Hollister council members Monday approved an ordinance to establish fees charged to residents for some fire department responses.
Council members Mickie Luna and Ray Friend joined Mayor Ignacio Velazquez in initially approving the ordinance. Council members Victor Gomez and Karson Klauer dissented.
The ordinance will allow the city to collect fees for actual costs involved with responses, although City Manager Bill Avera clarified to the Free Lance that residents would incur charges only in cases involving negligence.
Avera wanted to stress that the city would not charge for medical calls.
“People are only getting charged in the case of negligence,” Avera said.
The purpose behind the ordinance is to offset some of the costs for responses using a revenue generator that Avera referred to as “relatively new” in government circles.
With an approval, the city will hire a consultant to manage the billing that would take a 20 percent cut from the new revenue source. The city manager was unsure how much money the fees might generate at a time when Hollister has experienced a spike in overtime costs for the police and fire departments. An agenda report on the matter notes that fire department response activity continues to increase year after year.
The proposed fees are broken down by response categories that include motor vehicle incidents, hazardous materials, false alarms, fire investigations, fires, water incidents and the fire chief’s involvement.
The most common “billing level” expected would be for a hazardous materials assessment at motor vehicle accidents, with a “Level 1” cost of $435 up to a “Level 5” response involving a helicopter, with a charge of $2,200.
“We’re looking to hold people accountable,” Mayor Ignacio Velazquez said Friday.
The proposal already stirred attention from one taxpayer advocate, former chairman of the county’s Republican Party, Robert Bernosky.
Bernosky, now regional vice chair on the Central Coast for the California Republican Party, argued Friday that residents already pay taxes for a “basket-full” of services that includes fire and law enforcement responses. Bernosky called police and fire “core government services.”
“And I don’t believe that it is appropriate to start charging fees for that basket-full of services,” he said.
Additionally, Bernosky said he doesn’t want residents feeling reluctant to call the fire department or prone to declining services they may need.
“I want to call 911 and have the fire department here,” he said. “I don’t want to think, ‘Am I going to get billed?'”
He also disliked the idea of having a third party involved in billing because it puts further distance between elected officials and constituents on the matter.
Look back for more.
