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Health & Fitness

Those Who Ignore History are Doomed to Repeat It ...

A 2003 article and today's response about our current fire district mess. More information from Keep CalFire supporters for those undecided about how to vote in the upcoming recall election.

The following article and response are very relevant to the decision voters must make in the fire board recall election. They are lengthy, but essential to understanding the issues we face today related to whether three members of our fire board majority should stay or be recalled. Please read and think about what was said then and again now.

Originally posted on Wednesday, May 7, 2003 12:00 am, Half Moon Bay Review, By Jim Welte:

The multi-alarm political fire at the Half Moon Bay Fire Protection District has been fanned into a full-fledged blaze. While Firefighter Brent Smith awaits word on a pending settlement offer that would wipe out his lawsuit against the tension-laden district, another firefighter - with support from both past and present colleagues - has leveled more serious charges at the district's management. Firefighter Lane Lees, backed by three other firefighters, including deposition testimony by two of them, charged Fire Chief Jim Asche with political payback, by hiring the son of Fire Board Director Doug Mackintosh. Mackintosh's son, Eric, was hired by Asche as a firefighter for the district - despite Eric Mackintosh's ranking in the lower tier among candidates for a job when the district hired new personnel in 2002.

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Secondly, in charges alluded to in Smith's lawsuit, Lees said that Asche systematically ordered district personnel not to inspect the business of the elder Mackintosh's Strawflower Electronics, allowing several fire code violations to remain year after year.

"I am just appalled at the way these guys are carrying on with this whole thing," Lees said.

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The district hired Eric Mackintosh, who worked as a volunteer with the district for several years, in the second half of 2002. According to both Lees and the deposition testimony of firefighter Dave Roller, both of whom sat on the "oral board" that interviewed a host of candidates in the early part of 2002, Mackintosh had not interviewed well and wasn't among those recommended to be hired. When the oral board concluded its review, it referred a list of candidates for Asche to interview, and Asche reportedly told the oral board that he wanted to give Mackintosh an interview even though the oral board hadn't recommended he do so.

According to Lees, a former union shop steward at the district, Asche said he wanted to give Mackintosh and one of the other volunteers the experience of going through the interview process. According to Asche, the district's hiring process in 2002 was complicated by contentious contract negotiations between the district and the Point Montara Fire Board, which is responsible for paying for nine-and-a-half positions in the district.

While the negotiations stalled, Asche decided to delay filling any vacant positions until after the new contract was signed, which occurred in July 2002. Because several months had passed, Asche said he contacted all of the candidates who received a chief's interview, and many of them had already found jobs in other communities.

At that point, Eric Mackintosh ranked third among the remaining candidates, according to Asche. Because one of the other two ahead of him flunked a background check and the other didn't pass the fire academy, that left only Mackintosh. So the district hired him. But Lees said that, if so much time had passed and the other candidates had all dropped out, Asche should have reopened the hiring process.

"We felt like the whole process was just a charade to get Eric hired," Lees said. "It's not that he wasn't hirable - he's a good kid - but he was definitely not as qualified as the people who were ahead of him."

Asche vehemently denies the charge, saying that Mackintosh was simply the highest-ranking candidate remaining.

"I went right by the scores," he said. "I did not skip over anybody who was ahead of Eric Mackintosh. "Look, I'm not stupid," he said. "I know the sensitivity around hiring a director's son." Doug Mackintosh said he stayed as far away from the hiring process as he could while his son was going through it. "It's a touchy situation whenever you have a child applying for a job at a place you are associated with," he said.

The charges against Asche are not the first against the district related to hiring someone close to Mackintosh. In April 1990, the San Mateo County Firefighters Local 2400 union alleged that Ron Michaelson, a former employee of Mackintosh and a friend of then-Chief Gil Bustichi's son, was hired by Bustichi and approved by the fire board despite not being on the list of recommended hires issued by the captains. The union filed a lawsuit in the matter, accusing district officials of taking away the firefighters' votes on hiring. Both Bustichi and Mackintosh insisted that Michaelson didn't receive preferential treatment at the time, and San Mateo County Superior Court Judge Lawrence Stevens ruled that the district had no legal obligation to confer with firefighters on entry-level hiring.

Former firefighter and then-union president Frank Welch said at the time, "All we want is a checks and balances system where one guy can't hire whomever he wants. "Only qualified candidates should be hired and there shouldn't be any personal preferences." Stevens' decision halted the lawsuit. Those current charges of unfair hiring practices are not the only accusations facing Asche and Mackintosh.

Fire district documents indicate that Mackintosh's Strawflower Electronic received a proper inspection by the fire marshal in each of the last five years, with the exception of 2001 - and that was a year during which 130 businesses on the Coastside did not receive inspections by the fire district.

"A lot happened in 2001, as we all know," Asche said. But Lees - with the backing of additional deposition testimony from Captain John Riddell - contends that Asche has ordered the fire marshal not to inspect Mackintosh's business in recent years, and instead took personal responsibility for the inspections. Asche denies the claim, saying that he never oversaw inspections of Mackintosh's business and that it had been inspected every year - with violations documented and corrected. Computer printouts from the fire district are the only available documentation on inspections for those years.

Those documents list a series of violations for Strawflower Electronics for 1999, 2000 and 2002, with an indication that the violations in 1999 and 2002 were corrected, bringing the business into compliance. One former captain called Radio Shack "an absolute dirty dump" when he went to inspect it on occasion, saying it "had a lot of violations" that went mostly ignored. Although the former captain left the district several years ago, he asked for anonymity. Lees said the district's documents hide the truth, and that his two allegations are directly related to Asche's hire in 2000.

"The lack of inspections and the hiring of Eric Mackintosh are political paybacks for Mackintosh hiring Asche as the chief," he said.

According to Welch, the current situation is simply a symptom of a problem that dates back more than 15 years to Mackintosh's election to the fire board.

"It all goes all the way back to him," he said. "The fire chief has always been under his thumb, no matter who the chief at the time was."

Mackintosh said he can't understand why none of the allegations being made against the district are coming to the fire board for deliberation.

"I take very seriously that job that I have been elected to do, to watch over the fire district and to make sure that the people running the district are doing so honestly," he said.

Mackintosh said claims that Asche has prevented complaints from reaching the fire board don't have any merit, or he would have heard of them by now if the firefighters followed the complaint process.

"If at any time you bring a complaint against the department and you feel that somebody has in some way blocked that complaint from reaching the board, come to me and tell me about it and I will deal with it," he said. "I have not yet once had anyone do that."

Mackintosh also noted that the firefighter's union, now Teamsters Local 856, has an opportunity to address the fire board at each of its monthly meetings.

"They have multiple avenues to directly address the board," he said. "If the complaint has not reached the board, whose problem is it?" Asche said that any insinuation that he is repaying Mackintosh for hiring him is false. "I never even met Doug Mackintosh before I went though the hiring process," he said. "I knew who he was, but had never even had a conversation with him."

Lees said he is considering filing a lawsuit against the district related to unfair hiring practices. Half Moon Bay Firefighter Doug Snyder, currently on medical leave, said all of the issues brought up by firefighters against the district come down to the administration's inability to answer them.

"They can get away with all of this stuff because they're the chiefs and no one's watching over them," he said. "But if they would just answer some of these questions, it would be an eye-opener for a lot of people."

Response today... Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. Read the above article carefully. Consider that the allegations above are backed up by the depositions of multiple personnel all testifying under oath. Those documents continued to multiply up to the time that CAL FIRE blessedly arrived to replace that dysfunctional standalone fire department. Note that two names continue to be associated with the current issues surrounding our fire district, Mackintosh and Riddell.

Mackintosh, during the brief interim that he was not on the board, filed suit against the district in 2006-7 to prevent the new contract with CAL FIRE from taking effect. Local 2400, the union which has funded all his election campaigns also funded that lawsuit against our district to prevent themselves from losing control of the Coastside. Local 2400 controls every other fire department in the county, except for the county's own contract with CAL FIRE, which has been in effect for fifty (50) years. That lawsuit was funded and appealed all the way up to the state Supreme Court, which threw out the case. From the time that CAL FIRE arrived and Mackintosh returned to the Board, with Local 2400’s help, he and Riddell consistently criticized and demeaned CAL FIRE and their services, which they continue to do today.

Interestingly, before Point Montara and Half Moon Bay districts merged about the same time, Riddell was on the Montara board and complained about the HMB department just like he complains about CAL FIRE now. Same old refrain. After the merger, the merged department continued its downward spiral, descending into what outside investigators termed a "culture of conflict." A well described state of chaos with constant grievances and lawsuits filed by staff, some of which are described above.

There were more casualties as well, including surf rescue. This was a board decision based on a report from staff in 2005, the surf rescue program was in such disarray that personnel who staffed it and had started the program refused to participate for safety reasons. The Board agreed, and that service was no longer offered. This was well before there was a contract with CAL FIRE.

For proof, see "The Surf Rescue Program": Fast forward to today, and Mackintosh and Riddell are still here and still trying to get rid of CAL FIRE. Now they want the old days back, with the same cast of characters who created all the problems before. Now they have a third board member indoctrinated into the fold, Alifano, and they have majority rule over all board actions and decisions. They always vote as a bloc. Once recently Riddell tried to disagree, but Alifano whispered in his ear and the vote immediately changed to the usual majority domination.

In case anyone wonders whatever became of Local 2400’s influence, it is alive and well. They are generously funding the recallees' defense, and even went to the San Mateo Labor Board for more money from associated districts and unions as far away as the East Bay and Marin County. This is really a Local effort for Local control.

Interestingly, Local 2400's parent organization, IAFF, told them to stay out of Coastside politics, since our CAL FIRE staff are represented by another IAFF local, 2881, which has been here since 2006. I think they call such union activity "poaching." Poaching is frowned on by honest union members. Alifano is lying constantly about the recall effort, saying, among other things, that it was started and managed by Local 2881. A total lie, since most of the local residents who actually started and managed the recall had never even heard of 2881 at that point in time.

We were just an angry group of Coastside citizens and taxpayers who felt the board majority's behavior was despicable. We didn't like the decision to oust CAL FIRE nor the dirty politics behind it. We didn't like the way the recallees totally ignored their Board Policy and Ethics Manual. We didn't appreciate they way they totally ignored and disparaged the public and the CAL FIRE professionals. We didn't appreciate our hard earned tax dollars being squandered on a personal agenda to the exclusion of other district needs and the potential to lower or discontinue our parcel assessments.

For details and documentation of all this, see:

http://keepcalfire.com

http://talkaboutwidget.hmbreview.com/topic.php?t=8508&c=4&d=m

http://talkaboutwidget.hmbreview.com/topic.php?t=8562&c=4&d=m

Read the background; Read the issues; and Read the documentation, especially on this page: http://keepcalfirelocal.org/keydocuments.html.

Then think seriously about voting YES on the recall, unless you really do want to go back to the bad old days of yore. I sure don't! I wasn't born and raised in Half Moon Bay, like some can claim. I've only been here for 37 years. But I still want my friends and their friends and family to stay safe.

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