First Ever City Wide Elected-Officials Summit
On Monday, May 24th, the Dublin City Council hosted the first ever elected officials summit at the Alameda County Office of Emergency Services, and the sole topic of discussion was Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management. All five members of the Dublin City Council were present, as well as board members and staff representing the Dublin Unified School District, Dublin San Ramon Services District, Camp Parks, Alameda County Fire Department, Dublin Police Services, Zone 7, the Livermore Amador Valley Transit Authority, and the Chamber of Commerce.
There has been discussion for many years about the desire to have all public agencies and the business community conduct a meeting and partner on a key initiative. the Council added it to this year’s Goals and Objectives, and Councilmember Kevin Hart and I served on the steering committee. Although there are a multitude of topics we could have discussed, we agreed that there is no more important topic than disaster preparedness and reviewing our emergency management plans. Sheriff Ahern gave a great presentation on Alameda County’s disaster preparations, and we also heard about Camp Parks’ role and the interface with Homeland Security and FEMA in the event of an emergency. The presentations were followed by an extensive tour of the Emergency Operations Center.
Afterwards, those in attendance broke into groups and discussed a variety of issues related to the evening’s topic. One of the key take-aways is that although our individual public agencies may have solid disaster preparedness and emergency management plans that are enhanced and practiced regularly, there is very little coordination with one another. It was also discovered that very few businesses, neighborhoods, and individual families are very prepared either.
Two concrete take-aways from the discussion that will likely be approved as part of the City’s 2010-2011 Goals and Objectives were to do joint disaster planning exercises with all of the public agencies at least once a year. The other take-away was to work to do more trainings with businesses, and to reach out to all of the City’s HOA and Neighborhood Watch leaders to do a special workshop, while also doing a training for individuals in the community that may be interested in becoming more prepared.
Everyone left the meeting feeling that it was very informative, and they were excited to see concrete action items to work on. It was decided that the idea of an elected officials summit should become an annual tradition, where each year we come together to tackle a different topic. Next year’s event may be hosted by the City with a focus on environmental issues, or another agency may take the lead and plan a summit with an emphasis on another topic of mutual interest.
