Council Endorses Agreement to Retain Town's Police, Fire Services

The city council ratified a “tentative” agreement with the Rohnert Park Public Safety Officer’s Association that will keep the town’s consolidated police and fire unit rather than outsourcing those services to other jurisdictions, Rohnert Park Mayor Gina Belforte announced at Tuesday’s at City Hall.

“Yesterday, the RPPSOA notified us of a tentative agreement, and with a 5-0 vote we have approved the tentative agreement (resulting from) the city’s labor negotiations,” Belforte said. She added that terms of the agreement and other details would not be disclosed until the agreement was finalized.

Belforte’s announcement came after the council took the unusual step of disbanding in the middle of their meeting’s public portion to convene a private session before returning to finish the public agenda. Typically, private council sessions are held after the public agenda has been addressed in its entirety.

Evidently, the council decided on the unorthodox arrangement to make public a last-minute development that would have otherwise played out entirely behind closed doors.

Whether or not to retain the city’s joint police and fire department has been at issue since February, when . Gonzales later said a cost analysis showed that outsourcing the services would save the city over $2 million a year; however, such an arrangement would likely have meant a reduction in the number of public safety officers.

Rohnert Park officials have since weighed the option of dividing up the city’s police and fire units by outsourcing them to two different jurisdictions, a plan that Under that plan, the town’s police services would have been contracted out to the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department (an arrangement that several other Sonoma County municipalities already have in place), while its fire services would have been outsourced to the Rancho Adobe Fire Protection District.

“I know that the Public Safety Officers Union has made major concessions to help the city,” Police and Fire Chief said about the tentative agreement. “We are a unique blend of fire and police services, and we’ve been consolidated for 49 years. What this (agreement) proves is that we’re a cost-effective model for police and fire services in Rohnert Park.”

Also at Tuesday’s meeting, the council approved the addition of a between Southwest Boulevard and East Cotati Avenue, through an arrangement that eliminates some – but not all – of the parking on that stretch of road.

The council’s vote follows a at which over 90 percent of the attendees said they preferred of the approved plan out of several alternatives that were presented – including the option of leaving the street alone and not building a bike lane at all, according Deputy City Engineer Patrick Barnes.

The proposed bike lanes will run on both sides and both north and south on Camino Colegio.  Barnes, who delivered a presentation to the council about the bike lane proposal, said the lanes would serve a number of purposes and have a several benefits:

• Being a convenience to cyclists;
• Keeping cyclists off the sidewalk;
• Helping reduce speeding by drivers;
• Increasing driver visibility on the Camino Colegio by removing parking spots where the street curves.

The bike lanes will move Rohnert Park closer to completing the town’s bicycle “master plan” – first approved in 1993 and  – that envisions a continuous bicycle lane from where southern Rohnert Park borders Cotati extending up to the city’s northernmost point.

“Patience is a virtue,” said Vice Mayor Jake Mackenzie. “One thing that is happening, slowly but surely, is we are putting the bicycle grand master plan into effect.”

The Camino Colegio lanes were approved by the entire council except for Joe Callinan, who voted against because, he said, it would make parking too difficult for residents. Also, he said he was wary of what appears to be the next piece of the master plan's implementation: bike lanes that run from Rohnert Park Expressway to Country Club Drive, a stretch where he owns property and where he said replacing parking with bike traffic would bring a snafu.