Candidate for
Board Member; San Miguel Consolidated Fire Protection District

Current and past Boards along with top management have so badly mismanaged our Fire District that on Tuesday November 25, 2012 our Fire Board; against the wishes of many in our community; voted UNANIMOUSLY 7-0 with all members voting YES to enter into a 5-1/2 year $68 MILLION DOLLAR contract with Cal-Fire. With that vote our community turned over control of our Fire District to the Sate of California. We pay for it but we now answer to Sacramento.

As a Board member I will do everything within my power to return control of the Fire District back to our community, fortunately there is a one year notice clause in the contract that would allow us to do this.

Our finances have been so badly mismanaged that the current Board felt they had no choice but to contract out with that State. One glaring example of this mismanagement is:

The Board paid our previous Fire Chief (who managed only 84 employees) a higher salary than the Governor of the State of California (who manages 256,222 employees) He was the Highest paid Fire Chief in the County of San Diego. To add injury to insult the Board crafted a contract with Chief Ghio which gave him LIFETIME medical benefits after working for the District just five years.

I have a strong financial background and will work to restore San Miguel Fire District to sound financial footing.

Incidently shortly after the vote to outsource our Department the the Board began discussing how they could spend all the money they figured they would save by contracting out. We should be planning how to build up our reserves so we don't find ourselves right back in this position.