The Fire Burns On

By: Gillian Garaci

I remember the first month I started working with Evolve California as part-time staff, I wrote a Letter to the Editor about how even an affluent neighborhood near my town couldn’t manage to properly fund their fire department. This was almost four years ago. Unfortunately, we’re still facing the same issues today with even more extreme climate disasters to deal with. We need public resources now more than ever. We are seeing larger fires, more frequent floods, and more deadly hurricanes across the state. The only way we can combat this, of course, is acting on the climate goals scientists have set for us to slow down climate change. The second best thing, since elected leaders don’t want to follow these climate goals, is to at least mitigate the destruction created by these extreme natural disasters by adequately funding our emergency responders and infrastructure.

My letter mentioned 2020’s Schools and Communities First (SCF), a state-wide ballot measure that would have exempted commercial properties from the benefits of Prop. 13. Simply put, this would have required them to pay their fair share in property taxes. It, unfortunately, lost by around two percent of the vote. I want to remind folks that if SCF passed in 2020, we would have been receiving at least $12 BILLION from reclaimed property taxes EVERY YEAR! That means fire districts across the state would be receiving another HALF A BILLION EVERY YEAR! SCF would have gone into effect in 2022. That means we lost at least $1.5 billion in funding that our fire districts could be using today. Instead, that life saving funding is currently lining the pockets of billion-dollar multinational corporations like Chevron and Disney. 

I think it’s time we change the way we view these tax breaks. During the pandemic, we were afraid corporations precariously propping up our economy would flee the state if new taxes were levied. Unfortunately, we decided—by a slim margin—that corporate tax breaks are more important than properly funding our public schools and resources. Four years later, the economy has recovered, our state is in a surplus, and corporations saw record profits during the pandemic; it’s time to reconsider what we value. Next time Prop. 13 reform is on the ballot, we should make corporations pay market rate property taxes like they do in every other state. I mean, it’s the only way if we want to survive the increasingly unstable and deadly climate disasters.