Los Altos Hills council adopts local amendments to CAL FIRE hazard map after heated public hearing

The Los Altos Hills City Council voted 4-1 on May 15 to adopt local amendments to CAL FIRE's 2025 Fire Hazard Severity Zone base map for the town, raising the designation on 50 parcels and scheduling a second reading of the ordinance on June 18 to meet the town's June 24 statutory deadline.

The vote followed a nearly three-hour public hearing in which town staff, the Santa Clara County Fire Department, council members and dozens of residents debated the tradeoffs between stricter local hazard designations, property values and insurance availability. Jay Bradford, the town's Community Development Director, told the council the state provided the maps on Feb. 4 and that the town must adopt maps or local amendments within 120 days under state guidance. "We received the maps on February 4 of this year, and we were mandated to publish those," Bradford said during his presentation.

Why it matters: hazard-zone designations trigger different regulatory steps for building, disclosures and defensible-space measures. The CAL FIRE update increased designations across the town; Bradford said CAL FIRE's rollout changed roughly 1,000 parcels to moderate, about 178 to high and about 507 to very-high designations. The town's proposed local amendments would add higher classifications to 50 parcels that staff and the fire district judged to be under-assessed by the state-level methodology.

Most important facts first: staff recommended two approaches: (1) adopt the CAL FIRE base map exactly as provided, or…