County’s Tiny Districts Hit Hard by State Budget Cuts : Economy: An independent fire protection district serving an unincorporated area might lose, for example, up to two firefighters from its meager five-person force.

Special districts in San Diego County were hit especially hard by the austere new state budget.

No one understands this better than Lorenzo Gigliotti. As chief of the tiny Crest Fire Protection District, he has to find a way to cut $32,000 from his lean $320,000 budget.

Years of recession and the lingering fallout from Proposition 13 have left him no fat to trim. Now comes the agonizing decision. If this means layoffs, who among the grand total of five firefighters in the department must go?

“(This) cut, to us, is quite a bit,” he said tersely. “It could cause me to lose two people.”

Gigliotti and his firefighters are not alone. Gov. Pete Wilson’s $57.4-billion budget has slammed cities and counties all over the state.

But nothing has been hit harder than the independent special districts that provide services people take for granted. Every time someone flushes a toilet, calls a paramedic or goes to the library, there is a good chance a special district employee is part of the action.

The new state budget drains $375 million in property taxes that had been earmarked for special districts statewide. Special districts in San Diego County stand to lose $19 million.

Many district administrators are not as soft-spoken as Gigliotti about these moves. Bill Hollingsworth, the recently retired general manager of another of the 60 independent special districts in the county, the Olivenhain Water District, is convinced the cuts are more than unfair.

Hollingsworth says the state Legislature is stealing.

“There just might be a lawsuit coming along over this. I don’t think it’s constitutional,” Hollingsworth said. “The money doesn’t belong to the state legislators and it’s none of their business. If the state needs money they ought to get their backbone up and raise it someplace else.”

Hollingsworth and other administrators of the small districts say the cutbacks attack the heart of the districts. Special districts, which are mostly formed in unincorporated areas by close-knit groups of neighbors, are government at its smallest and its most local level, they say.

These are boards where Joe Citizen can walk up to his elected officials, look them in the eye and speak his piece, Hollingsworth said. Those legislators in Sacramento who are doling out the budget cuts hide behind the local governments, he claims.

“Government on this level is the front lines, so to speak,” Hollingsworth said. “The average citizen can get to these people on these boards, but they can’t get to the legislators. Now, when 120 legislators and a governor can’t figure out how to balance a budget, they let 3,000 directors around the state do their scrambling for them. The state legislators are ducking their responsibility, in my opinion.”

The mini-governments Hollingsworth refers to are those that provide such essential services as flood control, libraries, water, sewers, ambulances, firefighters, road maintenance and mosquito abatement, often to remote areas.

“You name it and these districts do it,” said Catherine Smith, deputy director of the California Special Districts Assn., a lobbying group that represents more than 500 special districts statewide.

After months of negotiations, Wilson’s final budget takes 35% from each special district’s property tax revenues or 10% of their total revenues, whichever is lower. Either way, most district officials call this a drastic hit to their balance sheets. This is money the state will be taking away, not, as in the case of schools, money that was being promised for a later date.

For people in such areas as Blossom Valley, Crest, Harbison Canyon and Alpine, these cuts will translate into higher water rates. Padre Dam Municipal Water District, which serves most of the East County, was strapped with a $636,000 cutback from a total budget of $20 million, most of which will be directed at those East County communities, said Andy Lovsted, the district’s finance director.

Lovsted and his board of directors are studying a selection of ways to manage the cuts. But to make up for the property taxes, there is no doubt water rates will go up, he said.

In these rural communities, water rates will jump by 13%, an increase that sits on top of the 9% hike the district implemented last June.

But county officials say no districts were hit any harder than fire districts, which can’t raise money on their own, making cutbacks even more painful.

Districts such as sewer and water districts can increase the fees they charge their customers to make up for losses and to balance their budgets, and in some cases, fee increases of up to 20% are now being considered.

But fire districts, which are on call 24 hours a day for emergencies of all types, are almost solely dependent on the county property tax rolls for revenue, said Pete Peterson, the chief of the Rancho Santa Fe Fire Protection District, a 42-square-mile district that sprawls amid the rolling hills of posh Rancho Santa Fe. In Rancho Santa Fe, an unincorporated community with $3.1 billion in assessed property values, the smell of smoke translates into multimillion-dollar losses.

However, Peterson and his 30 firefighters are responsible not only for fire protection but also the old-fashioned duties fire department’s used to be famous for.

“We seem to be the people residents call whenever they have a problem,” said Peterson, 53, a 30-year firefighter. “We do the old types of services, like rescuing people from snakes on their property. But we also provide quite a service in the area of medical aid.”

Peterson’s annual budget of $3.2 million will be cut by 10%, or $328,000, Peterson said.

“That’s not money we were counting on in terms of growth. This means we will actually have less money,” Peterson said.

That kind of news does not sit well in any community, particularly one as rich as Rancho Santa Fe.

“You have a large investment in homes here and in the whole San Dieguito area,” said Walt Ekard, the manager of the Rancho Santa Fe Assn. “We also have a lot of woodsy areas. The Oakland fire scared everybody here and with the drought the way its been, concern about a heightened potential for fire is great already.”

Peterson is a member of the board of directors of the San Diego County Fire Districts Assn., which encompasses a group of 16 districts with a combined budget of $43.3 million. All will be reduced by 10%, or $4.3 million, he said.

“That $4.3 million buys quite a few firefighters,” Peterson said. “I’m hoping we won’t hear about a lot of firefighters being laid off, but that might be the only solution in some cases.”

Layoffs might be the only solution for the tiny Bostonia Fire Protection District, a 1.5-square-mile unincorporated entity surrounded on three sides by El Cajon. Two of the department’s 15 full-time firefighters are threatened with losing their jobs.

Despite its small area, Bostonia’s firefighters serve 10,000 residents and last year responded to 2,000 fire and paramedic calls, meaning five or six a day.

Any cuts in personnel could mean Bostonia will not be able to maintain its mutual aid commitments with other fire departments, a problem also threatening Crest.

“I have a lot of heartburn with it,” said Bostonia’s Fire Chief Darrell Jobes of his prospects. “People say, ‘We want local fire protection,’ and the state is saying, ‘We don’t care, we’re taking it away from you anyway.’ ”

With such a small department, Jobes doesn’t have the leeway larger departments have, such as closing a station to cut costs.

“With one station, I don’t have that option,” Jobes said. “We could shut down our ambulance and not provide service one or two days a week. . . . Just pray to God you don’t need an ambulance on the day it’s off.”

The dismal prospects have prompted Borrego Springs Fire Chief Allen Fehlberg to start a letter-writing campaign, asking residents for donations to keep up payments on the department’s new ambulance.

“We’ve got the only ambulance service in 75 miles,” said Fehlberg, adding that the department has put a hold on maintenance and upgrades of its buildings and vehicles. “We’ve got one truck with a bad engine in it, but we can’t replace it. . . . We’re just squeaking by.”

Like most fire protection districts, about 80% of the Borrego Springs Fire Department’s $800,000 annual budget goes to manpower. The department has 12 full-time paid firefighters, 14 part-time reserves and six volunteers and now must find a way to cut $74,000.

“We’re in a tough spot in this,” Fehlberg said.

The months of intensive lobbying efforts over funds have left some ill feelings among administrators all over the county. Several fire chiefs said they were angry that public schools got what they considered preferential treatment and more than their share of the money.

Fehlberg, a member of the Fire Protection District Assn. legislative committee, said school districts do not operate as efficiently as fire departments.

“We are pointing the finger right where it lays,” Fehlberg said. “I’m not pulling punches. The state Legislature gave all the money to the schools.”