Board Of Supervisors To Consider Whether To Impose Mitigation Fee Assessments

RIVERSIDE (CNS) – The Board of Supervisors will hold a public hearing Tuesday to decide whether to grant the Riverside County Fire Department’s request to attach fire mitigation charges to the tax bills of more than 300 property owners who officials say did not pay the cost of abating weeds and other potential fire hazards around their parcels. According to the fire department, 327 property owners in communities countywide are delinquent and owe a total $178,530 under the county’s Fire Hazard Reduction Program. The amounts stem from activity in calendar year 2020. The reduction program involves deploying contractors to clear weeds and related overgrowth that might otherwise fuel brush fires during wildfire season, which generally spans May to November. In most cases, the parcels that were mitigated were vacant or set off from main residences, according to the fire department. Officials said property owners were served with orders to abate, or mitigate, the potential hazards, and when inspectors received no reply or saw that no action had been taken, landscaping contractors were sent to the locations under fire department authority to clear away the excess foliage. "The purpose of the Fire Hazard Reduction Program is to reduce or eliminate fire hazards created by vegetative growth and the accumulation of combustible debris, which poses a danger to the health, safety and welfare of the residents in the vicinity of any real property, as well as irreparable harm to sensitive habitat and species," according to an agency statement. Properties in each of the five supervisorial districts were identified by the fire department as delinquent on payments. According to agency documents, property owners were billed to recover the county’s expenditures, which ranged from $254 to $3,159 per property. A $254 administrative fee was also folded into the final bill sent to the property owners. The charges, if approved, will function as tax liens on the properties. During the hearing, all those who received assessment notices will have an opportunity to challenge them and ask the board for relief. Last August, Supervisor Kevin Jeffries expressed concern that the fire department had not moved forward with revising its appeals process to address mistakenly imposed charges. "There have been cases in the past where it was not the actual property owner who was abated, but a party with a parcel next to them," Jeffries said. "So the wrong parcel was cited in the assessment. There hasn’t been an appeals process for an improper assessment." Officials from the Office of the Fire Marshal assured Jeffries that the agency was making progress in amending the current process to ensure errant assessments are dealt with prior to reaching the board. Copyright 2022, City News Service, Inc. CNS-01-24-2022 12:32