By Inga Miller
The Modesto Bee
Copyright 2007 The Modesto Bee
RIPON, Calif. — The price of sending ambulances and firetrucks to more distant locations in growing cities has caught up with another community.
The Ripon Consolidated Fire Protection District needs as much as $800,000 more a year to keep reaching every part of the city, including new subdivisions on the outskirts, in eight minutes, according to fire officials.
Tuesday, the San Joaquin County Board of Supervisors OK’d a mail-only election to ask voters in Ripon whether they want to increase their taxes to pay for it.
It coincides with a similar measure in Denair and follows one in Manteca in November.
The ballots will go out April 8 and must be returned by May 8. To pass, the measure needs two-thirds of the vote, Fire Chief Dennis Bitters said.
“Our feeling is, we don’t decide the level of service, the community does,” Bitters said. “We tell them what we need to do it, and if the community says ‘We don’t want to do this,’ then we just don’t want to be in the position where we didn’t do our due diligence in telling them we are going to be outside our response time.”
In the 1990s, the state shifted property tax revenue allocations from fire districts to education. That cut into the district’s ability to meet the difficulties posed by growth. Of its nearly $2 million budget, it earns about $600,000 from contract ambulance work. About $752,000 comes from property tax, Bitters said. A special tax passed for the district in 1985 brings in $573,478.
To add another crew, the district estimates it needs an additional $800,000.
The eight minutes crews have to respond to a call starts the second the call comes into the dispatch center. It gives the dispatcher 90 seconds for the call, firefighters and paramedics 90 seconds to board and five minutes driving time.
7 more firefighters and a third firehouse
Bitters said five minutes has gotten to be a stretch west of Highway 99, where North Ripon and River roads intersect at a retirement community known as Chesapeake Landing. More homes are in the works or planned in the area.
When fire and ambulance crew members are at a call in that neighborhood or beyond, they face the same time obstacle getting back to the center of the city.
“More and more, we’re getting double and triple calls coming in,” said Don Moyer, a member of the fire board. “And then we’re really in trouble if we get a structure fire, a heart attack and an injury at the same time.”
The tax increase would allow the department to hire seven firefighters, which would fill one full-time, around-the-clock crew for a third, future firehouse in the River Road area.
The station would be paid for by developers and be about halfway between the downtown station on Stockton Avenue and the rural station near Highway 120 and Murphy Road.
The new station would benefit rural residents, too, “because the station is going to be five minutes closer out there. So everybody wins,” Bitters said.
The five-member fire board unanimously approved the measure for the ballot earlier this month.