The Board of Supervisors is considering establishing...

The Board of Supervisors is considering establishing a special assessment district to help pay for fire protection and to avoid extensive cuts to the Fire Department budget.

Supporters say more revenue is needed to make up for a loss of state aid. What makes more sense, levying assessments or imposing cuts on the department?

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Maggie Kildee: Ventura County supervisor Neither of those options make sense to me. The people of Ventura County are paying taxes now which support the fire district and provide an adequate level of service. Next year, the citizens will be paying the same amount of taxes and they will be getting half of the service because the state is taking that tax money away from the fire district. It doesn’t make sense to me to pay the same amount of money and get half the service, but the board doesn’t have the ability to keep that tax money in Ventura County. Because we’re talking about a real public safety issue, I cannot in good conscience not let the citizens make that choice for themselves, that’s why I supported the assessment district. This will allow individual property owners to protest the assessments and thereby bring it to a vote of the people. If we go straight to the ballot, there are legal questions that are raised. . . . The real culprit here is the state. The state should not be using Ventura County tax dollars to solve its own deficit.

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H. Jere Robings: Executive director, Ventura County Assn. of Taxpayers The tax increase is certainly a circumvention of the intent of Proposition 13, which the public believes limits the property taxes that they pay. The question of whether or not the Fire Department should take cuts, I think, should be resolved with an independent audit of the Fire Department. Not by the county, but by an outside auditor to investigate especially the use of overtime. I believe that there is probably room for considerable cost savings in the management of overtime. The taxpayers have been extremely upset and the volume of calls that we’ve received has been nonstop. People are saying they should not be burdened with any other taxes, that they simply cannot afford to continue paying assessments for every service that the county provides, whether it be libraries, flood control or anything else--including fire. The taxpayers are going to be given an option of either approving the assessment district or being told that their property may be in jeopardy. It’s going to be putting a gun to the heads of the taxpayers to approve the assessment district.

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Greg Stratton: Mayor, Simi Valley

I think that’s up to the voters. I think they should put it on the ballot and let the voters decide. The primary reason that we’re having to do this is that the state is taking the money away from local government, and I think the voters need to understand that and they need to decide whether they want to vote for higher taxes in the form of an assessment district, vote for lower services or vote to take it out on the legislators and throw them all out of office. This is the state of California, the Legislature, taking our money--money that is needed to perform local services--because the state can’t manage itself. I really think it should go on the ballot, because it’s a decision people have to make. How much fire service are you willing to pay for? And are you willing to let the state government take the property taxes that you pay, steal them, and then force you to suffer the loss of services? It’s just a level-of-service question that has to be answered. Maybe people don’t want fast fire service, I don’t know.

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George Lund: Ventura County fire chief

From a professional firefighter’s standpoint, it’s hard for me to realize that people would even want to make the kind of cuts that are necessary to balance the budget. . . . The type of cuts that would be required would in many cases double response times to emergencies. It’s a common fact that fires in a building will escalate and double in size every four minutes, that if emergency medical service is not provided to a person who has stopped breathing within eight minutes, irreversible brain damage will occur. The fire district’s response time to emergencies is currently just under six minutes . . . our average response time would come close to doubling. We would not be in a position to deal with a working emergency and still provide service to emergency medical calls. Fire insurance rates are partly determined based on what the insurance companies feel are the fire defenses of a community. It’s very possible that property owners could be paying more for insurance, over time, than they would to maintain the department through the assessment district.

Susan Lacey: Ventura County supervisor

I think at this point, we have a responsibility to the community to take all the steps on the benefit assessment district, because the governor has been very clear in his budget proposal that we’re looking at a 42% cut to the fire district, on top of cuts they already got last year. There’s a certain time period in which you have to take action in order to actually go to a benefit assessment district. I think it was the expectation of all the board members that if the 5% protest happens and we have to go to the ballot, then the voters will have a chance to make their wishes known, but I think it has to be our responsibility now to go through with the process. We’re talking about basic emergency medical care and fire safety, and to just slash up to 50% of the fire district budget--although we would be sending a message to Sacramento that we’re not going to go ahead and tax the folks--I just don’t think that’s the right thing to do. We cannot play games with people’s emergency medical care and fire safety. That’s not responsible government.