CAL FIRE COOPERATIVE AGREEMENTS…UNDER FIRE

There is a storm brewing over the recent Canyon Lake voters’ decision to reject a special tax to maintain and staff their local fire station.  This storm has the potential of spreading like a wildfire and threatens to engulf our surrounding cities.

For additional details on the Canyon Lake issues please see:

http://lakeelsinore-wildomar.patch.com/groups/police-and-fire/p/canyon-lakes-fire-woes-impacting-lake-elsinore

Here is the key that should convince people that these concerns are NOT limited to just Lake Elsinore and Canyon Lake.  “Under a current cooperative service area agreement with Cal Fire/Riverside County Fire Department, Lake Elsinore does provide some fire protection service to Canyon Lake and that city is supposed to reciprocate.”

Other cities like Wildomar are also operating under a Cal Fire/Riverside County Fire Department cooperative agreement too, and no pun intended, they are all playing with fire.  The assumption that there will be cooperation and reciprocation is a mighty risky one.  Sure it works some of the time and hopefully most of the time, but to assume it will work ALL of the time is a big gamble.  One really serious fire or a wildfire that spreads swiftly could prove to be a full blown disaster.

Many surrounding cities are coming out of a decade or more of paring down on public safety personnel and emergency facilities and equipment – while at the same time they are experiencing tremendous growth.  They have cast aside their primary duties to plan for citizens’ safety and the protection of our properties.  They have entered into these cooperative agreements to save money.  The result of dependency on this stratagem is fewer police, fire fighters, paramedics and the resources they need to perform effectively.

There are other considerations we should be factoring into our emergency planning which are pretty much being ignored.  In general our cities’ populations are increasing rapidly, and more and older residents will likely place greater demand on emergency paramedic services which represent the largest portion of calls.

There will come a day when this scheme collapses like a house of cards.  Safety personal and equipment can only be stretched so far.  What happens when more calls for the same kind of assistance come in simultaneously?

You can only send local equipment and personnel in one direction at any given time, and who wants to be the one who has to wait for the reciprocal agreement to kick in and endure the delayed response time for help to arrive?

WILDOMAR’S DEVELOPER FEES…SELL ITS CITIZENS SHORT

UPDATE: The Wildomar planning department had scheduled yet one more “special” meeting on the new DIF fee schedule for Wednesday, November 20th. However, the discussion and decision on DIF fees has been pushed out once again – maybe January?

It now appears the council intends to push through an inadequate DIF proposal, favorable to both developers and the building industry in time for the city council to approve it in the year-end rush, when critics of the proposal are distracted by holiday season activities.

Will they continue to give citizens short shift on these crucial fees just to attract more questionably beneficial development which doesn’t pay its own way? That’s what it looks like.

Both the County and the City have done a great disservice to the community in the past, and appear set to repeat the same mistake. A mistake which will have long term, negative ramifications for our community.

Adequate DIF fees pay for necessary infrastructure construction like fire stations, road improvements, and new or enlarged water and sewer capacity. Because of the council’s foolish decision to lower DIF fees rather than make them competitive with neighboring cities, Wildomar has fallen way behind in building or improving all sorts of infrastructure.

A short drive through the city should confirm the poor infrastructure conditions we are living with – for anyone willing to take a look.

One such example is that we have deferred building and equipping a long-needed second fire station on the East side – trading that much needed facility in for dependency on complex cooperative or reciprocal agreements with the Riverside County Police Department, Cal Fire and surrounding cities which support our fire and police protection.

These public safety services are essential, and they should be given greater priority. That does not mean we should have to pay more or special taxes for them. It means DIF fees should be raised to a competitive rate and more of the resulting city budget should be allocated to these very fundamental services.

City councils know most of their constituents feel fire and police protections are among the most important services, and our local city government often thinks these services make for easy targets to pry additional taxes out of voters.

However, voters want better solutions than adding a whopping new tax to their bills. Now is the time for the Wildomar city council to recognize that their citizens want developers to pay enough DIF fees to pay for the infrastructure that is required to support any expansion of our housing and population. New projects should not get away with just being revenue neutral.

More new taxes are not an acceptable answer! Development must be made to pay for these requirements!