JoCo fire protection group ready to present findings
Following several months of meetings and discussions, the Josephine County Fire Protection Committee is preparing to go public with its recommendations.
The committee was formed by the Josephine County Board of Commissioners last year, and charged with establishing boundaries, standards and a rate mechanism for rural fire protection. Committee members finalized their recommendations regarding standards, and submitted them to the board in early May. Now they eagerly await a response.
County Counsel Steve Rich met with the committee on Wednesday, June 27 in Grants Pass. Rich said that he is drafting a rewrite of the committee’s recommended policies, as well as an ordinance to enact them.
Documents should be completed within the next two weeks, Rich said.
A series of issues have complicated the process, including the fact that franchise agreements for private companies providing fire protection services are extremely rare in the United States. Because of that, Rich said, there are few documents available to use as examples of how such agreements should be drafted.
Currently, private companies providing fire protection in Josephine County face few regulations. That fact was part of what led to the committee’s formation, along with citizen demand. said county commission Chairman Jim Raffenburg.
“We wouldn’t be doing all this if we didn’t think the people of the county wanted this,” Raffenburg said. “We’ve gotten lots and lots and lots of phone calls and e-mails over the last couple of years regarding the existing system.”
The city of Grants Pass continues to annex neighborhoods in its Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) into city limits. Raffenburg said that those annexations have caused private fire protection providers to raise fees charged to their rural customers.
“Where that’s had an effect is people in the county’s Urban Growth Boundary Area,” he said. “When they were in the county and weren’t inside city limits, they didn’t pay city taxes and didn’t have fire protection. When they were annexed into the city, they started paying for all that. That means they didn’t need to pay a private provider for that same service.
“Certainly, that’s been part of the problem for the community-at-large. We’ve seen fewer homes being able to pay for that pool because the cost per home is going up.”
Raffenburg said that lack of standards and regulation for rural fire protection first became an issue around 1990. Since then, three committees have formed to examine the issues.
The last committee, which met in ‘96, was chaired by Raffenburg. At the time, he was a member of the county’s planning commission. And while the last committee’s recommendations were not implemented, they formed the basis of the current committee’s work.
“The standards they’re working on this time are derivative of the work that was done in 1996,” Raffenburg said.
It appears that what is likely to emerge from the latest set of meetings is a nonexclusive franchise agreement with operations and training standards, and a license that would allow the county to collect a fee from the provider. Raffenburg said funds collected from those fees would go toward enforcing the agreement.
The state of Oregon has standards in place for fire protection personnel, and Oregon Dept. of Transportation (ODOT) has standards for emergency vehicles. However, enforcement of standards is left to local jurisdictions, Raffenburg said.
At present, the board has a similar franchise agreement for ambulance service with American Medical Response (AMR).
The franchise agreement, if implemented, would be in place temporarily until a fire district could be established.
Formation of a fire taxing district was recommended by the committee. However, Raffenburg said, “The board wasn’t ready to go there at this point.
“As we go through the next few years,” he added, “we’ll see how the new system is working, and I imagine that at some point in time in the near future, in five to 10 years, the issue will probably raise its head again and will have to be a center of discussion in the community.”
Changing demographics in the county may prompt the formation of a taxing district, Raffenburg said, as those new residents typically come from areas where such systems are already in place.
Members of the Josephine County Fire Protection Committee will meet with the board on Thursday, July 5 at 3 p.m. The committee tentatively is scheduled to make a public presentation during the board’s weekly business session on Wednesday, July 11 in Anne Basker Auditorium in Grants Pass.
Once the board has been fully briefed, Raffenburg said, members of the public will be able to add their input to the process.
“At this point, we’ll be ready to hold public hearings on it maybe as early as late July; I hope no later than August,” he said.
