Feb. 13--In a somewhat stunning turnaround, the directors of the Julian-Cuyamaca Fire Protection District on Tuesday decided to re-open negotiations with the county, which could lead to the dissolution of the last volunteer fire department in the area.
At the conclusion of a sometimes raucous, standing-room only meeting inside the bays of the town's fire station, the board reversed a decision it made in September to remain independent from the County Fire Authority.
At that time, the county said the volunteer department needed to commit to dissolving the 87-square-mile district or else a paramedic fire engine and other funding and amenities the county had given the district the past few years would go away on Jan. 1, and they did.
That left the district in a precarious position. When the only ambulance assigned to the Julian area is out of the district making a hospital run to Escondido or Poway -- something that happens on average about 35 to 40 times a month -- there is no paramedic service available to immediately respond to another medical emergency.
Although the paramedic engine can't transport patients, the paramedics can perform life-saving services while waiting for an ambulance to arrive from out of the district -- something that could take 30 minutes or longer.
Tuesday's 3-2 vote does not mean the Julian department will dissolve and become part of the county's fire department, but it does mean that is again a possibility.
Board President Jack Shelver, following the meeting, said he hopes the county will return the department to the way it had been operating until the end of last year while renewed negotiations are ongoing.
He also said he hopes that Cal Fire will reopen two of its stations in the district that were closed last month for the winter.
Tuesday afternoon, County Fire Authority and local Cal Fire Chief Tony Mecham said he was pleased with the director's vote and thinks one of the Cal Fire stations can reopen within a couple weeks, and both within a month.
However, he said a paramedic engine will not return to the Julian station until the district decides to dissolve itself permanently. When the Julian ambulance is on a hospital run, he said he will try to have a paramedic engine brought into the district to cover.
"We feel today's vote was a good-faith effort on behalf of the board to do right by the community and the county also wants to act in good faith by picking up the winter costs of reopening the Cal Fire stations," Mecham said.
Shelver was the only member of the board to vote against remaining independent in September. On Tuesday, directors Kirsten Starlin and Aida Tucker joined him in voting to start negotiating again. Directors Brian Kramer and Buddy Seifert voted against restarting negotiations.
The meeting was attended by at least 150, often highly opinionated people on opposite sides of the issue. The majority wanted nothing to do with the county and say the volunteers have served the area very well for decades.
They said the county can't be trusted to deliver all it says it will, that Cal Fire employees don't know the lay of the land like the volunteers do, and that once the district dissolves, it will never again be able to get its independence back.
Supporters of the volunteer department are placing their hopes on a bond measure that can't go to a vote until November that will ask property owners to increase their fire taxes from $50 to $200 annually.
The hope had originally been to have the bond measure placed on the June ballot, but an effort to gather signatures in time failed when a number of them were deemed invalid.
Pat Landis, a supporter of remaining a volunteer department, said the problem with the signatures had to do with people listing their addresses as post office boxes but also maintaining other residences elsewhere in the county out of the district where they were registered to vote.
Landis said a new signature-gathering drive will begin soon to get a measure on the November ballot. Should the directors vote to dissolve the district before then, she said, the fire tax increase, should it pass, would be voided.
The San Diego County Fire Authority was established following the 2003 and 2007 firestorms on the theory that one centralized county fire department would provide better, more professional firefighting services to the rural parts of the county. All the other volunteer departments, often reluctantly, joined the authority but Julian remained fiercely independent, despite often facing budget restraints.
Supporters of merging with the county fire department said it's basically a matter of money. The volunteer department, they said, can't provide adequate service with the limited funds available to it.
Speakers on both sides praised the volunteers, but some said financial constraints make going with the county the best and only real option.
___ (c)2018 The San Diego Union-Tribune Visit The San Diego Union-Tribune at www.sandiegouniontribune.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
