LAKE COUNTY >> The county’s share of costs associated with the Valley Fire currently totals more than $1 million, according to numbers released on Tuesday.
These costs are based on the proportion of the total project expenses alloted to each government agency — federal , state, and county. For most of the expenses, FEMA will cover 75 percent and CalOES will pay 18.75 percent while the county is expected to shell out the rest, or 6.25 percent.
As of now, Auditor-Controller Cathy Saderlund estimated that the total project costs for the destructive fire and its recovery are $15.8 million, with that number expected to rise dramatically.
“This is probably a third of what we will see with [the Valley Fire],” Saderlund told the Board of Supervisors at its regular meeting. “[The numbers] aren’t final … they change often.”
The numbers were broken down by three project categories: emergency, permanent, and disaster service request, with the largest falling under emergency, sitting at about $11 million.
Saderlund said that most of those emergency costs are for tree removal projects — from both private properties and county right-of-ways— in addition to those incurred by first response services the days surrounding the fire and other protective measures. Of the $11 million, the county may need to be responsible for $694,000.
As for the permanent costs, the county’s share currently stands at $248,000 of nearly $5 million in total expenses for things like the reconstruction of the Starview and Bonanza Springs water systems on Cobb.
However, the final category, disaster service request projects, isn’t covered by the federal government. In fact, when a request was made to FEMA to help with things like donations and volunteer management, it was denied, leaving the state to cover 90 percent. The rest will be billed to the county for a total of $67,500.
To avoid paying all this money for public assistance projects, the county is hoping that they will be covered by the state with the passage of Senate Bill 937.
Co-authored by Sen. Mike McGuire and Assemblyman Bill Dodd, the bill recently passed a senate committee hearing with unanimous approval but it must go through the appropriations committee and then find approval in both houses and be signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown.
“We can’t really plan on it … we need to have a plan B,” Saderlund said, adding that even project reimbursement approval from the state and FEMA won’t have definite assurance six to ten years from now, thus stressing the need for proper applications. “If we do one thing wrong with [a project], and it has FEMA attacked to it, it can be denied.”
And these costs aren’t the only ones the county is worried about, especially when it comes to property taxes because the county stands to lose a lot of it thanks to the fire.
According to Saderlund, the state has put in the appropriation for a one year backfill to make up for these losses. However, that leaves the proceeding years in question.
“We all know that one year isn’t going to be sufficient for what we are actually going to experience,” she said. “That’s going to be an ongoing loss for us.”
Included in her report were the expenditures from the county’s general ledger associated with the Rocky and Jerusalem fires.
The former accumulated more than $500,000 in expenditures in county general ledger. This didn’t include projects in progress or contracts that are encumbered, she said. It will also have the same cost share structure as the Valley Fire.
FEMA isn’t involved in the Jerusalem fire recovery costs, but the current expenditures are only at about $23,000. Including the private property debris removal, the state will be responsible for 75 percent and the county will get the rest.
“We don’t like the figures but we sure appreciate the report,” District 1 Supervisor Jim Comstock, who among many others praised her report, said. “It sure is sobering.”
