This website was originally formed by The Orinda Citizens Emergency Services Task Force in 2012. The Task Force was formed by nine residents of Orinda to determine how Orinda was being serviced by MOFD, 15 years after MOFD was formed to better serve us.  It continues its observations on MOFD’s service to Orinda.

 

MOFD was formed in 1997 when the City Council and concerned residents determined that the 23% of our property tax dollars allocated to fire protection by Prop 13 were not being fully used in Orinda.  This caused an inferior level of service; not what the residents of Orinda were paying for. 

 

The City Council told the residents that if they formed MOFD it would:

1) Use property tax dollars from Orinda to MOFD solely for service in Orinda.

2) Improve service by putting a paramedic on every engine (90% of all emergencies are medical).

 

After the voters agreed to form MOFD and elected an independent board to run it, the City Council walked away from keeping track of how our tax dollars were being used, trusting the newly elected MOFD Board to do the right thing.

 

Nine years later, in 2006 when the City asked the residents to pass a bond to repair roads, storm drains and fire hydrants, the claim was made that one million Orinda property tax dollars a year going to MOFD were NOT being spent in Orinda as promised.  This claim helped defeat the tax.

 

Three years later the City finally called a tri-agency (Orinda, Moraga and MOFD) in early 2009 to discuss the situation.  At that meeting, MOFD claimed that the reason Orinda, with 53% of the population and 58% of the district’s firefighters stationed in Orinda was paying 64% of MOFD’s expenses, was that significant service was provided from Moraga stations into Orinda; service Orinda should pay for.  The Orinda Council accepted the argument.

 

As the year’s passed, Orinda’s property tax growth exceeded Moraga’s and Orinda was paying an increasing portion of MOFD’s expenses.  It was doubtful that Orinda’s taxes were, in fact, being used for service in Orinda.

 

In 2011, a petition signed by 220 residents was presented to the City Council asking that a task force be formed to review, after 14 years of service, how Orinda was being served by MOFD.  The City refused to create one.  So The Orinda Citizens Emergency Services Task Force was formed.

 

On September 18, 2012, the Task Force presented its 86-page report to the City Council.  The key findings included the fact that MOFD’s claim of Orinda receiving significant service from Moraga stations was only partially true due the fact that while Moraga provided service to Orinda, it also received significant service back from Orinda stations. So, net of this reciprocal service, Moraga stations respond to 100 extra incidents, out of 2,400 total operations per year.  This 4% increase in workload could not account for Orinda paying 14% ($1 million) of Moraga’s expenses.  But neither Orinda nor MOFD took any action.

 

In 2014 MOFD experienced significant financial stress so it reduced the number of firefighters in Orinda by two.  This reduced the cost to service Orinda but Orinda’s taxes did not go down. Everyone’s cost-per-firefighter went up and Orinda’s subsidy to Moraga increased from $750,000 to $1.7 million. 

 

By 2017 Orinda's subsidy to Moraga had increased to $2.7 million per year.  While the service MOFD was providing Orinda seemed sufficient (mostly emergency medical response), it would soon become apparent that it was not.  On October 8th the Tubbs Fire in Sonoma County started.  By the 12th, 22 people had been killed and 2,800 homes destroyed.  A year later, on November 8, 2018, the Camp Fire killed 85 people and destroyed 11,000 homes in and around Paradise.  The fire risk in Northern California, which was well known, became critically important.  To spend Orinda tax dollars subsidizing operations in Moraga when there was extreme fire risk in Orinda made no sense.  Yet nothing was done.

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​In February 2020, Orindans surveyed for a new sales tax told the City that their greatest concern  was wildfire prevention.  The City responded by including wildfire prevention as a priority use for the new sales tax and the voters approved the tax.

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Four and a half years later the tax has generated $13 million but only $1.7 million (13%) has gone toward actual fuel mitigation and another $350,000 in an attempt to educate the residents to do the work themselves.  And by 2024, with Orinda property taxes continuing to grow faster than Moraga’s, the overcharge to Orinda exceeds $4.4 million.  Money Orinda needs to provide wildfire prevention.

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But are the education efforts working?  Is Orinda safer than it was four years ago?  We don't know.  What we do know is that it continues to have an extreme wildfire risk.  In March, State Farm, which insures 40% of Orinda homes, announced it was withdrawing insurance from 1,700 policy holders.  In July, the SF Chronicle reported that other insurers had followed State Farm's lead and the number of homes losing their insurance had grown to 2,220.  The insurance industry still considers Orinda extremely dangerous; more dangerous than it is willing to provide fire insurance for. 

 

There are other indicators.  Two wildfire prevention experts recently surveyed three "firesheds" (out of about 100 throughout Orinda) and determined that they still needed over $300,000 in fuel mitigation to make them fire-safe.  Extrapolated over all of Orinda indicates a need for over $10 million in work.  Money the City and MOFD have, but are not spending on fuel mitigation.

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(updated October 13, 2024)

 

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