Fire protection in Chester, already reduced to a bare minimum, is scheduled for complete suspension after Feb. 28. Two ballot measures offer a chance to return to full service as either a professional or a less-expensive volunteer department. The measures were unanimously approved by the Chester Public Utilities District on Dec. 27, 2023, and scheduled for a May 7 special election.
The Plumas County Board of Supervisors is scheduled to approve a resolution allowing the special election, which holds the future of fire protection in Chester for the foreseeable future, at its Feb. 6 meeting.
Controversy over the utilities district has mounted in recent weeks, putting the board’s approval itself in jeopardy over the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday weekend. Late in the afternoon of Friday, Jan. 12, CPUD Vicechair Kim Green learned that a resolution calling for a special election was not on the supervisors’ Jan. 16 agenda, as had been requested by Chester district officials. The supervisors must approve any local ballot measure before it can appear on a ballot.
After a flurry of behind-the-scenes accusations involving county and CPUD officials, Board of Supervisors Chairman Greg Hagwood confirmed late on Monday, Jan. 15, that the Chester fire district ballot measures will in fact go to the Plumas supervisors for approval — not on Jan. 16 as originally planned, but on Feb. 6.
Hagwood blamed “a procedural entanglement” created by numerous public records requests filed by CPUD General Manager Adam Cox and others. These requests have to be reviewed by county officials, with final vetting by the county counsel’s office. That was finalized on Monday, Jan. 15, despite the MLK holiday, Hagwood said.
Cox, who has served as CPUD’s general manager since 2022, refuted Hagwood’s allegation that he had filed public record requests about the district’s own measures. “I want him to show me what public records requests I or anyone at CPUD have filed about our own measures,” he said.
Current services are limited
A years-long financial crisis forced Chester district directors to send layoff notices to all ambulance staff and firefighters effective Feb. 28. It currently has four emergency service workers, said Green. The community at Lake Almanor may be entirely without these essential services in March or sooner.
On Jan. 1 the district surrendered its ground transportation license for the ambulance. Between now and Feb. 28, the last day as a full-time fire department, the district will only be responding to emergency calls with paramedics and EMTs. It will provide assistance at the site, but will not be able to transport patients, Cox said.
“We’ll show up at a scene and try to stabilize and treat a patient,” he said. Then Chester paramedics will wait for another entity to show up with an ambulance. Most assistance is currently coming from Peninsula Fire Protection District in Almanor; Sierra Medical Services Alliance, an air and ground ambulance service based in Susanville; or Plumas District Hospital, based in Quincy, Cox said. Peninsula Fire is closest, a 20-minute drive away in good weather. Officials at Peninsula Fire have made it clear that they’re only willing to staff two ambulances, Cox said.
What the May 7 ballot measure would do
The financial collapse of the Chester Fire Department is a result of decisions that have been festering for 10 years and “swept under the rug,” Green said. District directors had hoped to reestablish fiscal solvency with a Nov. 7, 2023, ballot measure seeking approval of a $350-per-parcel special tax. It failed badly. The final tally — 200 “yes” votes to 381 “nos” — failed to receive even a simple majority in an election that required a two-thirds majority approval.
Now the directors are asking Chester voters to approve one of two ballot measures in May in hopes of generating as much as $2 million annually to fund the fire department and its ambulance services. One measure asks voters to approve a $1,500 per parcel annual tax to fund a full-service, full-time professionally staffed Chester fire department. The other asks for approval of a $450 per parcel annual tax to fund a volunteer department.
“We’re trying to give the community options,” she said. A “no” vote on both would result in no fire or ambulance services provided by the Chester district, said Green.
For now the district is keeping all of its ambulances, engines, trucks and other assets, Cox said.
Annika Peacock, a spokeswoman for the ad hoc Citizens Advisory Committee, said the May 7 ballot measures lack details important to voters. It is not clear that the fire department would be fully functional even if the funding were available, she said.
“I personally will not be voting in favor of either measure,” Peacock told The Plumas Sun.
Financial crisis could raise ISO rating
The Chester Fire Department has been operating at a $1.2 million a year deficit for at least a decade, Cox said. Annual operations require about $2 million. The fire district’s revenues include $350,000 in tax revenue and $400,000 billed for ambulance services. To close the gap, CPUD directors have borrowed $1.3 million from sewer district funds.
“This wasn’t an overnight phenomenon.”
Adam Cox, CPUD general manager
Poor financial decisions in the past were common, said Green. She cited a previous board’s hiring of an employee who currently costs the fire department over $160,000 per year for benefits and salary. That was when the department enjoyed as much as $7 million in income from using its firefighters as a strike team on federal wildland fires.
“If the district had socked away those wildland fire funds, we could still be living on them,” Cox said.
He blamed 10 to 12 years of “really bad choices” by the general managers and board members who have run the district. “This wasn’t an overnight phenomenon,” Cox said.
Those past mistakes haunt the present fire department and could have dramatic effects on the future of the Chester community. If there’s no fire department, and the Insurance Services Office rating goes to 10, it could make getting individual fire insurance difficult, said Cox. Chester’s ISO rating was 3 in 2020. Ten is the worst rating possible.
People are already paying “a ridiculous amount” for homeowners’ insurance “if they can get it at all,” Cox said. An ISO rating of 10 would mean there is no affordable insurance “in any sense of the word ‘affordable’.”
“And what happens when you can’t sell your house because prospective buyers can’t afford insurance? It means a town dies,” Cox said. “I truly believe that the fate of our fire department is existentially tied to the fate of the community.”
Peacock said a long-term solution would be to consolidate fire districts around the Almanor area. That, however, requires the cooperation of the Chester Fire Department.
Cox said he strongly favors consolidation and has yet to meet one person who doesn’t. It would require action by the Local Agency Formation Commission, which has already met to consider the issues.
Supervisor Tom McGowan, who represents the Chester area, did not respond to numerous telephone calls, emails and texts seeking his comment on the controversy.
Hagwood, the chairman of the Plumas board of supervisors, was confident that the supervisors’ Feb. 6 agenda would include the Chester ballot measures. A largely procedural matter, this “slight delay” will not jeopardize the measure scheduled to go before Chester voters May 7, he said.
For Cox, it continues the district’s holding pattern. “We just keep waiting — waiting for the next meeting, waiting for the next vote. And here we are again now, waiting on the supervisors,” Cox said.
