- Elizabeth Larson
- Posted On
Lakeport City Council sets April hearing to change deadline for seasonal weed abatement
LAKEPORT, Calif. – The Lakeport City Council on Tuesday night set an April public hearing for an update to city rules regulating the removal of hazardous vegetation.
Community Development Director Kevin Ingram introduced the proposed ordinance amending the Lakeport Municipal Code to change the date in which dry vegetation creating fire hazard conditions on private property must be abated from early July to June 1.
Ingram said the Tuesday night discussion was for the purpose of introducing the public hearing next month.
“This is a very important issue,” he said.
City rules currently address hazardous vegetation removal, including allowing the city to abate properties as a result of it. Ingram said the city also has been working with Lakeport Fire to aggressively deal with properties with vegetation issues.
However, Ingram said city code puts the deadline to abate hazardous vegetation as the first working day following the July 4 holiday. Ingram said that’s not consistent with a lot of communities, which have June 1 as the deadline.
He said the proposal is to formally amend city code to reflect that date, adding that changing the date would help make the community safer.
Lakeport Fire Chief Doug Hutchison addressed the council in support of the proposed ordinance.
“We've been working on this the last few years,” he said.
Hutchison said the No. 1 complaint his department gets – besides those complaining about people who aren’t moving down their vegetation and weeds – is why people are given so long to do it. By July, fire season is well under way
“Lakeport is not immune to what happened to Lower Lake by any means,” Hutchison said, in an apparent reference to the August 2016 Clayton fire.
Hutchison said the 1981 Cow Mountain fire moved from the Ukiah side to the Lakeport area in just one day, whereas it had been estimated it would take four.
He said when the September 2015 Valley fire moved with such speed that when it was modeled 1,500 different times, “at no time could the computer predict it would move that far, that fast.”
“We're in a new era. Unpredictable is the predictable,” Hutchison said.
He said Lakeport has been lucky. Besides the 1981 Cow Mountain fire, the other closest near miss occurred in 1994 along Highway 29 at Sixth Street. The fire didn’t move toward town thanks to the winds. A few homes were lost and it did $400,000 in damage. The fire district also lost an engine.
“We’re not immune,” Hutchison said of Lakeport, noting that once a fire gets seated in a community, as it did in Santa Rosa in October, vegetation doesn’t even matter any more. In such cases a fire will seek fuel, and Lakeport – a tightly packed older city is vulnerable.
Councilman Kenny Parlet noted that safe and sane fireworks sales – which in Lake County are only allowed in Lakeport due to a special measure passed by voters several years ago – currently begin before the July 1 weed abatement deadline.
He said of the proposed change in deadline, “I think moving it back to June is very prudent.”
Councilman George Spurr agreed, as did Councilwoman Stacey Mattina.
“It’s good to hear a little history, too,” said Mattina. “I haven’t all of these stories.”
Mayor Mireya Turner recalled that when she worked in the county’s emergency operations center during the Valley fire, the word Cal Fire kept using to describe the fire was the word “unprecedented.”
“We're in a whole new era,” Turner said, adding that any measure they can take to strengthen the fire department’s ability to protect the city is a smart idea.
Mattina moved to introduce the proposed ordinance and set it for for April 3 hearing, with the council approving the motion 5-0.
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032018 Lakeport City Council agenda packet by LakeCoNews on Scribd