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Trustees press staff on rising wildfire and cost‑allocation charges in updated budget memo
Summary
Board members questioned increases in open‑space costs tied to wildfire staffing and a new cost‑allocation model; staff said higher charges are driven by internal service cost allocations and that the program is forecasting a multiyear step‑up to meet a new target by 2027.
During the Sept. 10 Open Space Board of Trustees meeting, trustees raised questions about recent budget changes, especially increases tied to wildfire positions and a new city cost‑allocation model.
Trustee Brady asked staff how much open‑space spending for wildland fire had increased and requested more transparent, comparable spreadsheets showing the changes. "How much did our our spend for wildfire go up? What was the delta on that?" Brady asked.
A staff member responding to the board said a share of wildland fire positions is charged to the open‑space fund. “We pay 47% in 2026, which is somewhere around 450,000, which increases to around 927,” the staff member said. Later in the discussion staff explained the city implemented a new cost‑allocation model in 2024; the model’s step‑up approach is intended to reach the full allocated share by 2027 after a multiyear increase. Staff described an approximate impact of $250,000 in the current year and $375,000 in 2026 tied to the cost‑allocation changes.
Trustees asked for clearer, bite‑sized metrics the board and public could use to track changes, such as percentage changes year‑over‑year, department‑level breakdowns, and the number of attorney hours or other specific services driving central‑services charges. Trustee Brady said the problem is not transparency alone but simplicity: he described the official cost‑allocation document as voluminous and difficult for nonexperts to parse. Several trustees urged staff to produce plain‑language summaries and comparative spreadsheets to show what changed between the approved budget and the modified figures now under council consideration.
Staff told trustees there will be a council study session on the 2026 budget and that first reading of the city’s budget is scheduled for Oct. 9, with second reading Oct. 23. Trustees discussed tracking the projected longer‑term increases and suggested the board continue to scrutinize central‑services charges and report concerns to council as appropriate.
Ending: Trustees did not adopt a formal motion at the Sept. 10 meeting. They asked staff for clearer comparative materials and additional detail on the cost‑allocation model, wildfire position charges and the percentage‑change projections for the multiyear period.
