‘Progressive leadership abilities’ for new fire chief
33 years of firefighting experience comes to Santa Clara Fire Department
When Ruben Torres became a firefighter, it was with the words of his father, an immigrant laborer, ringing in his ears: Take advantage of the opportunities you have, his father told him, so you don’t spend your life as a laborer. Become somebody.
“I realized that firefighters are somebody,” Torres said.
Thirty-three years later, he is stepping into his third position as a Bay Area fire chief: After 29 years working his way up the ranks of the San Jose fire department and four years leading the combined Livermore-Pleasanton fire department, Torres took over this month for Santa Clara retiring Fire Chief Bill Kelly.
“Chief Torres’ strong progressive leadership abilities, collaborative style and his vast fire experience in culturally diverse communities will be huge assets for the City, the Fire Department and our community,” Santa Clara City Manager Deanna Santana said in a news release.
Torres will lead a force similarly sized to his previous position; the Santa Clara Fire Department has 130 firefighters, 10 fire stations and four divisions.
However, his new post comes with a sizable pay raise. In addition to a San Jose pension that totaled nearly $196,265.40 in 2018, according to Transparent California, Torres will be paid a base salary of $320,004 as head of Santa Clara Fire, the city’s human resources department said. Last year in LivermorePleasanton, he took in a salary of $228,011.93.
Lifetime government work
ers who retire in their 50s with generous six-figure pensions are far from unusual in the Bay Area, where pension reform has been the topic of frequent debate. Local officials who take on a new well-funded government job while continuing to receive a pension from their old one aren’t unheard of, either, but the practice has drawn fire from taxpayer groups in the past.
Lenka Wright, communications director at the Santa Clara city manager’s office, said that the city’s hiring process does not consider whether a candidate is receiving a pension from another organization, and that Torres’ salary is based on market conditions along with his previous experience and qualifications.
“Through a competitive recruitment process, the city sought the most highly qualified and experienced individual to lead the Santa Clara Fire Department,” she said. “As a result, candidates would have extensive fire service experience from other agencies.”
Torres said a paycheck — pension or otherwise — has never been his motivation. Instead, he nods to the three young children he has adopted, saying he’s going to be working “far into the future.”
He also points to his own youth when he first started working at the fire department.
“I got hired at the age of 20, not knowing what public service is and what it was,” Torres said. “I didn’t know anything about retirement services when I got hired.”
In 1985, Torres was a new hire at the San Jose Fire Department, fresh off a stint as a forklift operator for then-fledgling Apple. Torres would see Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak when they came around the warehouse, but the two men didn’t make much of an impression back then, he said: “They were nice, but I didn’t look at them any different from any other supervisor.”
And in the 1980s, Torres didn’t think Apple would make it very far: public service, he thought, would be the place to make an impact.
“I didn’t think Apple was going to be what it is now,” Torres said. “But I didn’t think fire service was going to be what is it now, either.”
Nowadays, it’s near impossible to imagine the Bay Area without the industry that tech titans Jobs and Wozniak helped ignite. In Santa Clara, though, Torres said he is committed to balancing Silicon Valley growth with maintaining the city’s “small town feel.”
He’s also interested in giving the department’s paramedics a bigger role on emergency calls.
When a Santa Clara resident calls 911 for a medical emergency, the fire department responds to provide paramedic services. However, they can’t take the patient to the hospital: only Rural/Metro Ambulance, a private company contracted by Santa Clara, can do that.
Torres would like to see transport duties transferred to the fire department as well.
“We would provide full service from the time we contact the patient to the emergency room,” he said.
Such a move, amid contract changes and concerns that Rural/Metro takes too long to arrive on the scene, would speed up care for critically injured patients and guard against a situation where Santa Clara loses its private provider without an alternative, fire department public information officer Drew Miller said.
“In the fire service, we’re in the ‘what if’ department,” Miller said.
Rural/Metro Ambulance did not respond to a request for comment.
Expanding his department’s first responder responsibilities fits the trend he’s witnessed over his 33 years in fire service: the departments he’s led no longer provide only “one-dimensional” fire and rescue services, he said.
“If you have an emergency, most agencies have specific roles, whether the police or outside agencies like PG&E,” Torres said. “The fire department responds to every 911 call there is.”