This community opinion was contributed by George Fendler. The opinions expressed do not necessarily represent BenitoLink or other affiliated contributors. Lea este artículo en español aquí.
Fire protection and prevention are key elements of our community. We shouldn’t be playing political games with something so important.
Sporting events are thrilling to watch. It is a way for people to demonstrate how good they are at specific specialized activities. Everyone enjoys watching a good contest play out. In sports, we have “sides” – their side and our side. Government is different. In a sporting contest there, by definition, must be a winner and a looser. In government, the goal should be to avoid having any losers.
Our elected officials should, with input from the community members, work on a plan to manage these systems. I believe that what is happening in Hollister and San Benito County right now is something else. Our representatives have gotten caught in the trap of thinking of this as some sort of contest. They have taken sides. The members of the community are aligning themselves with the “side” that they believe is the best solution. This mindset is fatally flawed because everyone involved has lost sight of the main task of designing solutions to the problem.
The BOS and the Hollister City Council members are looking for ways to fund an existing system. They have seemingly completely lost sight of the main objective. Everyone involved in this issue wants to have high-quality fire protection. Perhaps it would be a good idea to consider other solutions. The problem doesn’t seem to be the actual management of fighting and preventing fires. The professional firefighters that we are blessed with seem to have that pretty well under control. Any endeavor has room for improvement and that should be left to the trained and experienced firefighters. We need to consider other solutions to properly distribute the costs of providing this valuable service among the parties that benefit from it.
One possible solution might be to look at historic data. We have the advantage of having an operating fire protection system. We need to look at the actual costs of taking care of rural and city services. Things like frequency of occurrence, duration of events and costs of providing that service. These costs could be calculated by locality and allocated to the specific users of the system that are incurring the costs.
An easier way might be to consider that the county and the city have a symbiotic relationship. It would be difficult for either to exist without the other. In that way, it’s much like insurance where the total costs of providing the services can be distributed to those who benefit from them. That would be everyone in the county and the city. One way to accomplish that might be to form a special district. A San Benito Fire District might be a solution to this issue that would remove the divisiveness from the issue. Remember, a house divided cannot stand.
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