The Turlock City Council unanimously voted on Tuesday to extend an agreement with the city of Modesto for fire administration services.
Interim Deputy Fire Chief for Turlock Chris Jelinek stressed that this is not a takeover of the Turlock Fire Department by Modesto’s.
“This is an administrative services agreement,” said Jelinek. “This is not a transfer of fire operations or full control of your fire department. Turlock will continue to operate its own fire department, employ its own personnel, establish its own strategic priorities and maintain local control over policy, budgeting, and service delivery.
“What you have before you is an agreement that continues to provide contracted administrative services supported through the delivery of a deputy or assistant fire chief in service to the city of Turlock.”
Councilmember Rebecka Monez (District 2) had one question for Jelinek before she provided a laundry list of positive departmental moves made in 2026 alone.
“Here’s the elephant in the room,” she asked Jelinek. “Has Turlock ever been left uncovered because it sent resources elsewhere?”
Jelinek said that he had heard public comment to that effect but was unaware of such an incident ever occurring.
“Prior to this arrangement, every time you had a structure fire in the city of Turlock, all four engines and the battalion chief respond to that event, meaning your entire workforce on duty that day is deployed. And they need to be,” Jelinek said. “You’re providing a minimally adequate response for a pretty straightforward fire with 13 personnel, which means in that same space your coverage of the city is zero – until those units can be backfilled by our neighboring agencies.”
Jelinek called it “the value of the system and not the pain of the system.” He also pointed out that, on average, Turlock firefighters respond to about 90 structure fires per year – and coverage from other agencies is required. He used an analogy that described resources coming into Turlock as a flood, and resources sent out of town as a trickle.
Councilmember Cassandra Abram, who voted against extending the agreement last month, was pleased with the amendments made.
“If anyone’s following along, I voted no last time,” said Abram. “I strongly believe in the will of the council, so I do support this iteration of the contract, and I will be voting in support of it tonight because this is the item that’s before us and I think we’ve made a much better contract than where we were eight months ago when this started.”
In other business, the council unanimously approved the first reading for amended development agreements with the city’s four licensed cannabis retailers – FF Farms, Firehouse, Natural Healing Center, and Perfect Union – and cultivator Plan4Dream.
