees of Possible Layoffs

The Ventura County Fire Department has warned 228 firefighters and 40 civilian employees that they could be laid off July 3 unless it can head off Gov. Pete Wilson’s proposed $20-million funding cuts, county Fire Chief George Lund said Friday.

Layoff warnings were mailed to more than half the department’s staff in cities from Ojai to Simi Valley, devastating rookies and 16-year veterans alike.

“It kind of shocked me,” said Capt. Jim Arledge of the county’s Church Street station in Simi Valley, a 15-year veteran. “I think it’s very likely that lives and property will be lost due to these cuts. I hope something’s done before this occurs, to head it off.”

Every Fire Department employee hired after May, 1977, received a notice of intent to lay off, Lund said.

“From here it’s a waiting game to see what kind of revenue we’re going to be faced with,” he added.

Lund and other fire officials will meet Tuesday with the Board of Supervisors to lay out several spending plans. They range from a $43-million status quo budget to the worst-case scenario that would be played out if all $20-million state cuts are approved--making all 268 layoffs effective and closing as many as 18 of the department’s 31 stations.

Wilson offered some hint of relief Thursday by proposing to extend until Dec. 31 a half-cent sales tax that was to expire June 30, but the department is bracing for the worst, Lund said.

Meanwhile, Ventura County Supervisor Susan K. Lacey said she will travel to Sacramento on Monday with county Chief Administrative Officer Richard Wittenberg and county lobbyist Penny Bohannon to seek financial relief.

Lacey said she met Friday with Assemblyman Jack O’Connell (D-Carpinteria), who assured her that legislators are already discussing ways to soften the blows to public safety, such as phasing in the state funding cuts over several years or extending the half-cent sales tax beyond December.

“There are at least some folks that are beginning to notice that this may not be the best thing to do,” Lacey said of the proposed funding cuts.

Lacey said she knows that many firefighters expected the layoff warnings, but she added, “It’s got to be hard to actually read this, to have your life in front of your face.”

The phone has been ringing off the hook with protests at the Ventura County Professional Firefighters Assn., said that union’s president, Ken Maffei, who escaped a layoff warning because he has more than 16 years with the department.

“The day that they’re screwing the plywood to the windows of the fire stations and hanging ‘Closed’ signs on, there’s going to be anarchy,” Maffei said. “I really don’t think people are going to tolerate it.”

Moorpark City Councilman Scott Montgomery said Friday he will propose that the city offer the $125,000 it has set aside for a paramedic program to keep the local fire station--scheduled to close July 1--open for two more months through “peak fire season.”

One station in Simi Valley was hit with seven layoff warnings--one for each of the firefighters stationed there, said Jim Arledge, that station’s captain.

“Most people are kind of walking around in a daze,” said Arledge, a 15-year veteran. The youngest firefighters believe they are most likely to get actual layoff notices and “are resigned to it. Several of them have taken tests for other departments as far away as Colorado.”

Many firefighters said they learned of the warning notices from spouses who opened the mail at home Friday and phoned with the bad news.

“You keep hearing it’s going to come,” Jay Colvin, 28, who has been with the department since he was a cadet in high school. “The whole time it’s coming you think you can deal with it, and when it finally comes it kind of tears you up a little. . . . It’s kind of like a home to me. I’ve grown up around this department, and I can’t fathom seeing the county do without the services it’s been providing.”

Station 30 on Moorpark Road in Thousand Oaks, the busiest station in the county, was hit with four warnings.

“I was actually a little surprised because I was not aware that the notices were going to go quite as far as me,” said Engineer Danny Swenson, 37, who was hired in September, 1977.

If laid off, Swenson said he will use his contractor’s license to keep working. But like other firefighters, he said he worries about the public’s safety with half a fire department.

Rod Sims, the station’s captain, said that his firefighters have been taking criticism from the public for the department’s fiscal troubles, especially for a proposal to tax households an average $110 per year to shore up its budget.

“We’re getting people coming by that flip us off, cuss us out and scream at us,” said Sims, 45, a 19-year veteran who will escape the threatened layoffs. “They’re taking their anger and frustration out on us and we have nothing to do with this mess. . . . The people in Sacramento are making these decisions.”

He added: “I see the young guys tossing and turning in their sleep, walking the halls in the station in the middle of the night, saying, ‘What are we going to do?’ ”