Fire Areas Subject to Fee Could Shrink

Six months after homeowner protests forced delays in a brush inspection fee program, Los Angeles fire officials have proposed exempting 70,000 properties.

The change would drop mandatory inspections for flatland property adjacent to mountain fire hazard zones, and for some land that is heavily landscaped. Fire officials said the new plan will not lead to greater fire hazards.

Many residents who received brush clearance notices, sent out for the first time last spring, argued that their property should not have been subject to the fee.

Bowing to pressure, the Los Angeles City Council ordered the Fire Department in June to reevaluate the boundaries of its Mountain Fire District and buffer zones.

“We have excluded those homes that are not facing as serious a brush fire threat, including those in the flatlands,” Battalion Chief Daryl Arbuthnott said Wednesday. “We no longer have the buffer zones included.”

The report noted that in order to cover expenses of the program, fees for the remaining 100,000 parcels would have to jump from $13 to $17.

But the fee issue is so politically explosive that the Fire Department took no position on whether any levy should be imposed, leaving that decision to the council.

“We are neutral,” Arbuthnott said.

The city Fire Commission was also neutral, but commission chairman David Fleming, a Studio City attorney, said the city should absorb the costs from its general fund.

“That fee issue is so politically charged that I don’t think we should ask for a fee,” Fleming said.

Any attempt to reinstate a brush fee without putting it to the vote of property owners would probably be challenged in court, said Kris Vosburgh of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn.

“This is pretty outrageous,” he said.

Homeowner leaders who fought the fee earlier this year said they are prepared to do battle again.

Gordon Murley, president of the Woodland Hills Homeowners Organization, said the Fire Department has been inspecting properties for years using normal tax resources without the need for special fees.

“That’s what they are paid to do to begin with,” Murley said. “There is no reason to make an extra charge. It’s unfair.”

The fee was to cover the city’s cost of ensuring that property owners in fire hazard areas cleared brush from within 200 feet of buildings, as required by city law.

The council’s Public Safety Committee will consider the proposed new program on Monday. Clearance notices won’t go out until April, but Councilwoman Cindy Miscikowski, who heads the committee, supports cutbacks in mandatory inspections.

“In my district, the buffer zone came down to include part of Ventura Boulevard, including some high-rise buildings,” Miscikowski said. “I think it is appropriate to delete some properties.”

City officials said that the scaled-back program would not compromise safety. Fire inspectors drove streets in the buffer areas looking at historical patterns of brush fires before deciding to exclude some properties.

Inspectors used criteria set by the state fire marshal to judge which properties should be included. Satellite photos and models showing where brush was thickest and driest were also used.

“They have done a very thorough job,” Miscikowski said.

The new survey eliminates the old fire district and creates a 158-square-mile area called a Very High Fire Hazard Zone that includes parts of the Santa Monica Mountains, Mount Washington, El Sereno, Baldwin Hills and Elysian Park.

“The areas that remain are the areas with hazardous brush that need to be maintained or abated to prevent a catastrophe like what occurred in the Oakland Hills in which 3,403 structures were lost,” said the Fire Department report to the council.

Miscikowski said any new program should make it easy for property owners to be exempted from the fee by inspecting their property themselves and certifying to the city that it complies with the rules.

The city created the Mountain Fire District after the Bel-Air fire, which destroyed 484 homes in 1961.

The Fire Buffer Zones were established in 1971 based on concern about where the wind might drive brush fires out of the hills. The cost of inspection sweeps of the targeted area had been paid by the city.

But last spring, the Fire Department touched off a firestorm of protest when it notified 170,000 property owners that the city had decided to impose an inspection fee.

Council members said the notices were too abrasive and confusing, and failed to make it clear that residents who did their own inspections would be exempted from the fee.

After abortive attempts by the Fire Department to rewrite the notices, the City Council decided in June that the program had been so badly mishandled that it should be dropped and started again in 2000.

The council repealed the $13 fee and voted to refund $900,000 that had been collected.

City inspectors continue to sweep through fire-prone areas and cite property owners who fail to adequately clear brush.