4 Fire Protection Measures Rejected

SAN DIEGO —  Just four months after the most disastrous fires in the county’s history, four of seven ballot measures to improve fire protection in San Diego County failed to win passage Tuesday.

“It looks like the firestorm as a political issue is out, it’s history,” said Steve Erie, political science professor at UC San Diego. “People are back to their penny-pinching ways.... It’s an astounding place.”

The failure of the four tax measures comes as debate continues over whether the fires, which killed 16 people and destroyed more than 3,200 structures, could have been stopped sooner if the region had had better fire protection.

A task force report issued Wednesday by the California Department of Forestry said firefighting crews were hampered by poor communication, lack of training and lack of coordination among agencies, which led to chaos in the early hours when the wind whipped the flames into fast-moving infernos.

The measures rejected Tuesday joined 32 other fire protection measures -- out of 50 -- that have failed in the past 25 years, a rate that might be higher except for the reluctance of officials to seek tax increases.

The biggest loss was in the city of San Diego where a proposal to increase the hotel-motel tax paid by visitors failed to get the required two-thirds approval. Three rural measures also were rejected.

“Something has got to give,” said an exasperated City Councilman Michael Zucchet, a former lobbyist for the firefighters union. “Either we have to find new revenues or residents in this city have to learn to live with pathetically underfunded public safety services.”

While officials consider placing a new measure on the November ballot, the city plans to put an urgent appeal on its website for corporate donors to help the Fire Department’s equipment needs.

“I know that’s pitiful, but right now, I’ll do anything necessary to get the equipment we need,” said Assistant Fire Chief Tracy Jarman.

One of the more pressing needs, Jarman said, is for data terminals in fire engines to provide firefighters with route information and maps showing where other engines and squads are deployed.

During the Cedar fire, firefighters were hampered by a lack of information about how to get to the fire, what units were fighting it and where the voracious fire was moving. Many of the department’s aging vehicles are equipped only with dog-eared map books.

While possibly surprising to outsiders, voter refusal to approve rural parcel tax measures fits the county’s tradition of staunch opposition to taxes, even after destructive fires.

Even while the cleanup from the Paradise and Cedar fires had barely begun, officials in Escondido and the Board of Supervisors decided the time was not right to place fire protection measures on the ballot.

Richard Rider, chairman of San Diego Tax Fighters, said he thought the city measure was defeated because of voter anger over recent controversies involving subsidies for sports teams, the lowering of the city’s credit rating and the $1-billion unfunded liability in the city pension program.

“I think people felt there was too much skulduggery going on at City Hall,” Rider said. “When you’re paying librarians $125,000-a-year pensions, it’s hard to ask voters for more money.”

Alone among large California counties, San Diego lacks a countywide fire department; fire protection is provided by a patchwork of 60-plus agencies that often have trouble communicating; and the city of San Diego has fewer firefighters per capita than nearly all large American cities. When the fires struck, the city lacked a firefighting helicopter and had no agreement with the Navy or Marine Corps to use theirs.

Some parts of unincorporated areas are protected by volunteer firefighters who are summoned to fires by pagers. But opposition to taxation is often strongest in those areas, where public services are scarce and a pride in rugged individualism is high.

Voters in rural Campo, Boulevard and Rainbow, all areas threatened by the Cedar and Paradise fires in October, refused to endorse tax measures to improve fire protection.

Each measure was different, but the arguments against them were similar. The ballot statement against the measure in Boulevard, for example, warned that a $50 parcel tax would only whet the appetite of public officials: “Taxes won’t stop. Next year, another tax. Taxing will continue until they break you financially and drive you out of Boulevard.” Among those who signed the argument against the measure was the vice president of the Boulevard Fire Board.

Fire measures were endorsed by voters in the Harbison Canyon-Crest area, where more than 300 homes were destroyed by the Cedar fire; Palomar Mountain, where residents were forced to flee the fire; and La Mesa, where the measure was included with upgrading police facilities.

Supervisor Dianne Jacob was particularly buoyed by the victory in Harbison Canyon and Crest, where fire resources were immediately stretched to the breaking point when fire roared southward and jumped over Interstate 8. In the other areas, voters may have already forgotten the fires, she said.

“People have short memories,” Jacob said. “People think they’re overtaxed and I agree with them. But we have to think whether the state of California, with all its problems, is going to help us. I doubt it.”

In San Diego, voters were asked to increase from 10.5% to 13% the tax slapped on all hotel and motel bills. The measure would have provided $8 million a year for the Fire Department, $3 million for the Police Department and $7 million for tourist programs and promotions.

Mayor Dick Murphy opposed the increase because it took away the City Council’s power to decide how to spend funds raised by the tax. His mayoral opponents, Port Commissioner Peter Q. Davis and Supervisor Ron Roberts, supported the proposed increase.

The measure gathered 61% support, short of the required two-thirds needed for approval. San Diego has one of the lowest hotel-motel taxes of any large city in the nation; in Los Angeles and San Francisco, the hotel-motel tax is 14%.

“We should at least ask people to pay as much as we pay when we visit their cities,” said Davis, who placed third in the mayoral primary and was eliminated.

Murphy will face Roberts in a runoff in November. Murphy won 40.5% of the primary vote; Roberts, 29.5%; and Davis, 22.5%. Murphy beat Roberts in 2000.

In the city attorney’s race, the runoff candidates will be former federal prosecutor Michael Aguirre, who won 45.9%, and Executive Assistant City Atty. Leslie Devaney. Devaney narrowly beat Deputy City Atty. Deborah Berger, 27.8% to 26.2%. In other issues, a slow-growth measure for the county’s backwoods region was defeated.