Manteca voters in 86 days are being asked to approve a three-quarter of a cent sales tax hike to assure, among other things, the city has adequate fire service.

Mayor Gary Singh in good conscience says he can’t ask Manteca residents to do so if they are essentially “subsidizing” minimum fire protection for the 22,000 people living in the Ripon Consolidated Fire District through an automatic aid agreement that has deteriorated into a one-way street in the past few years due to Ripon’s underfunded fire service.

“It is just me saying this as the mayor; I’m tired of Manteca’s taxpayers providing fire protection for Ripon,” Singh said.

Singh added  for now he isn’t against ending mutual aid where a request needs to be made before an engine is dispatched to Ripon.

But he emphasized “if mutual aid ends up becoming automatic aid” he would be inclined to pull the plug on mutual aid responses as well.

The mayor said he intends to push at the next council meeting to have consideration of cancelling the automatic aid agreement placed on an agenda likely in September.

There is a clause in the agreement that runs through October 2025 that allows it to be cancelled by either party with a  30-day notice.

Singh made his comments Friday a day after RCFD property owners rejected a parcel tax hike to fund a second staffed fire engine 24/7 to protect the 56 square mile fire district.

Other Manteca council members privately have expressed sentiments similar to Singh’s when it comes to automatic aid.

The fact they are asking for a tax increase for services they have repeatedly demonstrated are needed in Manteca puts the entire council in an awkward political position of doing so when almost on a daily basis Manteca Fire is automatically running a three-man engine to Ripon due to RCFD’s inability to fund manpower for a second engine company.

That is happening as Manteca due to growth is experiencing a significant surge in demand. The result, is the city’s fire department is spreading its resources thin when they have agreed to automatically dispatch engine companies to Ripon when the one engine company the RCFD has is tied up responding to an emergency and other call comes in.

Two Manteca council members in recent months said they didn’t want to press the issue until the parcel RCFD vote to see if Ripon taxpayers would step up.

Manteca, last year, responded to at least 168 fire calls in Ripon.

 Manteca sources indicated the 168 number of calls they responded to in Ripon may actually have been  closer to 200 last year.

That’s because it appears a number of responses triggered by an automatic aid agreement were not correctly noted as such.

The responses — whether they were 168 or 200 — in some cases do not represent just one engine company from Manteca responding to Ripon.

As many as three Manteca engines have responded to Ripon house fires.

Manteca is a minimum of 10 to 15 minutes away, assuming Manteca’s only available engine is not at the city’s Lathrop Road station next to the Del Webb neighborhood.

And it has gotten to the point where Manteca firefighters have to arrive on scene before their Ripon counterparts can start effectively fighting house fires.

It has led to the total loss of at least one home in a fire that likely could have been less severe.

The same is also true of other fires where the losses were severe due to having to await for a Manteca engine arrive.

It is happening because RCFD is suffering the crippling effects of inadequate revenue.

They can only afford to place three firefighters on a shift.

Based on that, they can’t meet the minimum of two firefighters per engine company to dispatch a second fire engine.

As a result, all three firefighters are assigned to one engine.

Manteca, by contrast, has operated the last 35 years with three-man engine minimums for a more optimum emergency responsive.

Manteca shed the bare minimum staffing of two per engine that Ripon has now in the late 1980s.

A structure fire in Ripon in many cases now means it requires Manteca to show up before any firefighter can enter the building.

The hard-fast federal standard is two firefighters need to be in the outside when a minimum of two firefighters enter a burning building.

Ripon’s decimated budget that has cut into required overhead, also means Manteca often dispatches a battalion chief to taken control of the incident.

Automatic aid agreement

expires in October 2025

The Ripon Fire District and City of Manteca have what is called an automatic agreement as opposed to a mutual aid agreement.

It is the same arrangement the City of Manteca has with the Lathrop Manteca Fire District.

Automatic aid means the closest available engine to a Ripon incident — whether it is Manteca or Ripon — is automatically dispatched.

That’s opposed to the more prevalent mutual aid system.

One department needs to request the services of another.

That adds what could be minutes to the response and dispatch time after a 9-1-1 call is received as opposed to automatic aid.

And there is always the possibility the request for mutual aid is turned down if the department being asked decides it can’t afford to do so.

Automatic aid agreements are a two-way street that balance out even though it rarely is close to 50-50.

And rarely, if ever, is that happening now.

In recent years, the agreement between Manteca and Ripon Fire has become where basically 100 percent of automatic aid responses in a given year are Manteca to Ripon.

Manteca and Lathrop Manteca Fire, on the other hand, are in the 50-50 range.

It is to the point their coverage areas are basically seamless.

Automatic aid is driven by a desire to be good neighbors and to assure both entities have crucial back up when needed.

Back in the 1990s, when the Manteca and Lathrop Manteca Fire automatic aid was getting out of synch, elected leaders in charge of budgeting were concerned about one entity’s taxpayers subsiding those in another jurisdiction.

While the situation was nowhere close to what the Ripon-Manteca agreement has become, it did trigger consolidation talks and other options involving the City of Manteca, what was Manteca-Lathrop  Rural Fire District, the City of Tracy, and the Tracy Rural Fire District.
The automatic aid agreement between Manteca and Ripon Fire runs through October 2025.

It also has a 30-day cancellation clause.

In doing their due diligence, Manteca’s elected leaders would likely need to weigh issues such as the additional mileage being put on the city’s engines to essentially cover Ripon as well. New fire engines are now running $1.1 million.

And the new tiller truck that is going into service this fall that would end up responding to Ripon if it is the closest engine has a $2 million price tag.

 It should be noted  the Tracy Rural and Lathrop Manteca districts were headed down the path to the situation Ripon Fire finds itself today.

Tracy Rural resolved it by consolidating with the City of Tracy and becoming the South San Joaquin County Fire Authority.

Lathrop Manteca Fire’s financial woes were settled by a one cent sales tax increase approved by City of Lathrop voters. A large share of the annual receipts are diverted to Lathrop Manteca Fire to provide emergency services within the City of Lathrop’s boundaries.

It is against that backdrop that Ripon Fire unsuccessfully pursued a parcel tax increase.

The  current property tax rate was set in 1985.

Efforts to increase it also failed in 2007 and 2018 failed.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com