Several residents, mitigation leaders and a local business owner told the House Ad Hoc Committee on Fire Preparedness that insurance nonrenewals and grant program rules are harming small rural communities and complicating home‑hardening efforts.

Elsie Stafferson, executive director of Pine‑Strawberry Fuel Reduction, said the community had high participation in state mitigation grants but that program rules had been changed in ways that penalize successful enrollment. "We build it as a 90‑10, but we were so successful on getting property owners involved in it. It became a 70‑30, which then became an impediment for some of our people to get that work done," she said. Stafferson also said some grants treat repeated maintenance as ineligible if a property received prior grant funding, which can prevent new owners from receiving support.

Business owner James Garner described difficulty obtaining commercial insurance through traditional carriers and attributed many nonrenewals to the way risk maps are applied. He said an arbitrary FEMA mapping boundary placed some Payson properties inside a high‑risk zone and that attempts to get FEMA to correct mapping problems were unsuccessful. "If you can't get fire insurance and you have a mortgage on your house...the bank decides they're going to insure you and bill that to your mortgage or call your mortgage," he told the committee.

Committee members noted prior legislative work to collect real‑time insurance data. Representative Selby and others said last session’s data‑collection bill (signed into law) aims to give Arizona-specific, near‑real‑time information on nonrenewals and premium trends and that follow‑up work with insurers and DFFM seeks ways to tie mitigation dollars to highest‑need places.

Speakers asked lawmakers to review grant rules that increase homeowner cost-shares, to consider ways to stabilize insurance markets and to pursue targeted mitigation funding to help older, second‑home communities where many owners are unable to front costs for grants and then wait for reimbursement.