The Mendocino County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Tuesday to uphold a 2017 agreement to allocate public safety sales tax revenue to the county’s 22 fire agencies.
Supervisor Ted Williams brought the issue to the board, citing a “handshake” deal made in 2017 to direct a portion of Proposition 172 funds to fire services. Williams said the county has underfunded fire agencies by about $1 million over several years.
Proposition 172 is a California ballot measure passed in 1993. It created a half-cent sales tax (0.5%) dedicated to public safety services such as police, fire protection, district attorneys, and corrections. By 2017, Prop 172 was still in effect, and counties like Mendocino continued to receive funds from it. However, there was no legal requirement on how counties must divide those funds among eligible public safety agencies. Mendocino's "handshake" was a local commitment made by the board of supervisors to fire agencies to allocate 5.46% of annual Prop 172 revenues plus a fixed $87,521 to the fire agencies.
Williams observed many of the fire agencies rely on volunteer staffing and they have seen a decline in funding from the sales tax since the original agreement.
While all the supervisors voted to uphold the agreement, some did so grudgingly. "I think the timing is is horrible for this," said Supervisor Bernie Norvell, who represents Fort Bragg, Westport, and Laytonville. "We are in fact in an economic downturn. Now, I support this because, you know, I do support fire ... I get it that they need the equipment, but I also I need some sort of affirmation from my colleagues that with what we're trying to do going forward with public safety and prioritizing public safety that say sheriff, probation, which are all going to be part of the upstream work that we're trying to do, are not going to be sacrificed in doing this."
Supervisor Mo Mulheren said it was interesting to her that "only fire specifically was called out." She thanked county staff for preparing a chart with additional information.
The chart showed that the sheriff's office and the jail consistently received more than 70 percent of the funding from the tax.
