Salida fire district voters turn down assessment increase

By a narrow margin, voters in the Salida Fire Protection District turned down an increase in fire suppression assessments.

Fire Chief Dale Skiles said Thursday the vote was 52 percent opposed and 48 percent in favor of the proposed assessments, which would have raised the annual levy from $45 to $156 per home. A private consultant counted the mail ballots for the property owners’ election Thursday and gave the unofficial results to district officials.

Skiles said the consultant told him a few ballots needed to be validated, but she does not think it will change the outcome.

“We knew it was going to be very close,” Skiles said. “The district will proceed as we are today. We thank all those who participated in this process.”

The proposed assessments, intended to pay for full-time staffing for a second fire station, ran into opposition from the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. The taxpayer advocates said special parcel assessments were not the legal or appropriate way to fund fire protection. The association warned the district board could be responsible for paying attorney fees and refunding taxpayers if the assessments were challenged in court.

Skiles would not speculate on whether the group’s opposition was a factor in the results.

Stanislaus County Supervisor Terry Withrow, whose district includes Salida, said he was disappointed. “The people have spoken and the level of service will have to be adjusted accordingly,” he said.

The fire protection district has full-time staffing for its station in central Salida. It developed a plan to hire six more firefighters and staff the station on Ladd Road near Del Rio to provide better coverage in the 42-square-mile district. The increased assessments for residential, commercial, industrial, agricultural and other types of property would have generated an additional $800,000 a year.

Withrow said he believes special assessments are a legitimate method for smaller fire districts to fund their services. The Woodland Avenue Fire Protection District also is conducting a property owners’ election on proposed special assessments.

William Ross, a Palo Alto attorney who advises Salida, said at a public meeting Wednesday that he disagreed with the Howard Jarvis group’s interpretation of the law.

Ross said state legislation in 2004 clarified that special assessments can be used to fund fire protection services, equipment and facilities. He added that a state Supreme Court decision affirmed the right of districts such as Salida to establish the assessments.

The attorney said those two developments came after voter approval of Proposition 218 in 1996 and the Howard Jarvis group’s victory in a lawsuit over special fire assessments in Los Angeles County in 1998.

The Howard Jarvis group has been emboldened by a 2011 ruling by the 3rd District Court of Appeal, which said that a fire district’s proposed assessments in Calaveras County could not be used to fund fire protection. The group maintains that emergency services are a general benefit for the public and should be funded by general taxes.

The group charged that Salida wanted to fund a large percentage of its services with the property assessments even though property-related incidents accounted for 12 percent of calls. A large percentage of emergency responses are for car fires, vehicle accidents and medical calls that may not involve property owners or people who live inside the district boundaries.

“I am willing to bet a special tax in compliance with our constitution would have been better received by the people in Salida,” said Ryan Cogdill, litigation attorney for the Howard Jarvis association in Sacramento. “When people get the feeling their elected representatives are not being completely forthright, they respond negatively to that.”

About 20 people attended Wednesday’s public hearing at the Salida station. Salida resident Debbie Nutt said she voted for the assessments, and also praised the Fire Department for saving her son when he suffered a ruptured appendix.

Nutt said the Fire Department was important to the community and paying $156 a year was not a problem.

Salida resident Brad Johnson said Thursday the Howard Jarvis group was able to stir negative publicity about the measure.

“They did not attend any of the meetings and no one was concerned about those issues, so that blows their credibility, in my mind,” Johnson said. “The atmosphere is that people don’t want to pay taxes and there is a lot of media that promotes that. But paying taxes is how government is run.”

Johnson said the current fire assessment is a tiny part of the property tax bill and the modest increase would have provided double the manpower for fire protection, “which was huge.”

Ross praised the district board for holding informational meetings on the measure and fully explaining the assessments to the public.

This story was originally published June 17, 2015 at 10:11 PM with the headline "Salida fire district voters turn down assessment increase."