City and County Halt Tax Feud

The city of Ventura and Ventura County agreed Wednesday to exchange firefighting and dispatch services, effectively ending a 15-month standoff over a city threat to stop paying its share of the county’s sales tax.

The deal requires the county Fire Protection District to handle all fire dispatch calls for the city of Ventura. In turn, the city agreed to continue responding to all fire calls in the unincorporated sections of Ventura Avenue.

Ventura City Manager Donna Landeros said the agreement would save the city the $500,000 it would have spent creating a new dispatch center, and offers to save the county the $1.2 million needed to build and staff a fire station on Ventura Avenue.

“They were difficult negotiations,” Landeros said. “But there was a willingness to look beyond the sales tax at services we could do jointly that would provide benefits for both entities.”

The deal ends a crisis that flared last year when the city balked at paying its annual $572,000 in county sales tax. The county then threatened to eliminate the 1.25% tax altogether, which could have cost local cities $85 million. Ventura alone would have lost $15 million.

Negotiating teams were quickly assembled to put the brakes on the looming fiscal fight. Both sides agreed that if the county offered Ventura something of value--preferably worth about $572,000--the crisis could be averted.

There was talk of the county handing over some buildings or providing revenue for road repair. But both sides eventually settled on exchanging services.

Since his election in November, county Supervisor Steve Bennett has spearheaded negotiations for the county, working closely with Ventura Mayor Sandy Smith and Councilman Jim Friedman.

“I sat down with Sandy Smith and said, ‘Let’s find something where the county and city can exchange things that make us both better off,’ ” Bennett said.

Smith said the emphasis on an exact trade threw off negotiators for months.

“As policymakers, we weren’t getting anywhere with numbers,” Smith said. “If we could get an agreement where both sides would benefit, we could call it a win-win.”

Currently, the city of Ventura dispatches both fire and police calls. Bennett said the deal means fire calls would be transferred from the city to the county, and city dispatchers would focus solely on police calls. The number for either type of emergency call is still 911.

Landeros said Ventura has a problem retaining dispatchers because of the stress associated with answering both types of calls, and said the new approach would eliminate cross-training. “I think our system might have imploded in five years without this,” she said.

Ventura city Fire Chief Dennis Downs said police and fire agencies speak different languages, and that training a dispatcher in both areas is intense and takes about a year.

“The police speak crime, robbery, burglary, and we talk about fire-deployment resources, suppression activities, hazardous materials,” he said. “The two are very different arenas, and for dispatchers to get ahold of both is very difficult.”

Bennett said the county gains continued fire protection on Ventura Avenue. The city has a fire station on the road and responds to calls along unincorporated stretches of the route. The county pays $140,000 annually for this service, but as part of the deal the city would provide the service for free.

County Fire Chief Bob Roper said he expects to make the move “seamlessly.

“We will add personnel to the dispatch floor,” he said. “The public will not notice any difference.”

Ventura County Executive Officer Johnny Johnston said the county has offered similar deals to other cities. Only Oxnard and Santa Paula dispatchers handle both fire and police calls, he said, and neither has taken the county up on the offer.

The Ventura City Council will vote on the agreement Monday, and the Board of Supervisors is scheduled to take it up Aug. 6. Both have been briefed on the agreement in closed session.