As many of our District constituents are aware, the Cordelia Fire Protection District (CFPD) has been struggling financially for a number of years. It has worked diligently to develop creative solutions to mitigate its financial limitations, including support of the general tax measure on the November election ballot for Solano County. However, recent events have overcome these best efforts in the form of significant staff attrition caused by the ongoing surge in fire service hiring throughout the State. As a result we have seen the District's total staff reduced by almost 50% and the attrition continues as you read this.

By the end of last August the District was experiencing insufficient career and volunteer staff to provide 24/7 medical and fire response to the good folks of this fire District. Since our #1 goal and responsibility is to provide medical and fire response to all District residents, we decided to enter into a contract agreement with the Fairfield Fire Department (FFD) to provide staffing coverage on those days when the CFPD cannot do so due to rapidly diminishing staff. Initially it was a day or two here and there, but over time we fully anticipate that the FFD will provide increasing coverage until they will be responsible for covering our District full time.

The CFPD and FFD have worked hard to craft an arrangement whereby  the residents of our fire District, will see continued, unbroken coverage for both medical calls (the majority of our calls), fire response and accident response on the highways. FFD maintains an excellent staff of highly trained professionals, all of whom are Paramedics, which will improve the current medical response services. The FFD has stood up an additional crew and is in the process of building a new station very close to our District which will equal or improve current response times. Therefore, District residents will see engines from the Fairfield Fire Department responding to calls on some days instead of our great staff from CFPD.

Our Board of Directors live in the District, some of us for many years, so we truly understand the impact of the above changes, some of which will be very positive. The CFPD Board has worked hard and diligently to creatively deliver the best services to you given our constraints, but some events are beyond our control. As such, we have made the hard decisions aimed squarely at maintaining the best medical and fire response services possible given the options available.

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to us via our website or our postings on Nextdoor.com. The future holds many changes, but your elected Board will continue to work towards delivering excellent services and responses to our District's needs.

Be Safe, Be Well,

Chief Dave Carpenter
Director Glen Langstaff