Plans to prevent forest fires by reorganizing the way San Diego removes flammable brushes on city lands is still dead two years after an audit called for major changes.
City officials blame the bureaucracy and a budgetary crisis for their inability to follow five of the seven recommendations of the audit, which qualified the management of the city’s brushes, poorly coordinated and not complete enough.
Critics had speculated this winter that the devastating forest fires in Los Angeles would encourage those responsible for San Diego in action on the management of brushes. But officials said on Wednesday that their efforts were stopped.
A key recommendation of the audit that has not yet been implemented is to start monitoring and inspecting the city’s fire rescue on land belonging to the city in high risk areas.
Firefighter chief Tony Tosca said that the effort had been blocked by the former city’s operating chief to fail an administrative rule to guide how fire managers work with other departments, as the audit asked to do so.
“The administrative regulations would give the department of firecolors the power to enforce the regulations if necessary,” Tosca told the audit committee of the municipal council on Wednesday. “Without an administrative settlement dictating this, we cannot move forward with the way of carrying out policies. So we stop until we have these advice. ”
The chief of the city’s exploitation, Eric Dargan, was released this winter. But he was at work for more than 18 months after the release of the audit in July 2023. Mayor Todd Gloria recently assumed the functions of Dargan.
Fire managers have also not followed a recommendation that they add more workers to manage the new responsibility for supervising the management of brushes across the city.
Tosca said the ministry decided that it would have five new workers, especially in a newly created position called “specialist in forest fire prevention” and asked for money to hire them.
Person who now works in the department has special expertise in the management of brushes, a separate type of work that what firefighters generally attack.
The ministry asked for money to occupy these jobs, but Tosca said Gloria refused to include them in the budget project he published last week for the financial year that begins on July 1.
“We have the software, we have the entire area – everything we need – prepared, we just need to have the financing of these positions,” said Tosca. “We are trying to make improvements with existing staff. But unfortunately, without the additional positions, we are in a way at a stop point for our progress. ”
The city’s auditor, Andy Hanau, said that it was a high priority for firefighters officials to take the lead on the management of brushes, which he called common practice in other cities.
“It may be something to consider in the budgetary process,” he said, referring to the upcoming negotiations between the mayor and the council.
The Department of Parks and Leisure has undoubtedly experienced success following the recommendations of the audit by performing two tasks: meeting other departments on the consolidation of brushes management efforts and the evaluation of the entrepreneurs that the city has used for certain brushes management works.
But the ministry has not completed three additional tasks that seem to be more important.
These include the management of the management of the brushes of other departments of other departments and to take responsibility for the management of brushes in the so-called paper streets-planned streets which now exist only on paper.
The third unfinished task is to determine the number of additional employees that the ministry needs to perform these tasks.
Erika Ferreira, assistant director supervising the open space, said that the department has entered into a special agreement with the transport service to manage paper streets.
But she said that a funding for the necessary staff had been rejected a year ago during negotiations on the current financial year budget. And she said that the major projected deficits prompted officials who did not even ask for money during this new budgetary cycle.
“We are certainly going to make this request during the year 27 if necessary,” said Ferreira, referring to budgetary negotiations in a year in the spring of 2026.
Ferreira said that parks managed to have completed the consolidation talks with other city services who control the land with Brush.
She said that the transport departments, economic development, police, rescuers and libraries have all accepted that the parks service manages their brushes management work. She did not mention the public services, another department which controls many land.
But Ferreira said that the endowment and money are necessary to continue the parks department by taking over. “At this point, we are in a way to stop with this recommendation,” she said.
Ferreira gave the audit committee good news on Wednesday on the new cards in the area of gravity of fires published recently by Calfire.
“The changes in the cards in the gravity area of fire have no impact or do not increase the area of management of the city brushes,” she said. “All the areas on the property of the city and less than 100 feet of the habitable structures are currently known and incorporated in our current calculation of brushes management.”
The member of the Vivian MORENO council, president of the audit committee, said that she was disappointed by the managers of the parks had not even asked the mayor to finance the additional staff he needed for the management of the brushes.
“I believe that there is a responsibility that we must inform the mayor on paper:” Hey, that’s what we really need “,” said Moreno.
Originally published:
California Daily Newspapers
