Letter: Important to vote yes on H
To the community,
Voting yes on Measure H helps to transform Meyers and the county into one of the many fire-adapted communities sprouting up around the country. An additional $100 per household is actually a sound investment considering the staggering cost of catastrophic wildfire.
The creation of a healthy forest through fire hazard reduction protects us from catastrophic wildfire, saving our families, our homes, and our way of life in Tahoe. It also supports small local businesses and is extremely cost effective compared to the cost of wildfire.
Fuels reduction costs $1,000-$2,000 an acre. According to the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Wildland Fire Management Program Benefit-Cost Analysis, firefighting costs alone run at around $3,000 an acre for fires between 10 and 100 acres. The Angora Fire at 3,100 acres cost taxpayers nearly $7,500 an acre to extinguish. These figures do not include major economic costs such as infrastructure damage, loss of tourism, community health problems, and the destruction of community homes and quality of life. The Angora Fire caused $150 million in damages. That equates to almost $50,000 an acre additional impact.
The cost of catastrophic wildfire is staggering, especially since it causes additional impacts from carbon dioxide release, soil erosion, watershed damage, and wildlife displacement. By funding Lake Valley Fire Protection District’s wildfire education and fuels reduction program, Measure H will protect our neighborhoods from the dangers of wildfire and save the community money in the long run.
A recent study estimated that wildland fires cost between two to three times as much as the cost to reduce hazardous fuels. The Mokelumne Watershed Avoided Cost Analysis, conducted by the Nature Conservancy, Sierra Nevada Conservancy, and the U.S. Forest, also documented the environmental gains a community receives from fuels reduction. Essentially, fuels reduction simulates what fire would do naturally in our ecosystem without posing a threat to our community. The benefits of this include the following: healthier and more mature stands of trees, reduction of invasive pest and plant species populations, improved habitat for large mammals, reduced soil erosion, healthier watersheds and riparian environments, increased carbon storage from larger tree stands, cleaner air, and a reliable source of renewable energy.
In the end, our community has the opportunity to be on the leading edge of fire prevention and environmental stewardship while also saving a substantial sum of money. Living in the forest carries with it responsibility. Make an investment in the future of our community by voting yes on Measure H.
Citizens for a Fire-Adapted Community – Yes on Measure H
This is just to much money and Lake Valley is competing directly with private tree service contractors. Rest assure that everyone at Lake Valley is going to get a big fat raise if this is past. Maybe measure H money can’t be used for raises but the funds that have been paying for the fire crew will be free up for anything they want to use it for. This is smoke and mirrors from Lake Valley thanks to their arrogant bay area fire Chief. I am all for fire protection and I take care of my property accordingly. On second thought maybe Lake Valley can finance the Angora crew. They can start by firing all the Chiefs like the City of South Lake Tahoe did. Stay out of my wallet Lake Valley. Vote No No No
Yep. Most people don’t really understand how government agencies’ budgets actually work, Fat Skis.
As with the governor’s CalFire fee (illegal tax), this is another shell game. And it’s SO much easier to get the voters to agree to tax “themselves” when more than half of the people who would be paying the tax don’t even get to vote on the issue because they don’t live here.
It’s a sham.
Vote no.
I’ve only received one piece of info on this measure and it’s from the Lake Valley Fire Protection District. Their own brochure says the tax starts at $120 per parcel per year and goes up at 3% per year forever. That’s an exponential curve, isn’t it? Meaning that eventually the tax will approach infinity years down the road. I’m all for improving fire protection, but the taxing structure in this Measure seems to me to be faulty.
Hank the fee is pegged to CPI which is a measure of inflation. If CPI increases by 0%, the fee goes up by 0%. If inflation is 4%, the fee goes up by 3% and the purchasing power of the fee decreases.
The multiple phone calls that were ignored and unreturned by Lake Valley to get my fire safe inspection completed several years ago has soured me on any funding increase. I don’t respond well to being ignored by those who get their paychecks from me.
The author states it costs $1,000 to $2,000 per acre to do fuel reduction. Is this what the tax payers paid the logging companies over the past few years to perform fuel reduction in the basin? In reality I believe it was put out to bid and the logging companies paid the Forest Service for the timber removed from the forests surrounding our neighborhoods? How much money was generated from the sale of timber removed under the guise of “fuel reduction” What happened to those funds? The Forest Service probably received the funds because the trees were removed from forest service land. Shouldn’t the proceeds from the sale of timber for fuel reduction help support programs to make the private land in our community “fire-adapted”? As I drive through the community I’ve noticed most homeowners have done fuel reduction around their homes to the limit of what the TRPA will allow. So is this tax going to help Lake Valley do what the Forest Service is already doing on Federal land or is it going to go towards fuel reduction on private land which essentially is the land owners responsibility.
Bottom line is why should I have to pay a tax to get something done that is already being done AND somebody is making a profit doing it.
Vote no on H and F
Both are overkill/unnecessary.
My guess is both groups writing as “citizens for etc etc” are employees of the fire dept and the college.
What is this tax going to do to ” fire-adapt” our community? What does fire adapt mean?
Hank, good point….. reading the mailer close, the fire dept promises that they can levy less than the then maximum rate if they determine that the full tax will not be necessary to fun the programs in a fiscal year.
What a joke that is, have you EVER known a bureaucrat to not find a way to spend your money?
And WHY would they use a CPI index from the Bay area to determine the amount of tax increases in tax up here? Is this perhaps because the bay area is one of the most expensive places in the country to live and the CPI is higher?
I firmly believe most fire Depts in Tahoe are furnishing a level of service and kinds of service that are more than we need. The area may have more tourists at times than population at times, but you don’t size the church for easter sunday. This is often an excuse for huge police depts and fire services.
Interesting, Cranky. We agree on this particular issue. Is this one of my transgressions that “always” happens? Or is this just a coincidence?
It looks like chief Harris is missing something.
LTN PREVIOUS ARTICLE-Another hit to Lake Valley’s income is the diminished property tax collected from the Angora burn area. This is because about 100 of the 254 houses that were reduced to ash in June 2007 have never been rebuilt.
“They are off the tax roll except for the land value,” Harris said. “Thats another hit to Lake Valley’s income is the diminished property tax collected from the Angora burn area. “That is a significant issue.”
What about all of the other lots outside of the Angora fire area that have been developed since 2007? Heavenly completed construction on the Tamarack lodge in 2011. Based on Harris’s statement above what is this about? Replacing missing revenue for Lake Valley as a whole or the Angora peak crew in particular?
The Citizens for a Fire Adapted Community – Yes on H is comprised of local citizens and firefighters who believe in creating a Fire Adapted Community for the safety of all.
The $1,000 or $2,000 dollars per acre treatment cost is what the tax payers pay the logging company because there is no market value for the forest product. This is the result of years of over regulation of the timber industry and it must stop. One of the major goals the Fire Adapted Community supports is reversing this trend by incentivising local businesses to sell forest products as well as create local biomass facilities to accept the material.
Unbelievable but true is the fact that District had a tax with a maximum of $75.00 in 1993 that was let go in 1994 because the elected Board of Directors fought for a new source of funding through dual county status. Dave Huber was a board member than and still is today. As a business owner himself, he and others like John Rice and Greg Herback will make certain that fiscally conservative financial management continues. Money earned through grants and/or fire income will be put back into the budget and Measure H will be reduced. Yearly financial statements will be produced and the public will see for themselves.
Measure H is designed to create stable funding and therefore the increase based on the CPI was a necessity. No index exist for our area and why the San Francisco area was chosen. A max of 3% keeps increases below the rate of inflation but allows the purchasing power of Measure H to at a minimum not decrease over time.
The main point of Chief Harris’s statement regarding the loss of revenue by the Angora Fire is that the District cannot support the Angora Peak Fire Crew and chipping program at the expense of necessities like fire and emergency medical response (EMS).
Lastly, wildfire knows no boundaries. Yes the Angora Fire started on USFS land but traveled rapidly to private land and destroyed 254 homes and caused 150 million dollars in damages. Measure H builds a partnership to protect what matters.
I really must question “Yes on H” statement that the taxpayers paid $1,000 to $2,000 per acre to the logging companies because the timber has no marketable value. This statement is hard to believe and it calls into question “Yes on H” credibility to present the facts honestly so that the taxpayers dollar investment will be well spent. I am sure that is why skid pads were built and truckload upon truckload of timber lengths suitable for milling were taken out of the Bear Creek and Camp Rich areas to name two. It might be believable to state that for the Burton Creek area and the Meadow by STUPD when a helicopter was used for weeks because of environmental concerns where the trees were chipped for biomass. A recent search I preformed showed that determining the value of timber on an acre of land involved a very difficult and convoluted equation that established a figure between $0 and $15,000. A very clear point was that the actual cost of falling and removing the timber was more than the $2,000 stated. I find it hard to believe that all that wood was removed by the timber companies for charity towards a “fire-adapted” Tahoe community.
I might be sort-sighted so I have to ask the question of what they may be referring to when they state they want to ” incentivising local businesses to sell forest products as well as create local biomass facilities to accept the material.” Hmmm, Meeks lumber, DIY, firewood, artisan wood carvings. That’s a lot of Local forest products. There is a Biomass processing facility in the Carson Valley (not close enough), but perhaps we could add a biomass power plant for generating electricity to the Meyers plan. Washoe Meadows would be a great location don’t you think?