San Diego faces next year's fire season without increased fire protection, since Prop. A, the fire tax, failed to get the two thirds vote needed to pass.
KPBS reporter Alison St John asked two Supervisors if they have a plan B.
Supervisor Ron Roberts took the initiative to get prop A on the ballot but he didn’t throw much weight behind it. The tax would have raised $50 million by charging every property owner in the county a dollar a week. Roberts says he plans to analyze what went wrong.
Roberts: Once you get through being disappointed, I’ve asked my team, let’s do an analysis and find out where the areas of the county are that supported us strongly and where are the areas that didn’t and lets try to figure out if there’s a subsequent plan.
But another plan is not going to manifest any money before next Fall.
San Diego County spent $3 million to bring 2 super scooper aircraft from Canada for this wildfire season. The planes are credited with keeping wildfires from burning homes last month.
But San Diego Supervisor Greg Cox says that was a one time allocation
Cox : So I’m not real optimistic there’s going to be the funds to do the superscoopers next year. Bottom line is there needs to be additional funds that are going into the fire service, cos it’s not going to come out of existing programs that are being funded through the county.
Cox says the county’s budget it likely to be hard hit by the current economic downturn.
Both Cox and Roberts say the next realistic opportunity to put a fire tax measure on the ballot is not until 2010.
Alison St John, KPBS news.
