Editor’s note: The audio version of this story aired before the Kings County Board of Supervisors voted to end fire services for the city of Avenal on March 28.
AVENAL, Calif. – The drive into the small Kings County city of Avenal resembles the classic Windows XP computer wallpaper – lush green rolling hills sitting beneath a sky filled with white puffy clouds.
But that peaceful image is far from the turmoil gripping the rural city of 14,000 that sits amid the hills of the western San Joaquin Valley.
The majority of Avenal’s city council members – including the mayor – are facing a recall by residents. The city and county are also suing each other.
At the heart of this messy dispute is a public safety measure that most people take for granted: funding for the fire department.
Specifically, many residents claim city leaders didn’t involve residents enough in their discussions about the future of the fire department.
“The recall did not come out of nowhere,” said Delilah Barajas, an Avenal resident who’s spearheading the recall effort that began late last year. “It is the result of years of ignored residents, secrecy, and financial mismanagement, intimidation, and failure to protect public safety.”
Avenal doesn’t have its own fire department, but it has made efforts to establish one. The city had been receiving fire services from Kings County. But the Kings County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously Saturday to end its fire services contract with the city.
The county said the city planned to hold an event at the Avenal Community Center, despite Kings County Fire Chief John Chamberlin deeming the building unsafe to occupy because it is under construction and not up to fire code standards.
Saturday’s escalation wasn’t the start of this city-county fight, but it has left the city of Avenal in even more uncharted ground. At one point the city was paying the county $425,000 each year for fire services.
But last year, that changed. The county informed city leaders the city’s annual fee to keep fire services would increase to nearly $1.1 million — more than double the previous amount.
Multiple community members told KVPR that before this fee increase, King County was helping subsidize the costs of Avenal’s fire services.
Avenal is a city far from major population centers and relies on the limited resources it can get to get by. Two major revenue streams sit on opposite ends. To the northeastern side of town is a landfill which has also been the source of controversy. On the other side is Avenal State Prison, whose incarcerated population accounts for about a third of the city’s population.
But with the city feeling the pinch of rising costs for fire services, Lopez said this has pushed the city to consider creating its own fire department. The county claimed in its statement on Saturday that Avenal has already identified a fire chief.
“In the long term, it's sustainability,” Lopez told KVPR, “and what I've tried doing the past five years is finding ways to bring services in-house.”
Lopez and members of the city council began indicating last year that they were working to start a volunteer fire department.
“We intended to provide stipends, and we provided and hoped, over time, as we established it more, to be able to make full-time jobs out of it,” Lopez said.
But that idea did not go over very well with residents.
Some were concerned that volunteer firefighters would not be as qualified for the job as professionals. Others just wanted the public to be part of the conversation.
“They won't listen to what the community says,” Ginger Wallis, an Avenal resident who is helping the recall effort, said.
Wallis said she and others felt ignored by the city when the volunteer fire department came up for consideration at public meetings.
“They're just too comfortable in what they're doing,” said Wallis, “thinking that this city is like their gym to play and have fun, and it's not. You got people's lives at stake here.”
Avenal is also trying to fend off a fight from the county. Kings County District Attorney Sarah Hacker sued the city over an alleged lack of transparency.
In a December lawsuit filed in Kings County Superior Court, Hacker claims that Avenal city leaders violated the Brown Act, a public meeting law. The filing also alleges that Avenal leaders did not properly involve the public in discussions about the fire department.
As for the recall effort kicked off by the fire services dispute, the Kings County Elections Department will hold the election on April 28.
Avenal sued the county over the election, claiming the county didn’t have the right to choose the date.
“The city has asserted that at no point have we ever relinquished our own authority to manage our own elections,” City Manager Lopez said.
