Advanced Wildfire Risk Reduction (AWRR)
Advanced Wildfire Risk Reduction is a combined offering of Renne Public Law Group (RPLG) and our non-attorney division, Renne Public Management Group. Headed by Dave Winnacker, a former fire chief and state-wide leader in wildfire prevention and suppression, this group offers wrap-around, actionable solutions to communities large and small based on the latest fire science, and attorneys who have been actively engaged in wildfire reduction efforts.
Our services include:
- Assessment and visualization of community wildfire risk based upon advanced modeling
- Review of existing ordinances and programs
- Development of a phased implementation roadmap for targeted and prioritized mitigation measures
- Development of implementable, community-wide risk-reduction strategies
- Drafting of legislative and policy changes necessary to implement risk reduction
- Assessment of staffing needs and organizational changes necessary to effectively implement wildfire risk reduction strategies
- Development of community outreach approaches and documentation necessary to support strategy implementation
- Hands-on support for outreach efforts, including providing experts to speak at community, board and council meetings to secure buy-in from decision-makers, property owners and community leaders
- Support for pursuing grant opportunities
- Development of enforcement strategies, and, if needed, legal support for enforcement efforts
- Legal defense of fire prevention efforts (through Renne Public Law Group)
Our Team
Jon Holtzman
Jonathan (Jon) Holtzman is a founding partner of Renne Public Law Group, and was previously a founding partner of Renne Sloan Holtzman Sakai LLP. Since 2005, Mr. Holtzman has been named a “Northern California Super Lawyer.”
Mr. Holtzman’s practice focuses on assisting government agencies maintain and expand public services through strategic consulting, negotiations, fact finding, arbitration and litigation. He specializes in addressing long-term structural issues relating to pensions, health benefits, retirement health benefits, civil service reform, and other means of attaining greater managerial discretion and effectiveness through collective bargaining and reorganization. He frequently speaks and writes on matters pertaining to municipal bankruptcy, ballot initiatives, interest arbitration, bargaining, fact finding, comparability, fiscal analysis for bargaining, and pension and retirement medical programs.
Mr. Holtzman has experience in virtually all aspects of employment law and labor relations. His labor expertise encompasses negotiations, fact finding, mediation, grievance and interest arbitration, and litigation related to bargaining obligations. He is the author of Rutter Group’s California Practice Guide: Public Sector Employment Litigation Guide, the leading treatise on public sector employment issues.
Mr. Holtzman also practices government law, including general advice work, drafting ballot and other legislative measures and initiatives, litigating issues of constitutional and statutory interpretation, and electoral matters. He currently serves as District Counsel to the Moraga Orinda Fire District and as General Counsel to the Woodside Fire Prevention District.
Prior to entering private practice, Mr. Holtzman served as Director of Labor and Policy in the office of San Francisco Mayor Willie L. Brown, Jr. His duties included serving as the Mayor’s chief labor negotiator. As a senior advisor to the Mayor, Mr. Holtzman oversaw the management of city employment and benefits issues, and helped craft major policy initiatives including the city’s living wage law, civil service reforms, and criminal justice initiatives.
Before working directly for Mayor Brown, Mr. Holtzman was San Francisco’s Chief Deputy City Attorney. He was a principal architect of the City Attorney’s nationally recognized affirmative litigation program, which brought together groups of local government and non-profit plaintiffs to seek court-ordered reform of unfair business practices by energy producers, tobacco companies, national banks, gun manufacturers, auto insurers, and escrow companies. He also defended San Francisco’s affirmative action programs in a series of lawsuits arising under Proposition 209, including San Francisco’s challenges to Proposition 209 in both state and federal courts.
Before his appointment as Chief Deputy City Attorney, Mr. Holtzman was San Francisco’s chief labor and employment attorney. In that role he served as a chief negotiator in labor negotiations and interest arbitration with the City’s 47 unions, and acted as lead counsel in lawsuits, writs, class actions, and appeals involving all facets of labor and employment law. Mr. Holtzman managed the City’s transition to collective bargaining and interest arbitration and drafted attendant charter and civil service reform measures. On behalf of three mayoral administrations and numerous boards of supervisors, he authored and negotiated more than a dozen labor- related charter amendments adopted by the voters.
Mr. Holtzman has been extensively involved in efforts to improve government effectiveness. He negotiated and drafted a 1999 ballot measure reforming the governance of San Francisco’s municipal transit system and making it a quasi-independent agency, and Proposition G, which overhauled MUNI’s system of negotiation with unions. He also drafted a 2002 ballot measure enhancing the authority of the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, and a 2003 ballot measure requiring the City Controller to conduct “benchmarking” studies of City services, as well as performance audits to improve government effectiveness.
Before joining the San Francisco City Attorney’s Office, Mr. Holtzman was an associate at Morrison & Foerster for four years, focusing primarily on employment class actions. Upon graduation from Stanford Law School, he clerked for California Supreme Court Associate Justice Otto Kaus for two years. During law school he clerked for the Washington, D.C. Center for Law and Social Policy and for the Washington D.C. firm founded by former Defense Secretary Clark Clifford and disarmament negotiator Paul Warnke.
Dave Winnacker
Fire Chief (ret) Dave Winnacker spent 21 years in the fire service in Fresno City, Alameda County, and as chief of the Moraga-Orinda Fire District from 2017-2024. He served as the Western Fire Chiefs Association California Director, as the California Fire Chiefs Association WUI Task Force lead, and as the fire service representative on the California AB9 Wildfire Mitigation Committee and the California AB642 Risk Modeling Advisory Workgroup.
At Stanford University he is a Hoover Institution Veteran Fellow working on the intersection of wildfire and property insurance with an emphasis on the pricing of risk. In the private sector he was the co-founding advisor to ZoneHaven, an evacuation software in use throughout California and is the co-founder of XyloPlan Risk, a wildfire risk assessment and visualization company.
Prior to joining the fire service, he served on active duty as a Marine Corps Infantry officer from 1997-2004 and remained in the reserve component serving as the Commanding Officer, 4th Force Reconnaissance Company from 2014-2016, as the Deputy Commander, 23D Marine Regiment from 2019-2022, and as the Chief of Staff, Marine Innovation Unit from 2022-2024.
Karen Boyd
Karen Boyd is a veteran communications strategist, crisis communicator, and civic leader with decades of executive management experience in the government, nonprofit, and corporate sectors.
For more than two decades, Karen served as Communications Director for the City of Oakland, California’s eighth largest city serving 424,000 residents where she advised top Oakland officials and executive leaders – including five Mayors – on a wide range of high-profile, complex, sensitive, and urgent issues, including police reform, the deadly Ghost Ship fire, civil unrest, and the rise of unsheltered homelessness. As a senior official and City spokesperson in a fast-paced, full-service municipal corporation with a $2 billion annual budget and a 4,500-person workforce, Karen is well-versed in a broad range of complex administrative, operational, technical, personnel/labor, legal, and quality of life issues. She is also a seasoned expert in emergency management, having participated in dozens of emergency operations activations and crisis responses on the executive management team as the Lead Public Information Officer.
Prior to her government career, Karen led a national public involvement practice for a global environmental engineering consulting firm, where she designed the first public education campaigns in the United States focused on stormwater pollution, including the iconic “No Dumping, Drains to Bay” storm drain stencils. She also designed and implemented environmental education, community relations, and risk communications programs in diverse, multilingual communities across the United States.
Karen is inspired by service to others and mission-driven work. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of Children’s Fairyland as Secretary, and recently joined the League of Women Voters of Oakland’s Board of Directors. She was also President of the East Bay SPCA Board of Directors, where she served for seven years. A fourth-generation Bay Area resident, she has deep ties in Oakland and the wider Bay Area region.
Karen received her Bachelor of Arts degree in International Relations from the University of California at Davis, and studied at the esteemed political science school – L’institut d’Etudes Politiques – in Grenoble, France.