Inspection Fee OKd for Fire-Prone Areas

Property owners in fire-prone mountain areas will be charged an annual fee of $13 for brush-clearance inspections, the Los Angeles City Council decided Tuesday.

The fee applies all 180,000 parcels in the mountain fire district, a region that includes much of the San Fernando Valley’s periphery--regardless of whether the owners ignore their hazardous brush or dutifully pick up every last dead twig.

“The fee protects all residents who live in the fire district,” Councilman Mike Feuer, who represents part of the Santa Monica Mountains, said after the council unanimously approved the new charges without discussion. “It provides the resources to the city to assure that every resident clears their brush properly.”

An additional charge awaits the laggards who disregard warnings from the Fire Department. The council hiked the fee to $314, up from $250, for the administrative expense of hiring a contractor to do the clearance work. They will also be billed for the actual cleanup costs, as was already the city’s practice.

The new charges are expected to generate about $3.24 million to cover costs of the city’s brush-clearance program, according to a report from the council’s Budget and Finance Committee.

Deputy Fire Chief Jimmy Hill said the department also intends to start charging a $204 noncompliance fee, already on the books but not previously enforced for lack of staff, for property owners who flout the clearance rules. This fee will be levied each time an inspector reexamines a property that was not adequately cleared the first time.

Property owners in the fire zone are required to clear dangerous brush and trim trees within 200 feet of any structure and 10 feet of any road.

As the fire season dawned in September, about 8,000 parcels remained overgrown despite city citations for uncleared brush, prompting a round of finger-pointing between the council and Fire Department.

“We were going out there sometimes three, four or five times a year to prod these people along,” said Capt. Paul Quagliata, commander of the Fire Department’s brush clearance unit. “We don’t have time for that. It was spreading my people too thin.”

Alarmed by the unfinished job, the City Council approved $1.8 million in emergency funds in October to help the department hire six more inspectors and issue contracts to clear the remaining brush. Even then, Quagliata said, the work was only partly finished.

The council’s action is the latest in a series of recent crackdowns on overgrown vegetation.

Last year, the Fire Department started enforcing the 200-foot clearance zone around structures, double the previous limit. The council also adopted an ordinance last week allowing the city to bill property owners who fail to clear brush for the cost of fighting fires on their land.

“The city never wanted to be in the business of having to clear brush from private property,” said Councilwoman Laura Chick, who has criticized the Fire Department’s brush-clearance pace in the past.

“The goal is to get property owners to do what is required by law, what is in their own best interests and to deliver a message that if they don’t, it’s going to hurt them in their pocketbooks.”