Pocket Change: Fire in the hole

Fire season is upon us– how ready is San Diego for another round of fire storms?

If any area should be ready, it is San Diego. More than 5,700 structures and 17 lives were lost in the 2003 and 2007 San Diego County fires, and it cost the San Diego economy about $2 billion.

The National University System Institute for Policy Research recently released a report — “San Diego County Falls Further Behind”– on fire protection investment and an analysis of recommendations made in response to the previous fires.

The report can be boiled down to four key facts:

1. San Diego County spends a good deal less on fire protection and emergency services than Los Angeles County and Orange County per capita.
2. San Diego is one of the only counties in California without a county or regional fire department.
3. Since 2006, budgeted positions in fire departments in San Diego County have decreased.
4. Many of the recommendations made after the previous fires have not been put in place.

The details are better told by the Pocket Change regular commentators, one of whom co-authored the NUSIPR report.

Erik Bruvold, founding president of the National University System Institute for Policy Research, and co-author of “San Diego County Falls Further Behind”:

“By all measures of fire protection (per capita spending, fire fighters per 1,000 residents, changes in staffing) the San Diego region is lagging behind both Los Angeles and Orange counties.  The later comparison is particularly telling.  Both Orange and San Diego counties have conservative electorates.  Both have local media which is highly skeptical about local government and taxation.  Both have thousands of homes on the boundaries between open space and the urbanized environment.

“Yet, for the last budget year, Orange County jurisdictions will spend $190 per resident while San Diego will only invest $153.  Over the past three years the five largest fire departments in Orange County have added more than 100 budgeted positions while San Diego has cut 8.5 positions.  In 2008, Orange County fought a devastating, wind-fueled wildfire with the loss of ‘just’ 187 homes.  Perhaps most interesting, in San Diego County more than 40 separate entities provide fire fighting protection.  In Orange County, with nearly the same population as our county, fire and emergency medical services is provided by only 12.

“The most telling difference is the existence of the Orange County Fire Authority.  With a budget of almost $300 million, it is significantly larger than the biggest fire department in San Diego.  It serves as the critical ‘center of gravity’ in discussion in that region about fire preparedness, regional strategy, and the setting of regional firefighting priorities.  It provides contract services to 22 smaller cities, decreasing the amount of money spent on overhead and administration and maximizing the resources that are available for frontline fire fighting protection.

“San Diego is one of a few California counties not served by a county fire department.  Our report highlighted areas where turf battles, jurisdictional disputes and a focus on the local rather than the region continues to stifle change and innovation. With wildfires becoming more frequent, more destructive and harder to fight, it is long past time for the region to demand progress on a regional fire agency.”

Murtaza Baxamusa, Ph.D., AICP, director of Research and Policy, Center on Policy Initiatives:

“As large-scale fires become a regular phenomenon in San Diego, we need to test the strength of the umbrella of public institutions providing local fire-fighting resources. Over the past three decades, this protection has been damaged in multiple ways.

“First, Proposition 13 halved the collections of property taxes, which most fire districts relied on. No longer able to float general obligation bonds to pay for needed fire facilities, fire agencies had to backfill by cutting service levels. Proposition 13 imposed an insurmountable two-thirds voter requirement for approval of taxes that specifically funded firefighting. This is remarkable since Proposition 13 itself did not meet the two-thirds threshold.

“In the two decades following Proposition 13, there were 50 ballot measures in San Diego asking for increased revenue for firefighting, and only 18 of them got the two-thirds voter approval. Even after the Cedar fires, ballot initiatives that dedicated funding for fire protection in Ramona and the city of San Diego failed. In the city of San Diego, our average fire engine response time increased from 4 minutes to more than 5 minutes during the decade following Proposition 13, and has never dropped back.

“We now have the lowest number of firefighters per capita among comparable jurisdictions in the country. The city needs an additional $40 million and the county needs $50 million annually to fund fire services at a level that residents need.

“Second, the initiatives capped the annual growth of property taxes at 2 percent. This does not account for the non-linear impacts of population growth and density on environmental factors (such as high-rises, sprawl) affecting public safety. Fire districts therefore became dependent on facilities benefits assessments, meaning they are increasingly reliant on new development to fund new facilities, even when that development occurs in hazardous areas.  As a result, fire districts splintered and merged and contracted and morphed in a desperate attempt to squeeze revenues out of new construction.

“In San Diego County, there isn’t a regional firefighting agency, since voters have never approved a district-wide tax. Thus a patchwork of 28 emergency providers provides services unevenly and randomly across the unincorporated area of the region.

“These initiatives and the hostile anti-tax climate have done long-term damage to San Diego’s ability to provide a decent level of fire protection service. The Insurance Service Office (ISO) evaluates three major areas — the fire department (50 percent), water supply, and fire alarm and communications systems — in grading communities across the nation. Insurers of homes and business property use ISO’s Public Protection Classifications in calculating premiums. ISO Class 1 is considered exemplary, classes 8 and 9 are considered under-served and Class 10 as having no service. Seven communities in Los Angeles and none in San Diego County are Class 1. Among the cities affected by fire, Escondido is Class 2 and Poway is Class 3.

“Twenty-two of the unincorporated county’s 28 structural fire protection agencies have an ISO classification (or split classification) of 9. Of these, seven agencies are rated exclusively Class 9. Almost a million acres in the San Diego region (more than 10,000 residents) are not under the protection of any fire agency, and are rated Class 10.

“In the city of San Diego, it is not surprising that the city failed to meet national accreditation due to a shortage of 22 fire stations and 400 fire-fighters. In the community of Rancho Bernardo, where most destruction from the Witch Fire seems to have occurred, the city’s Fire Accreditation study identified a need for two additional fire stations per national standards of an engine per 9 square miles. The current Rancho Bernardo fire station is expected to service 167 road miles, the worst in the city, when the average for the 45 districts in the city is 91 road miles.

“The fire of under-funded services is burning into San Diegans’ wallets in other ways as well. According to ISO national averages, the cost of fire losses for homeowners’ policies in communities graded Class 9 is 65 percent higher than in communities graded Class 5. Thus when we fail to invest in our firefighting capacity — which would be, in effect, insuring our communities against regularly occurring wildfires — we see our homeowner insurance premiums rise significantly.”

Steven Bartholow is SDNN’s multimedia editor and political reporter.

Tags: fighting, fire, fire fighting, lagging, Los Angeles, Orange County, protection, report, SDNN, Uncategorized

This entry was posted on Monday, September 14th, 2009 at 3:49 pm and is filed under Pocket Change, Politics & Government . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.