About Cambria

It probably sounds a bit worrisome to many of you, but last week’s CCSD meeting was actually quite interesting. The new members of the board are stepping up to the plate and addressing the issues they raised during their campaigns and our new fire chief is making his mark, too (no pun intended.)And although the meeting ended with a bit of a fizzle (committee assignments), Director Clift had the audience of a dozen or so “regular folks” (and some firemen) nearly standing and cheering (or at least crying “Amen!”) As soon as a get a moment to do the edits required, I will post the relevant sections of the meeting for your enjoyment. Until then, here’s a bit of a teaser for you.

Fire Chief Mark Miller gave a brief but significant report about the Defensible Space Ordinance that’s been a thorn in the side for many Cambrians. In a nutshell:  After meeting with the stakeholders – Fire Safe Focus group, Forest Committee, Cal Fire, and  local weed abatement contractors The CCSD and Fire Department have decided to take the position that we do not want to pursue adopting our own ordinance. They will continue to enforce the regulations that are outlined in Public Resource Code 4291. They are cooperating with Cal Fire to do the inspections on both vacant property and improved parcels and are hoping to open up the communication to avoid a lot of the angst we saw last year and have greater success with lot clearing. According to Chief Miller, Cal Fire has authority over improved parcels and CCSD enforces ordinance that covers the vacant parcels. In the Chief’s opinion, pursuing the ordinance led to the jusisdictional lines being muddled. Since they will no longer be pursuing the ordinance, the jurisdictional issues have been put to rest.

Director MacKinnon asked that there be discussion on the expenditures report, which led to a discussion about the way the reports are currently done, what the current software can and can’t do, what information might be helpful and useful and a consensus on the part of the board that the current reporting system needs to be revamped or tossed in favor of something else. The Finance Committee (MacKinnon and Clift) will be looking into the possible alternatives. (Note to President Sanders:  many of the ongoing expenditures for “regular” vendors – those who seem to be listed every month- can be tracked cumulatively at the Cambria workspace of EditGrid.com Fiscal years 06-07, 07-08 and 08-09 are all available, but none includes all the vendors, since I typed the information in manually.)

Regular business began with the comprehensive audit of the District’s books. For the CPA and numeraphiliacs in the crowd, it was likely a riveting hour of unbridled fun. Me, I tend to get a headache trying to understand more than one page at a time. I can easily grasp the concepts, but get glassy-eyed as all the abstract detail and jargon start a tea-party in my grey matter. Talk of depreciation, assets and wanting to have more gloom and doom in the auditor’s report to make sure Cambrians understand that the district may look flush, but that is not a full picture of what the situation is for the district.

The really good bits of the meeting were during the discussion of spending $20,000 on emergency equipment to put on the fire trucks. I really wouldn’t do it justice to just describe what happened – you should really see the video. The issue is one the district has been dealing with for over 5 years – cooperation and agreements with the Healthcare District surrounding emergency services. The upshot? Even with 4 ambulances at our beck and call and all CCSD firefighters certified as EMTs, and CCSD Fire, Cal Fire and the Ambulance go out to every call, only the EMTs and paramendics of the ambulance service can provide treatment. And according to the Fire Chief’s guesstimate, the CCSD fire crew arrives on the scene first about 75% of the time (though that was only based on his sense of it, not any actual numbers.) Much, much more to come on that topic, including the discussion about the Ambulance and emergency services for Cambria.