Cache County Council Workshop Meeting – 12/02/2025

Thank you for joining us online. We have Joseph Anderson. Is anybody else online? That's it. Okay. Before we start let's go ahead and do some introductions. You can all see who who we are, our names. But Dalen, if you want to start, let's just make sure everybody knows who's here.

Okay.

Okay. I'll do that.

I'm Brady George. I'm the fire chief here in the county district.

I'm Kurt Webb. I'm the county

There you go.

My name is Jim Wilson. Just an interest in the term. K. Thanks. And, Joseph, do you wanna tell us

who you're representing?

Yes. So I'm Joseph Anderson with Division of Forestry Fire and State Land, and I've been tasked with implementing a house bill of 48 throughout the state.

You're a very popular man right now. Sorry. I bet. Okay. We'll introduce ourselves too so that you know who we are.

I'm, Councilman Mark Herb.

And the Councilman Dave Erickson. And I'm council member Sandy Goodlander.

And I'm Nolan Gunnell, councilman.

And we have our, policy analyst Andrew Erickson with us too. So feel free to interrupt at any time. Joseph, if you have something you want to add, we'd be happy to hear from you and I'm sure we'll have questions for you. I'm gonna start by turning time over to Dalen to kind of give us an overview.

Okay. Okay. Yeah. Please. So actually, I think I'm wondering if Joseph might provide an overview. I mean basically, hospital forty eight, and correct me if I'm wrong, Joseph is an attempt to get to improve our WUI or our wildland urban interface, fire response and outcomes for property owners as well as, I mean there's some minor insurance implications, but really, I think Joseph's probably the best one to really introduce it. And, I can fill on in on local,

how it applies locally a little bit for sure. So Okay. That'd be great. If is that okay with you, Joseph?

Yeah. Absolutely. And if, some of you have been to some of the public meeting presentations or, see those virtually, this will be a little bit of a repeat. But let me break it down. The state spends tens of millions of dollars every year fighting wildfire across Utah. Most that is spent protecting homes and structures, within the high risk wildland arena base. What the intent of this bill is to educate the public that live within those areas on how they can better protect their homes so that when that wildfire comes through, instruct the homeowner on what they can do individually to better, protect their property from the threat of wildfire. There's a couple of other elements to the bill that are a little more minor. One of it impacts insurance. As we know, homeowners insurance has been a serious issue in the high risk wildfire areas. And insurers use a million different ways, to assess that wildfire risk and label something as high risk buoy. And one of the results of that is you have properties in Downtown Saint George that are being called high risk buoy and their insurance dropping. In order to better protect consumers, the intent of this bill was to have every every insurer, when they're labeling something high risk buoy, use the same mix. And only things within that line, and they call high risk buoy. That's so that's the only criteria it is worth with on insurance companies. They can still use all the other data to assess risk, of course. If they label something as high risk while in from an air base, that would keep it within the boundary line, a much tighter boundary line that the state's creating. Initially, this bill requires, municipalities to adopt and enforce the WUI code. County were already required to as participants in the cooperative wildfire system. This just adds values to that requirement if they're participating in the program. And that that basically kind of sums up the program. And I'm sure you're gonna have a million questions. These are the most common questions. These are the most common questions. So with the fees that are assessed in homeowners, the state is the one who does that fee rate, and the bill requires us to do it per square footage. Now we know that's not ideal for most counties in the state, and that would be about to change if you get new legislation that would fix that. But the way it's written right now that says that these fees have to be assessed by square footage. Costs are that go into that, both the cost of the county and the cost of the state in implementing the program. In the beginning, we're not gonna know those. Right? It's just guesswork. So until we have a couple years under our belt, we're doing a very low flat rate fee for properties in that area. And then starting 2028, once we had an idea of what the costs are both to the county and the fund cost. So for the first two years, the flatbed fees are gonna be between $20 and a $100 per structure, based on square footage. So a smaller home would be the $20. The largest home would be a $100. So it's a very minimal fee, and it's really meant to cover just kind of whatever the start up costs are of this. And then we can move forward with determining what those final costs are. So what questions do you have that I didn't cover?

One question that I had, you said that the fee will be set per square foot. Is that per square foot of the property or the home? Of the structure itself. Of the structure. Yeah. Okay.

And the bill is written specifically to say that this is a fee and not a tax, and so it's collected by the account fee. So we give you the information of what those fees are, and then you have the property information county and the state will have an agreement if you would like to keep a portion of those fees to cover your costs. You can. So we'll have an agreement that outlines, what portion of the fees that you desire to keep, and so then we'll return whatever that is to you to cover make sure your costs are covered in this.

So you are gonna the state is gonna send us a list of the homes that need to be assessed a fee. Like, we don't have to go out and make those assessments as a county. Is that correct? Is that what I'm hearing?

We will provide the boundary map showing what the light on the ground is. And then working with your, you know, property assessment folks or GIS folks, whoever you determine is the best fit for that, then

k. So the the county does the collection of the fees. So we Yes. The county does the collection. Yeah. So so we'll be so we'll be blamed for the whole thing. Right? Because we collect the fees, and then we send the we we send the fees to the state. Right?

Yeah. The hope is that we can educate the public originating with the state legislature implemented through the division, and the county is just the middleman essentially, collecting the fee. So what we'd like to do is partner fee, they understand where it's coming from.

K. I have two questions. That's the blame. So I'm I'm not sure of what you described of insurance on the property as this gets defined in those locations of risk on the homeowner's insurance. Plus, in our county, we have some remote cabins that are up by Hardware Ranch, and they are on private property. So they have restricted us from going on and seeing their cabins, if you call it that. So we don't have an idea of square feet square footage on many of those places. So how do we answer that as far as the fee goes? You got any guidelines for that?

Oh, that's a fascinating case.

Because I would suspect we're dealing with hundreds of cabins up there.

Yeah.

We'll have to work with you on that. Are they not they're not taxed based on their they're not already currently taxed based on their

Well, they're in the FR 40. They're taxed. But I've ran into I've had so many people call me this past week because we shut down the road because of weather. So they're complaining. So we've actually had some assessors go up there, appraisers, and not get in because it's private property. So you can look on Google Earth and see what's there, and I asked our assessor to do that last week. And it's like, well, here's a cabin. It's 10 acres. But we can see it's on stilts or it's this. But we don't have a square footage on there because we're not allowed to go in there because it's private property.

So, and, Joseph, like, catch me if I say something wrong, but part of this part of the high so the fees will only apply to the high risk buoy that's based off the map the state creates. Right? Correct. Part of that is a density, how close these structures are to each other. And the f r 40 does a lot to separate those buildings from one another. Right? But trees are as burnable as a cabin is. Yeah. But this is about structures. This isn't about trees. Right? So what we're worried about is structure to structure fires. Right? So what I'm saying is there's areas in Scare Canyon, Antlott Area that won't be as impacted as you think by this because they only have one cabin per 40 acres. So as firefighters, we can deal with one structure easily. Right?

Five structures is a whole another deal and that's where this the density component. But that still doesn't make sense because the fire department can get to a structure here in the valley pretty quickly. But up there

But what I'm saying is that the the fees and the so the answer to your

No. You can't get the fire department there. So it's gonna burn and go quicker than the others here in the valley that the fire department can get to. Does that make sense? Yeah. And and you're right. Like, that response

go ahead, Joseph. Alright.

So the hospital forty eight is dealing with the high risk wildlife urban interface and where our fees will be assessed. It doesn't address, you know, the depression response. This is really public education. And Natalie's right is we because we the map is a bit, I can't tell you if those specific structures are within it, but there is a density factor. So it's not just where there's risk. We can look at where there's risk right now, but how close are the structures together? So the way the map currently is, if you have to have at least two structures within 250 meters, you can roughly translate that to the yard, in order to qualify to be in that high risk wildlife urban interface. Interface has a density portion, which is different than just, you know, direct there's wildfire risk with the vegetation. So that map, if those structures are far away from each other, more than 200 meters, they're feeded. And so it doesn't have anything to do with what we're talking about during this discussion. That doesn't mean they're not at risk. They can still very much be at risk. They're just not gonna be within the boundary of the map due to density.

Back to your point as far as 40 acres, it is f r 40, but there's been subdivisions that have been platted and approved there, so they're less than 40 acres on the cabins. Yeah. So there will be some areas that are impacted, but

Unless they didn't. Unless they didn't. Unless they didn't fill a permit. That's what we're worried about. I wanna welcome Casey Snyder. Representative Snyder is joining us online and I think he's actually coming. Oh, no. He's on. He's just on. Okay. Welcome, Casey, and we'll invite you to join in anything that you wanna add. If you feel like you wanna add or if somebody has any questions for you, we've got Joseph Anderson from the state here and Dalen. Dalen. Yes.

Okay. So Oh, and, Tom, yeah, I know. I'll jump in as you want me to and and as it becomes appropriate, I apologize for not being in there first. I got sucked back in the capital this morning for meetings. We're trying to we have a special session coming up next week that we're trying to prep for. So I

Perfect. Thank you. We know you're busy. Okay. So the state is gonna send us a map. And on on my on my little outline that I have, it says that Cache County already meets the requirement of adopting the WUI code, but do we have a do we have that map yet? We have the map. We have a we have a map that we established

when we when we adopted the code. There will most likely be misalignment between our map and state's map. So at some point, we will wanna go back and set our boundary at that, but we'll have to have those areas that are already fall outside of that area grandfathered. So we'll have to identify that on the map moving forward so that we'll know what because they will have built under our map, not the new map. And so that's where that disconnect will occur.

And when and we have to have this done by by January 1? Is that has been placed for several years. Okay. So we're okay as a county. Okay. Alright.

Local buoy map where the county will enforce the buoy code. That local map, you draw independently, so they're they're totally separate. You draw So when somebody does buy empty land, they wanna put a house on it. You wanna make sure if they're it's in a wildfire prone area. If you wanna make sure that they will modify the WUI building code. And so you're asking to encompass all of those areas. Whereas the high risk map is only looking at where structures are currently on the ground or the and we play high risk, but WUI is extreme risk. So there's your normal virus that you're addressing at the local level through adopting the wood code, and then there's extreme risk that we're looking at with this mapping that has the density factor. So they're two different maps.

And and one piece to add in there too, for purposes of the the only lots assessed the fee are in the state's high risk area, not in the county's area. So it's and the the city goes through the same process. But for the purposes of the state, on the existing map, it's generally those areas highlighted in red. That's the thing that is the areas and the properties that are gonna have the fee assessed.

I got one question on, like, some commercial places.

They they they are they follow the same fee structure that exists in the same app because it's not residential versus commercial. It's structure based, if that makes sense.

You know, I just ask them, like, for example, the Beaver Mountain, Cherry Peak, you know, things like that that are there's you can get a quite volume of people in those areas yet one or two structures. You know? Then I think I I would dare say that we don't have a a tremendous amount of wooey areas. Right? High risk. Just kind of those spots and stuff versus up the bit like Logan Canyon, you might have a few where there's some density.

Yeah. And we're still waiting on the state that extreme risk we map, but just from our So anywhere wild on fuels, so whether that be grass, brush, or timber, interact with what you made structures is the WUI. Right? Yeah. So when you think of, like, Logan Canyon or Amfly area with Scare Canyon, Hardware Estates, Beaver Mountain. Some of that. Like, that's buoy. Right? And to kind of circle around, there are risks to individual structures and, like, response times part of that. And I think a big part of this, though, is multiple structures being impacted and overwhelmed because there's too much brush, the structures are too close together. All And when we are there, when firefighting resources are there, we can deal with one or two structures at a time, right, rather than 20 or 50 or a 100. So Cash County, as far as extreme risk buoy, doesn't have a lot.

Lot. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's a few other counties. I'm as I'm sitting there kind of thinking in my head, I'm thinking an area maybe like Wasatch County k. Timber Lakes up in there, which has actually fire hydrants and, you know, a whole system, but yet they are packed in there with cabins and homes and, you know, up in that high mountain area. And so I would dare say that that might Yeah. Might be a high risk area. But, I'm thinking around here. I think we're we're not, too much.

No. Not not a lot. I think the the way to view this is kind of values at risk. How how many of, like, what values there are and how close they are together. Like Yeah. And so, like, there might be a couple that build their cabins close together on corners of the 40 acres or or 40 or those ones that got subdivided. Right? They might fall into it while their neighbors aren't because they're far further away. So

k. Now it's it's

go ahead, Casey. And and one thing maybe if I can add to that too. Can you guys hear me okay? There's a little feedback on my end. Yes. Okay?

Yep. We're you're good.

So one of the things that's also important to note on this, so the the the map, the high risk map that's established by the state is is as much for the county, but I'd say as it as it is really for the homeowner, we we have homeowners losing through this bill to use our map because we have the highest degree of confidence in that. So it's and so now the statute says that insurance market this is our WUI map. This is what WUI means. And and so it really actually, what it did is it worked about 230,000, 220,000 structures in the initial WUE maps the insurance was using. All of those passage of this bill, it moved it down to about 70,000 structures. So we pulled the majority of Utahns who were getting sort of ripped off by insurance markets out of that structure and said, okay. These are the ones that are there. But with the fee and how this is all structured, the fee and how this is all structured, if the homeowner is in the WUI under existing market rules, they have no recourse to bring their premiums down or to protect their property. Under what we're talking here now is if somebody is in the WUI and they coordinate with you all and they do all that the tasks to make their home fire safe, at the parcel level, they can go back in and have their home certified as as low risk for fire now post all of mitigation, which means that now they're

Okay. So these assessments, if I remember right, we learned a little bit about this down at USAC. And those assessments as they come in, say, well, okay. If you were to do this, this, this, and this, then you will actually mitigate and lower the risk quite a bit. And that's what you're saying, Casey, that then that can be used to go back to insurance companies and say, hey. We did these things, and our risk has been lowered. Will insurance come down?

Yep. And and my intention at that point is if you have done the action, and and savings within their insurance bill. But if all of the structures that are in the high risk risk will be to implement sort of this life save life and property savings protocols, we reduce the overall cost of catastrophic fire to the state and the risk of it moving outside of high risk into some of the moderate risk areas. So we're actually doing fire mitigation by getting ahead of it on the front edge of the most fire prone areas.

I got one more question is how does this affect for example, are we addressing this these assessments? Sometimes it's outside of your scope. It's outside of what you can do on your property that maybe the the biggest hazard comes from the forest service next to you. But they're not they're they're not making it very you know, they're not doing anything to reduce the fuel load in any way. And so no matter what you do, you still might have that huge risk just being neighbors to public land.

And that's a matter of point. We can't require the federal government to to do anything different. But when the homeowner takes these actions as recommended by assessment, if that right through the law of settlement. So it's really saving the private landlords. Now although they wish we could mandate the federal government to do, you know, what they need to do, the goal is to protect the the landlords of Utah here.

K. I have a couple questions. So the assessments of these properties to see what they to, like somebody's gonna have to go out and say, here are the four things you need to do to lower your risk, and Then someone will have to go back and say okay, you did them. Those are two visits that I see. Is the state going to help with any of that or is that completely on the county and on our fire department or our assessors department?

So, and then on the the other hand, the other hand is jumping on this one too. So the primary responsibility for all home assessments, lies at the state. Yeah. So the state of Utah is responsible per statute for all of this. However, since you guys have the cost share agreements with the states that you have to do every year a certain amount of work to be covered by the state's fire insurance if you have a wildfire. If you want to, you can go ahead and do these assessments if you want to. Again, it's totally voluntarily, and the time and resources put into those assessments can count towards your annual match contribution for your the fire mitigation requirements. So it's it's totally voluntary on your end. Ultimately, it's the responsibility of the state. But if you want to get ahead of this and you wanna use it as your match, we've made that as an option available to folks.

K. Okay. And then my second question is, what about a timeline for sending out notices to people about this fee, like getting it on an actual tax notice so that we can can collect it because we have to collect it in 2026. Correct?

Yeah. It'll it'll go on. It's just a it's required statutorily to go on the tax bill moving into next year's tax bill. So the we're there's still some room making. Joseph, you wanna jump in on this part. We're we're still working through the protocols. I think there's, what, 18, twenty four months before you guys are gonna start really having all this lined up.

Yeah. Twenty four months. So between now and when you guys as the county are going to send out tax notices, lower with you on the language so that we can clarify for homeowners who are getting this fee, why the fee is on their, on their bill, and, what to do moving forward as far as requesting a lot of assessments. So we'll work with you on that. You tell us when you send those out, and we'll make sure that we're partnering to get everything out of time for you. As to the mod assessments, I wanna go back. You mentioned time frames on mod assessments. We're currently developing the certification criteria and lot assessment criteria. And so we expect that all that will give us great. We're only thinking we would review this in the winter done the same way. Statewide. And we'll have a software program that the employee will be entered into the. And one of the features that we're looking for as we build that software platform is that homeowners can self certify when they do work. So it won't require follow-up with the individuals. They can just upload pictures and say, hey. My law assessment told me to do this. I got it. Here's the here's the pictures. And then we can review that and say, yep. You're good to go. And we can change that classification level for them. So we're trying to limp we're trying to make sure that we can do this as efficient as possible and as quickly as possible given the limited manpower. And my guardian said, it is the responsibility of the division of Forestry Fire and State Lands to do this, and we would love to partner with you on that if you have, capacity under your CWS, obligation.

So question, can you give an example of what a lot assessment would be as part of that looking at the material the incur quite a bit of expense, or how does that sit? Do you have an example of that?

I do. So the law assessments are looking at two different things. We're assigning that triage level, you know, high, medium, low according to the work they've done around their property. When it comes to vegetation, you wanna make sure there's pretty much no vegetation next to the house because we don't want inwards falling in that, catching that vegetation on fire, which we didn't catch the structure on the fire. And then out about 30 feet, we wanna make sure the vegetation is, you know, spaced out. It's not goodbye. There's no ladder fuels that allow it to go from the ground up into the treetops. And then after a 150 feet, then you can have, you know, some taller, trees and whatnot and a little less, restricted on the density. And that's all outlined in the buoy goat. And we'll explain that to these homeowner as you go and do the assessments. The when it comes to the home material where we're looking at the roof, of course, that's a huge one. The siding, any decking around the property, what the eaves are like as far as grading and protection under their gutters, things like that. This fee, again, is not punitive. It's not meant to really motivate someone to make these changes. This is a as an education campaign to tell them that, hey. If you wanna better protect your property, and if you'd like to show your insurance company,

the cost of doing all the software and, having the assessments done. So it's it's a nominal fee that can actually be eliminated if people do the work.

And and to that too, where Cache County has already been adopt or already has adopted the way code and been enforcing it, does

I got one question. Will grazing will grazing be an allowed or an approved improvement to mitigate and bring forage down?

So the laws that don't require any methodology as far as improving the property. It just has certain vegetation requirements. So if they wanna use grazing or they wanna bring in a crew, we ought to specify that.

So that might help a lot of that might help a lot of these areas that, you know, that they've been kind of unfriendly to cattle in their areas. They may say, hey. Let's open them up and get let's get this understory out of here. You know, let's get it grazed off. Limited. It would help.

Okay. What are the questions? Does anybody have? I might I might have a few questions for our local fire department on just how and I wanna make sure and I'm sorry if I'm confusing because I get confused. The state has not put out their map yet to us. Is that correct? Correct. Okay. And does this The the final map that I do think is talking to Jamie, the current there's

I don't know what the actual

So in the other mapping system that anybody can look at. And on that map, there's a layer that says structure exposure score, and that goes from a scale of one to 10. What that means is if a wildfire occurred in that location, here's the risk to a potential structure if there was a structure there. So that's a good starting point, if you're trying to understand wildfire risk, but that doesn't take into account where structures actually are with the density. So that won't actually tell you what new map is going to look like because the new map that has taken the account where structures actually are. We do have a draft of that right now that we're working through, a couple of a piece of that. So we will have that done here within the next couple of weeks to share with you.

K.

Alright. I you know what? I really appreciate you all being here because the little bit that we had heard, just a little little bit of information made it sound like it was going to be a a real overreach by the state and that the counties were gonna be costing a lot of money, and they feel a little more comfortable that this is gonna save our homeowners money on their insurance and help us to be in a better place if there is a fire. And so I think there's some counties that are way behind

in even looking at some of these things and but I I know we've been talking about wildland urban interface for for years, you know, and I know chief hammer jumped on a lot of that and pulls pull them all out of you. So I think we're I feel really good with what you guys have said and everything that we're you know, chief George, we're I think we're basically, we can just keep going rather than have to, you know, start from scratch. So

And and I'm really glad that the state's gonna help come out and do those assessments. I worried about that. Our assessors are so over they're not overworked, but they're overwhelmed sometimes with all the assessments assessments that they need to do. So so I think that help from the state will go a long way.

We when the map is available, what's the next step? Yes.

So when so go ahead, Joseph.

When we have the map, then we will share it with you and all of your local team there to make sure we can work with you to integrate it into your system and then identify which structure, which properties are within that boundary line.

And then does the council have to sign off or accept those findings? Or what is what is the role with the council going forward?

The bill doesn't specify. I'm not I'm not aware of any requirement there. Okay. Great. K.

So we don't have to approve anything, the map or anything. It just comes to us and I I think that it would be great at that point

chief George and and whatever else that we can ask but to say, hey, look. Let's look at it together. And even the fire district, maybe let's look at it and and make sure that we're all on the same page.

That's what I'm Sounds like it. Thinking.

Code. The only areas that there might be concern is structures that we built for the adoption of that code. Seeing their map and and overlaying on Mars with the GIS data would allow us

So does the map come to you and then you share it with the council or who gets the map? The state. This Yeah. These guys are good. Joseph wants to hide it and

and

would be great if we had once that's in place, once the structures have been identified and confirmed on the Cache County level, we just had a spot on our agenda for a five minute overview of, hey. You know, here's the update. Here's the plan. Here's here's how things are moving. That that's

Yeah. Once that comes out, I think that's that's sufficient to me. Identify that specifically within our our strat our structure map so we'll have that layer. One question I have, Joseph, how often is the the state gonna review that map and update it? So there's because density is gonna change over time. Yeah. And so just curious as to what that revision cycle is.

Yes. The revision cycle is annual. So each year, we will update it and add in all the new development that's occurred. Also, look at any fires that have occurred since the previous cycle and map those as well because that's gonna change the risk if there's a fire

Okay. And then the actual process to get information to our treasurer who will have to add that on to to the tax notices. Like that that could be a little bit of a have you guys got a plan for that or is that something we're just deal with as we get that information?

I I think the mechanics of that will be fairly easy because it's just a line item. Okay. It'll be it will be its own line item of the Just on specific homeowners. These or the impacted

property owners. Okay. Yeah. It won't be that big of a deal. I understood from what they've done before. And the burden comes back to can I believe in figuring out that square footage? Yeah.

K. Some of them may say, believe.

Hey. I wanna go back to something if I could with what Joseph said. This stuff's so structures included. But places that would have been high risk are likely to not be at risk for this foreseeable future based on the fire behavior that occurred in that fire. So that this being a living document that's updated fairly often is is actually gonna help people as they move through this. I I I believe that most of Monroe Mountain will probably be low risk of fire based on

Okay. Does anyone else have any other questions? Do any of you have questions for us or for, Joseph or Casey? Anybody in the let's hear from the public. Is there something that you have a question about or that we could answer for you? Okay. Alright. Thank you everyone for being here. Unless yeah. I feel so much better about this. I was I I thought it was a big worry, and now I feel like we can handle it, and it's not so much to worry about. So thank you for joining us, Joseph and Casey, and we will be in touch if we have any other questions.

Thank you.

Thanks, man. Thank you. Alright. I think we're in good shape, especially the fact that we already have a map of sorts and we've adopted the WUI code. So I didn't realize even that. Like, when I was at USAC, there were there were things said that I thought, oh, my word. We have to have all this by January 1. We're in trouble. I remember that now. We our wild lands is our

our map. I think it's it's been about

six years six, seven years. Could that be? So I think the code that's in place since 2006

code. Yeah. And so But I remember I remember they they redid a bunch of things on our map. I thought about it could've been and all the I remember the fire board talking about it, going through it, and they did some rework on it at that time. And and I remember some of the concerns that they shared even with the at that time, chief hammer talked about that we don't know all the structures that are in these areas. And we're hoping to get those. Somehow, we gotta find those structures.

I do have one question. So if if we assign an area of WUI high risk, Citizens has paid their fee, but they take no lot of assessment. So the risk still may the bills say that that risk stays with that citizen for not doing that, rather than the county providing more fire control, Yes. I think with the the fees actually assessed on an annual basis that they continue to stay at that highest rate. And so they're accepting that they acknowledge their risk and they haven't changed it. So they can't come back and say, well, the county knew it, so they should have had better fire fighting capabilities.

That that's a good question right there. I think it will be in the messaging of how that announcement is sent out and kind of the education piece of that, that they're acknowledging by not taking actions

to reduce their own risk that they are incurring that. I hope it sits on the citizen rather than saying on that one. The government entity didn't step up their firefighting capabilities.

So I think the other part of it is right now, and I think a lot of people are fixated on that very low amount, which is good to start the process off to gather information. But those individuals after those first couple years at that low rate, suddenly that rate jumps because now we have enough data in the system to say, this is what the actual cost is of of managing fires with a high risk that way. That will prompt action for a few probably still won't guarantee everybody, but it'll prompt action with quite a few to start mitigating some of that risk.

Yeah. $50 a year, there'd be a lot of people that decide. What about? Yeah. A lot of pain. Especially if you gotta change your roof Yeah. Change your shapes. Or something expensive.

Yeah. It's several $100 or,

Yeah. K. Alright. Any other questions?

It just seems not a question, just a statement. We're talking structure, but representative Snyder talked about the Monroe fire. I think about the Duck Creek fire. All that fire happened because of fuel, which was different than structure. The fuel took part of the structure. So and that's why I lean towards if you look at hardware in the Ant Flat Road area, there's a lot of fuel up there. So even if I'm 250 meters away from another structure, it's probably gonna go just as fast as if there was another structure there because I have fuel there, whether that's sagebrush, trees, grass, whatever.

And so that's where are the the state's cooperative wildfire system and the participation commitment? I'm not sure. Projects going on in the county that we just cleaned up. Well, we still have to burn the piles of the stair canyon. It's had a lot of fuels removed as well as the Rock River Mountain. But you're right. Like, that there's kind of, like, the fuels and then the structures which

Well, you bring up a good point. Because isn't Scare Canyon most private property? So, yeah, the state has to go in there and take care of that private property fuel, or how does how do you make that happen? Does that make sense? Through grants, you know, we identify it as a high

level area that needs that help and then apply for grants and grants. Pay for that to help the citizens. It's more than it better be matching. They better have some skin in the game. Depends on which grant it is. For sure. Some of them are that way matching. Some some are correct. K. And then Okay. And then these gentlemen help us with that by working through the CWS program so that it identifies that the county is taking part in it to make that risk more also.

Oh, good. Got it. Yeah. I wondered. I wrote that down what was our mitigation match. So

And maybe just an obscure point of view to your point of all the fuel that's out in the forest grounds or even on private.

Interesting. So one of my biggest concerns is there in the public public lands, our forest service. If it needs to be thinned, we've gotta get rid of some fuel.

I know. A couple

I know. A couple doesn't even scratch it. Right. But you're Really? These two things.

And that's a you know, that's kind of legislative level. I know. They're looking at it pretty closely, right? More more than they have in years. Yeah. Yeah.

Hey. Nice.

Oh, you're fine. Putting a plug for the local forest service guys. Like, they filled some positions that haven't been filled for years. They're starting to pick up more local.

Dylan, you a local boy? I am. I was in welding and swallowed. K. I'm just gonna say, I keep looking at you and I go, Dylan, man. I know you.

I'm scared

that I ever followed. Hey. Stay after and tell us all his teaching methods.

I'm

gonna say I'm gonna say my earbuds in. My phone's not out in the shop. So

Okay. I'm just here going, man. I'm having some I tried to I've tried to forget some things, but you weren't one of them. It just it just left me. Okay? If you really remembered me, that would be bad.

If we were all judged by our high school days, that would be horrible. That's

the bad part about staying. Yeah.

High school either. Sister?

Sister and a brother. So Really? Cannon was my brother. Okay.

She might have done There's the other it must be the other Pedrero. There's another Pedrero. There's a a daughter or a sister there, ma'am. I guess cousin maybe or something that

So I did put it at Skye. There was,

Alright. Just stay in touch with us, and I I I feel I feel like the treasurer should have been here, the assessor. I probably should have invited them because they're gonna play a part in all of this. And so as you get maps and information, let's make just keep the communication up. When we had when we had a full understanding what you would be asking them to do, I think that's Yeah. Pretty timely. Yeah. I was I worry about

just the information that they will have versus the information of the reality of what it is. That's, you know, changes or building or building or, you know, which might help you in the long run too.

He said that that would be preventing it. But that would? If you would like it as a separate vendor item, that can be done.

Well, it's during the public hearing.

Would you like it under other business?

I don't know. What do you guys think? This this this survey that Alma did Yeah. It it's listed as seven b two, but we thought we don't have it in here. We've got the treasure correction, the budget, and then the budget opening. And so I don't know that that survey result has anything to do with

That's what I was told.

K. Okay. I I just Let me work through that. Where should we have it on the agenda? To me, it's just the information. I was gonna say, here is the results of the survey. You could do six. I think

it's d that should be available under items of special interest.

I think that would make more sense. Okay. And this because we are not gonna apply for these grants. They're gonna be like, the senior center's gonna apply for one of the the fire department will do one. The election center, they I mean, they can apply for them, but Yeah. But this is our support. This is our support. Support for it. Yeah.

It's to be talking about and also the great big withdrawal.

Mhmm.

Yeah. So let let's do that. Let's move that to to six d.

Okay. So we'll need to make a motion or a regular meeting for it. Sandy, someone still needs to adjourn, do you think?

Oh, and can I get So moved? Second. Seconded meeting adjourned.

Awesome. Don't have to encourage me to adjourn the meeting. Thanks,

Adam.