LAKEPORT — Voters are favoring a measure which would increase the special tax rate for fire and medical services in the Lakeport Fire Protection District, based on preliminary voting results released Tuesday.
In the all-mail special election held for Lakeport Fire’s Measure M, 74.83 percent of votes counted by Tuesday evening had been cast in favor of the additional tax, with 25.17 percent voting against the tax. The measure, which needs a two-thirds supermajority (66.7 percent) “yes” vote to pass, appears to be headed for approval.
“I would be surprised if those numbers turned around,” said fire district governing board director Alan Flora on Wednesday, noting he was “optimistic” that the measure would pass. “I think it’s unlikely that there’s going to be that level of swing,” he said.
The preliminary results will be made final following a month-long canvassing period which begins Thursday. In this vote-by-mail election, voters had until May 7 to postmark their ballots, meaning more votes may be received over the next few days.
In total, about 6,000 ballots were mailed out to voters. The county’s preliminary results show that 1,891 of those ballots were returned with successfully cast votes (two undervotes were noted), with 1,415 of those cast in favor of the measure and 476 cast against it.
These results closely reflect data collected by the fire district in polling conducted prior to the election, added Flora. “The numbers were very consistent with our polling,” he said, noting that polls had shown a “mid-70s” percentage of voters in favor of the measure.
If the tax passes following the official count, property owners within the LFPD will pay $6.14 per benefit unit for fire and emergency medical services provided by the fire district—raising the annual tax for an owner of a singe family home, mobile home or duplex to $184.20, up from about $60. The tax is expected to bring in $1,206,000 in the 2019–2020 fiscal year, and may be increased by up to 3 percent annually.
Measure M was drafted amid ongoing financial problems at the district, which came into the public eye last fall when six firefighters were laid off to accommodate the 2018-2019 budget. If the measure passes, the district board plans to hire back six firefighters to restore the fire department’s staffing levels to what they had been prior to the layoffs, according to a proposed expenditure plan produced by the district earlier this year. That would mean staffing the department’s downtown Lakeport station with four professional firefighters at all times.
Lakeport firefighter Andrew Bergem said Wednesday that when the preliminary results had come in the night before, “it was a huge sign of relief. Everybody’s excited for the future now.” Bergem noted that the campaign had been “a ton of work” for the department’s volunteer and professional firefighters, but that he believed going door-to-door across the entire district on three separate occasions had helped with the vote.
“The issue was a matter of educating, of helping people understand. And I think we covered that,” Bergem said.
Interim Lakeport Fire Chief Rick Bergem said Wednesday he was overwhelmed by the apparent support of the community in voting for Measure M. “I’m pretty ecstatic,” he said.
Should the measure pass, the fire district will have to wait until March or April 2020 for tax revenues to begin to come in, continued Chief Bergem. In the meantime, the district has applied for a competitive Federal Emergency Management Agency grant that would provide funding specifically for hiring staff. FEMA will award those grants from July to September of this year, Bergem said.
Even with the tax funding in place, director Flora added, “we’re still going to need to take a measured approach. There’s a lot of stuff that hasn’t been taken care of for years that needs to be addressed,” he said, indicating equipment and facility maintenance and upgrades.
