Mitigation rates won’t change for developers

The fire mitigation fee rates paid by developers to fund the cost of fire department facilities serving the new development will remain unchanged for the next year.

The San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted 4-0 March 26, with Greg Cox at a National Association of Counties meeting, to accept the Fire Mitigation Fee Review Committee’s annual report and find that the 19 participating fire agencies were in conformance with the County Fire Mitigation Fee Ordinance for Fiscal Year 2017-18.

“Glad the board approved everything,” said San Diego County Regional Fire Authority director Herman Reddick.

The county established the Fire Mitigation Fee Program in 1986 to provide funding for fire protection and emergency medi­cal services in the unincorporated communities. Although local fire agencies lack the legal authority to impose mitigation fees on new development, the county collects a fee from building permit applicants on behalf of 17 independent fire protection districts and one county service area with fire protection respon­sibility.

A second county service area with 2017-18 revenue was dis­solved in November 2018 with two neighboring fire protection

districts taking over responsibility.

The mitigation fees are dis­tributed quarterly to agency accounts and must be used for capital projects or to purchase firefighting equipment or sup­plies which will serve new developments.

The Fire Mitigation Fee Re­view Committee reviews the annual reports of the participat­ing agencies to confirm that the improvements are necessary to serve new development. The committee members consist of two fire chiefs—currently Bill Paskle of the Alpine Fire Protection District and Fred Cox of the Rancho Santa Fe Fire Protection District, one elected director of a fire protection dis­trict, one County Service Area staff member, one San Diego County Fire Authority staff member, and one representative apiece from the Building Indus­try Association, the San Diego County Farm Bureau and the county’s Planning Commission.

The County Fire Mitiga­tion Fee Ordinance allows fee ceilings to be increased or de­creased in proportion to chang­es in the Cost of Construction Index. The ordinance also re­quires an evaluation of the base fee every five years based upon dividing the average cost in cur­rent dollars to construct a fully-equipped fire station within the county’s unincorporated area by the average square footage of structures served by that aver­age fire station. That result be­comes the new base fee and was last adjusted in October 2014.

The fee for non-agricultural construction will remain at 58 cents per square foot and the fee for agricultural buildings without sprinklers will still be 16 cents per square foot. The fee for agricultural buildings with fire sprinkler systems was un­changed at two cents per square foot, and the fee for poultry and greenhouse buildings is still one cent per square foot.

“There’s no change in fees,” Reddick said.

During Fiscal Year 2017-18 the Alpine Fire Protection Dis­trict received $54,844.16 of Fire Mitigation Fee Program rev­enue. The San Diego County Regional Fire Authority had $281,182.02 of mitigation fund revenue.

Because the funding is used for capital improvements, it is not required to be spent in a par­ticular fiscal year. The Fiscal Year 2019-20 planned capital expenditures approved by the Fire Mitigation Fee Review Committee include debt service payback for construction of the Alpine Fire Protection District’s fire station and renovation of the San Diego County Regional Fire Authority’s Mt. Laguna station.