County Fire Department Seeks ‘User Fees’ : Crisis response: Service charges would raise $4.2 million yearly to help keep pace with emergencies, a report says.

To keep pace with Orange County’s booming population, the County Fire Department hopes to start charging for services ranging from reviving residents from death’s door to responding to false alarms.

The proposed “user fees” would raise an additional $4.2 million a year, according to a just-finished department report. The fees are expected to help county firefighters grapple with the increasing number of residents they serve, which has soared from 390,000 to 800,000 over the last decade.

The County Fire Department is responsible for fighting fires in unincorporated areas as well as in 13 cities within the county that pay for the service. The proposed fees would ensure that the county can continue to respond quickly to emergencies in those areas, fire officials said.

“I think it’s necessary if we want to continue our current response time of five minutes or less on 85% of our calls,” Assistant Fire Chief Robert H. Hennessey said. “It’s extremely critical. . . .”

Those who would be subject to a variety of new user fees include residents and businesses in Cypress, Dana Point, Irvine, La Palma, Los Alamitos, Mission Viejo, Placentia, San Juan Capistrano, Seal Beach, Stanton, Tustin, Villa Park and Yorba Linda, along with those in the county’s unincorporated areas. The fees are expected to be approved Tuesday by the Board of Supervisors. The proposed charges must then be approved by each city council before they may be imposed. Under current plans, the fees would take effect in January, 1991.

Homeowners and businesses would be given the option of paying a yearly user fee, similar to an insurance premium, that would cover the cost of any paramedic care provided to them. Those declining to pay the yearly user fee would be charged for each instance of emergency care.

Under the current proposal, for example, each household would pay a yearly subscription rate of $30 to $45. Residents who decline the yearly fee would be charged $150 to $250--depending on the extent of the care--each time the county dispatched paramedics to their address.

Fire officials said the fee would probably be applied on a sliding scale to lower-income residents, although details have yet to be worked out.

Households or businesses with faulty equipment causing more than two false alarms in a month or three false alarms in six months would also be charged a service fee. Businesses that require repeated inspections because of failure to comply with fire codes would be charged for repeat visits.

The fee proposals are part of a major restructuring of the department, the first reorganization since the county took over responsibility for fire safety from the state in 1980.

“With no guaranteed funding level from one year to the next, it has become increasingly difficult for department management to maintain vital programs. . . ,” a department report on the reorganization said.

Particularly draining on resources is burgeoning South County, where inspections for new homes have grown by 25% in the last five years, the report said, adding that no end is in sight.

The South County is expected to continue to grow at a rate of 15% to 20% for the next five years and population for the region is expected to climb to 395,000 by the year 2000.

Complicating the task of firefighting in South County are the dense pockets of housing, their proximity to forests and other wild, unpopulated areas and the lack of major, direct highways to housing developments, the report said.

The department proposes creating a new seventh battalion for South County and hiring three new battalion chiefs for the region.

The report noted that numerous other localities, including some in Southern California, now rely on user fees to defray the costs of firefighting. Anaheim, Buena Park, Garden Grove, Fullerton, Huntington Beach and Orange charge a variety of user fees for emergency services, the report said.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors rejected user fees for paramedic care after cities there objected to the proposal last year, according to the report.

In numerous cities, the report said, there have been “no legal difficulties or public resistance” to user fees.