Confusion of Mill Valley fire plan was costly
Mill Valley residents are well aware of what could happen if they found themselves in the path of an out-of-control wildland fire.
The deaths and destruction left in the wake of raging wildland fires in the North Bay over the past few years sent a clear warning.
It is one we ignore at our own peril.
Protective measures have been on the top of City Hall’s agendas for years. Last year, the City Council, at the urging of the city’s fire department, took another step, but it appears that step was faster and further than local residents wanted to go.
It led to a lawsuit filed by residents who mostly remain anonymous, calling themselves Mill Valley Residents for the Protection of Wildlife.
Their lawsuit led to the council’s recent legal backpedaling, at the cost to taxpayers of an estimated $300,000.
It’s hard to figure what they accomplished. Did it make
Mill Valley safer?
The council recently endorsed a settlement with the group, approving revisions to the city’s ordinance — changes that mainly install provisions for reviewing and appealing fire department orders that homeowners trim or remove outgrown landscaping or flammable trees and plants too close to structures.
The overall goal makes sense, giving firefighters a fighting chance to save lives and property.
The lawsuit charged that the city failed to prepare an environmental impact report evaluating the potential shortand long-term effects of its fire-safety regulations.
The council’s backpedaling drops mandatory landscaping setbacks and allows for historic and ornamental planting. While the city fire chief still has the authority to require removal of trees and shrubs planted close to houses, the amendments allow for appointing a hearing officer to consider appeals.
The fire department’s recommendations to homeowners and businesses are clear. Far from ordering a “clear cutting” of Mill Valley’s landscape, the rules take aim at overgrown vegetation and tree branches
The overall goal makes sense, giving firefighters a fighting chance to save lives and property.
that hang close to houses that have served as bridges for wildland fires to reach and burn homes and other buildings.
In the lawsuit, residents who formed the Mill Valley Residents for the Protection of Wildlife argued the city, in adopting stricter fire-safety rules, went too far.
They felt the city’s regulations would hurt Mill Valley’s ecology and character.
So would a raging wildland fire.
Many residents will take the fire department’s advice and keep grass-covered areas clipped and remove potential hazards to provide greater safety to not only their home, but to help prevent the spread of fire to their neighbors’ property as well.
Councilman John McCauley made a good point in abstaining in the council’s vote on the revisions to the ordinance. He estimated that the legal skirmish will have cost the city about $300,000 for the plaintiff’s legal fees and the city’s defense.
Most of the plaintiff’s sum went to cover their legal costs and for a $10,000 grant to help residents pay for vegetation management measures.
It could have accomplished more if it was the reverse, providing a more sizable sum to help local homeowners cover the cost of hiring crews to make fire-safe improvements.
While the city’s understandably ardent pace to put protective measures into practice was well-intentioned, the lawsuit is a reminder that public boards, councils and commissions need to make sure that while they are leading the way, those whom they are leading are behind them.