Fire Suppression Assessment...

All of us who live or work in the San Diego Rural Fire Protection District (East Otay, Jamul, Descanso, etc.) should have received a mailer from the District by now. The flyer that comes in the mailer is titled “Fire Suppression Assessment”, and there's a mail-back ballot and envelope in there as well.

Basically this mailer is trying to sell us all on the idea of a new tax, proposed at a rate of $120 per year, per residential parcel (or a little more or less, depending on the type of parcel you have). If 50% or more of the property owners (weighted by the amount they'd pay) approve, we've got a new tax. The pamphlet uses a good portion of its ink emphasizing the limitations on how this money could be spent, and the fact that it's only authorized for 30 years.

The last few years have brought a series of wildfires to our parched area, and every property owner in the area is righteously concerned about the ability of our fire departments to suppress fires around our property. So I'm sure that everyone receiving one of these mailers is doing the same thing I've done – carefully considering whether the new tax makes sense from your personal point of view.

Here's my perspective.

The short answer: I'm voting no.

The longer answer:

There are fundamental problems with our firefighting organizations that have nothing whatever to do with money. The most significant of these issues, to me, is the patchwork-quilt nature of the dozens of organizations involved – local, municipal, county, state, and federal, with overlapping or adjoining areas of responsibility and a mish-mash of chains of command and communications. Aside from the sheer organizational madness of this in the chaos of a major fire, there's another problem: capital expenditure control. Fire fighting teams need things that are very expensive – helicopters, planes, fire trucks, fire stations, etc. By having a patchwork-quilt of organizations, the ability to raise capital in the first place is wildly variable, and of course there's no coordinated control of it. Throwing more money at one group in this disjoint mess strikes me as missing the point altogether. In the current scheme, I have no confidence at all that the money will be spent wisely, or even in a way that would benefit me.

One little nit-picky observation that inclines me to distrust the District's fiscal judgment: the one-page pamphlet is printed in full color on the front, black-and-white on the reverse. It looks like it might even have been printed on a color laser printer. However they did it, they spent thousands of dollars making it color, for no good reason. That's thousands of dollars that could have been used for something that actually would make my home safer. That's not a good example of thriftiness with my tax dollars...

Then there's the standard bureaucratic deceptions that always seem to accompany such a proposal. For starters, there's the assertion that the money can only be spent on fire suppression. This is a piece of boilerplate in assessments like this, so laughably (and demonstrably) untrue as to make you think that the bureaucrats who wrote it must all be laughing in a smoke-filled room somewhere. Three things happen to such directed funds in the real world: (1) bureaucrats often simply ignore the rules, (2) bureaucrats pull a classic bait-and-switch by changing the rules after the voters approve the new tax, and (3) the bureaucrats obey the rules, but reduce the general fund budget allocated for the same purpose, thereby freeing up $1 of general fund for every $1 of directed fund received – which is, mathematically, the exact same thing as saying that the new tax goes straight into the general fund. There are no protections against any of the three classic bureaucratic fund dodges in this code.

Then there's the assertion that this tax will last “only” 30 years. When's the last time you saw any such tax actually disappear? I'd estimate the probability of this tax disappearing at approximately zero percent. I'd estimate the chances of it being both (a) increased, and (b) extended to infinity at approximately 100%. On those grounds alone, I'm strongly inclined to say “no”.

My ballot is in today's mail, with a big, fat, “no” on it...