KELSEYVILLE, Calif. – Supervisor Rob Brown explained a plan to reduce fire danger in four homeowners associations at a community meeting in Kelseyville on Wednesday night.
At least 200 people attended the standing-room-only meeting at Riviera Elementary School.
During the meeting, which ran just under an hour and a half, Brown explained the idea behind the plan, which he’s been working on since June, and fielded a number of questions from area residents.
Brown’s plan focuses on four communities which he said have the highest fire risk: Buckingham, Clear Lake Riviera, Riviera Heights and Riviera West. Brown’s district includes all of those areas except for Riviera Heights, which is in the supervisorial district of Tina Scott, who also was on hand for the meeting.
He’s proposing a risk management zone or county service area zone of benefit, as enabled by California Government Code Section 25210, for the purpose of removing brush and other wildfire fuel sources from private property.
The benefit zone would need to be separately approved in the homeowners associations of each of those four communities.
He showed a map of the area’s fire history, noting the biggest fires were from 1949 to 1961.
“They were huge fires. They did a lot of damage to the wildland, but there were no homes back there then,” other than a few farmers and people living on the lake, Brown said, explaining that much of the development in the Rivieras and Buckingham came in the 1970s and later. He said the 1949 fire burned in an area that today is in the Rivieras footprint.
Now, Brown estimated there is 69 years of fuel load in the area, and it’s much heavier than it was in the 1940s.
“It’s gonna burn again. And what we have to do is try to minimize that fuel load,” and do what is possible to make sure the area doesn’t experience another disaster like those that already have happened in Lake County or what Paradise is undergoing, he said.
“I don’t think I’m overdramatizing the possibility, that we have a fire here in the Rivieras, given the roads and the access and different situations that we have here, people will die. That’s the thing that really – it literally keeps me up at night, wondering what’s going to happen,” Brown said, explaining that he had predicted there would a a serious fire there because of the fuel load.
Brown said there are approximately 5,000 lots in the four communities that would be included in the zone. The breakdown is 2,776 in the Clear Lake Riviera, 480 in Riviera West, 639 in Riviera Heights, 600 in Buckingham and 505 peripheral lots.
The basic idea is that property owners will pay a one-time assessment based on size: $100 per lot for properties of less than one acre, $200 for lots from one to five acres, and $300 for lots of five acres or more, Brown said.
It’s anticipated that the one-time assessment would raise $500,000, which would pay for lot abatement. Brown said liens would then be placed on the properties to recover the funds. Those funds will not go to the fire department.
In addition, Brown said the money could be used as the necessary match for state grants, which could add millions more dollars to the effort.
The program will be run through the Lake County Community Development Department, he said.
Priority lots will be determined by an assessment committee that includes Cal Fire, Kelseyville Fire, homeowners association staff and county representatives, he said.
Abatement letters will be sent to the violating property owners, who will have 45 days to cleanup the lots, Brown said. If they don’t, it will be done for them and then a lien will be placed on the property; that lien will go on their tax bill. The lien, when repaid, will go back into the benefit zone fund.
As to the election process, Brown said ballots would go out to the property owners. If a person owns multiple lots, they get multiple votes.
Brown said the county is aiming to send out the ballots during the week of Jan. 9.
There will be 45 days for property owners to return their ballots. The Board of Supervisors will hold a protest hearing on the first Tuesday after that 45 days is up. The board can then accept the results and go to work in the spring, Brown said.
Brown said the abatement letters would go out 30 days from the middle of February. By March, the lots are either cleaned up or the county’s hired contracts go to work.
By that time, they won’t yet have the assessment money – the assessment bills will go out with the property tax bills in December 2019 – but Brown said he has assurances from County Administrative Officer Carol Huchingson that she would recommended fronting some money to begin the work, which would later be reimbursed.
“We’d tried to have those done before fire season,” Brown said of the lots prioritized for cleanup.
He added, “It’s going to take awhile to get all this done, but we have to start somewhere.”
Brown said the county wouldn’t guarantee there will never be another fire. However, the reality is, with the fuel load there is now, another fire would be a disaster.
Brown’s presentation on the plan lasted about 20 minutes. For more than an hour, he responded to numerous questions about the proposal, as well as other issues.
One matter that came up was control burning. Brown said this year alone there were 2,200 burn permits being handled for the county. He said control burns aren’t necessarily the answer, explaining his own burn several years ago that ended up destroying a neighbor’s garage.
On Thursday, Brown told Lake County News that he has received an enormous amount of interest for his proposal.
“It’s been very positive,” he said.
He said he’s also received a very good suggestion about including areas all the way around Soda Bay.
“We can connect the dots later,” he said.
Anyone wanting to speak to Brown about the plan is invited to call him at 707-349-2628.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
111418 Fire Mitigation Community meeting presentation by LakeCoNews on Scribd