Chief Abbott addresses fire tax

North County Fire Protection District (NCFPD) fire chief Steve Abbott was a speaker at the Fire Districts Association of California conference in Monterey last month.

Abbott presented a white paper on the State Responsibility Area Fire Prevention Benefit Fee which assesses the owner of each property with habitable structures and in a firefighting state responsibility area $150 annually. The white paper "Rekindle: A Mutual Aid Request to Extinguish the State Fire Tax, Again" notes that fire agencies themselves are receiving little benefit from the tax.

"The whole goal of the presentation was to...