What happened at the Sebastopol Town Hall on Fire Reorganization?

LAFCO has blessed the annexation of Sebastopol Fire into Gold Ridge—now what?

Gold Ridge Fire Chief Shepley Schroth-Cary spoke to a small audience about fire consolidation at the Community Center on Wednesday. (Photo by Laura Hagar Rush)

On Wednesday, April 2, the City of Sebastopol and Gold Ridge Fire Protection District hosted a town hall on fire reorganization at the Sebastopol Community Cultural Center. It was possibly the smallest town hall on record, with only 30 or so participants, not counting staff.

The city of Sebastopol has been debating the question of consolidating with a neighboring fire district for years. Earlier this year, on Feb. 4, the city council approved the consolidation of the Sebastopol Fire Department into the Gold Ridge Fire Protection District. On March 5, the Sonoma County Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO)—the government body that oversees and regulates the boundaries of cities and special districts—gave its nod to the consolidation.

LAFCO’s decision was followed by a mandatory two-month protest period—we’re now in the middle of that. All Sebastopol voters and property owners have been sent information about the fire reorganization and the related parcel tax. They now have the opportunity to protest the reorganization by sending in the accompanying protest form. All protests must be received before the protest hearing on May 7, 2025, at 2 pm.

If fewer than 25% of voters or property owners file protests by that time, the reorganization will be approved and will take effect no later than July 1, 2025. If more than 25% file protests, a special election will be held in November 2025 to determine the reorganization’s fate.

The case for consolidation

Wednesday’s town hall meeting at the Sebastopol Community Cultural Center was facilitated by Robb Korinke, a public relations consultant. At the beginning of the meeting, Korinke introduced the Sebastopol City Council’s Fire Ad Hoc committee—Councilmembers Neysa Hinton and Jill McLewis. Hinton has been on the council since 2016 and has been working on the question of fire consolidation almost as long. McLewis campaigned against fire consolidation in 2022, but her time on the Fire Ad Hoc changed her mind.

“Many hours have been spent on this, and I’m really excited that we’re actually here at this point,” McLewis said. “I spent a lot of time being educated. When I originally started with this, I thought that perhaps we could maintain our own fire department and just through the massive amounts of education from all the different consultants—from finance to response times to sustainability and what we face here now in Northern California with wildfires and such—I just came to the realization that the best thing for all of our residents was for us to do this reorganization.”

Gold Ridge Fire Chief Shepley Schroth-Cary then gave a little history on the Gold Ridge Fire District.

“Gold Ridge is a combination of the Freestone Fire Department, Twin Hills Fire Department, and Hessel Fire Department. That occurred in 1993,” he said. “So for many years, we were about 75 square miles…More recently, we annexed the communities of Lakeville, Wilmar, Bloomfield, Two Rock, Bodega, Camp Meeker and Fort Ross. So we expanded from 75 square miles to nearly 226 square miles—primarily rural, primarily very low-call volume, but a large land mass.”

There are several fire stations in Gold Ridge’s district. Schroth-Cary counted them off: “Our Twin Hills station, just across from Twin Hills School on Watertrough Road. And then Hessel, our headquarters station. And then Wilmar [in Petaluma]. With Sebastopol and the proposed consolidation with Monte Rio, there’ll be two additional staffed stations.”

Korinke then laid out the case for the consolidation: namely that rising call volume has outstripped the ability of Sebastopol’s mostly-volunteer fire department to respond to emergencies in a timely manner. The number of calls has risen 16% since 2019, and there has been a corresponding decline in response times.

“Really, I think, at the center of what we’re talking about tonight is not just a merger of these agencies, but a transition from a predominantly volunteer-driven force to one that is a more robust career force and model,” Korinke said.

Schroth-Cary elaborated: “What we’re trying to reduce by staffing the firehouse is that time from receiving the call to initiating the response. That’s the thing we can control. You can't always control the distance from the firehouse to the emergency, but you can control the speed at which you get in the fire engine and initiate response. And under a volunteer model, we lose precious time. It’s precious time when you’re experiencing a heart attack or a stroke. And one important thing to understand is the way fire spreads— within 30 seconds to a minute, a fire will double, and that’s exponential. So you can imagine, our goal is to keep fire small.”

Math professor Kyle Falbo challenged Schroth-Cary on his use of averages rather than the median.

‘What we’re trying to achieve is just a baseline,” Schroth-Cary responded, “and to improve that baseline so that those outliers actually diminish. The outliers are when either there isn't a volunteer available or we can’t amass the right number of people to staff the fire engine, and now we’re delayed getting out the door.”

Some in the audience were shocked to hear that such situations—like not having enough staff or enough trained staff to get a fire engine out the door—happened at all.

You get what you pay for

According to the city of Sebastopol, reorganization promises the following benefits:

• A fully staffed department with three career firefighters on duty 24/7 at the Sebastopol station

• Faster response times and improved emergency coverage

• More firefighters, trucks, and equipment to respond to emergencies

• Needed upgrades to Sebastopol’s 50-year-old fire station

• Better planning resources for wildfires and other natural disasters

But reorganization (also known as consolidation) also comes with a parcel tax for fire service that Sebastopol residents aren’t used to paying. Sebastopol property owners will pay approximately $265 per year for a typical single-family home. There’s an additional $100 if you have an ADU. Commercial properties will be charged $300, plus another 14 cents per square foot, while multi-family properties, like apartment complexes, will be charged $265 annually, plus $100 for each unit.

The funding for fire and emergency services in Sebastopol will come from three sources:

• Sebastopol’s General Fund will make an annual $1.1 million contribution.

• Measure H [the fire tax] will contribute $1.1 million.

• The $265+ parcel tax in Sebastopol will fund another $1.1 million.

That may seem steep, but City Manager Don Schwartz said that was actually $1.1 million less than it would cost to operate a standalone Sebastopol Fire Department offering the same level of service.

Asked whether Sebastopol volunteers would get first crack at paid positions at the Sebastopol Firehouse, Schroth-Cary said that promoting volunteers, once they’re qualified, was his preference.

“It’s been my philosophy. I started as an Explorer with the Gold Ridge Fire District. I value the local knowledge of our volunteers. I benefited from that local knowledge. I benefited from being a volunteer. So it’s my philosophy, when somebody meets the minimum requirements and they’re a good candidate, then absolutely. Now I’m not going to sit here and promise anybody a job today. I’m not in a position to do that, but as a philosophy and as a practice, I just hired nine new firefighters for the Gold Ridge Fire District, and all nine of them had been volunteers in the organization.”

There will be another Town Hall meeting on Fire Reorganization on Zoom on April 23, 5:30 pm. Register for this meeting here.

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