Funding shortages start to hurt (Dec. 17)
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By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune
One of the things we, as taxpayers, have yet to realize is how the flow of taxes into local governments is down. Services we took for granted even a year ago are gradually being withdrawn.
Some of the public is beginning to understand what that means to them personally. On Tuesday, a petition bearing the signatures of some 1,100 citizens of the Ahwahnee and Raymond areas was presented to the Board of Supervisors, protesting the imminent cutbacks in services from those stations for the winter months. People who live in those communities are afraid that if they need medical assistance, or if their properties catch fire, help will arrive too late. They have been appearing before the supervisors for months now to protest the cutbacks.
The cuts came last summer as a result of anticipated funding shortfalls. During budget hearings, the county clearly had to make up for a lack of millions of dollars. The fire service was ordered to take its share of the cuts. When county fire officials came back to the supervisors with recommendations for cuts, Ahwahnee and Raymond wound up on the block.
During the summer, those stations are staffed by CalFire specialists to meet the challenges of range and woodland fires in that hilly and wooded area. When the CalFire people went home, the county would make up the funding to keep the stations open during the winter.
Since then, even more cuts have been made, and as a result the likelihood of the funding for those stations being returned is slight.
There is a solution, of course. The people in that area could vote to tax themselves enough to keep the stations open. There’s still enough time to get it on next year’s ballot. The signatures that were on that petition probably would be enough to get such a tax up for a vote.
Unfortunately, we are in that kind of economy.
