County Agrees to End Santa Clarita Fire Fee

Santa Clarita and Los Angeles County ended a year of haggling by settling a dispute over fire protection fees that the young city claimed were unnecessary and unfair.

Assistant City Manager Ken Pulskamp said Tuesday that county officials have decided that they will no longer charge Santa Clarita $408,000 a year to fight fires in brush and open areas of the city. The county halted the fees as of July 1, Pulskamp said.

The city had maintained that the fees were unnecessary because the county’s Consolidated Fire District already collects millions of dollars in property taxes from Santa Clarita. Last year, for example, the taxes generated $6.5 million for the fire district, Pulskamp said. “We were concerned we were paying too much,” he said.

The City Council, unhappy with the fees, explored forming its own fire department this year to save money. But with the dispute resolved, there are no plans to create one, Pulskamp said. Council members have said they are pleased with the service that the Consolidated Fire District provides Santa Clarita.

Financial Conflict

The dispute over the fees was the tail end of an earlier financial conflict between Santa Clarita and the county. In that dispute, the City Council balked at reimbursing the county for about $2.7 million in services that the county provided after the city incorporated on Dec. 15, 1987.

Cityhood proponents had promised to pay the $2.7 million, but members of the City Council later questioned whether they were bound by the promises of the incorporation committee.

That decision prompted county supervisors to lambaste one council member at a public hearing. The supervisors sternly warned Councilman Dennis Koontz that Santa Clarita would have a hard time winning favors from the county in the future if it did not pay the fees.

The city and county finally settled that dispute in June, 1988, when Santa Clarita agreed to reimburse the $2.7 million. As part of that agreement, the county reduced the wild land fire fees to $560,000, about half of what the city had been charged. The fee was later reduced to $408,000.