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Tuolumne supervisors direct staff to rewrite MOU with Under Canvas amid dispute over emergency-services fee
Summary
The board voted 4–1 to have staff return with revised language removing an annual fee from a project condition after extended debate over whether the charge was voluntary or effectively required; Under Canvas was prepared to contribute about $25,000 in year one under the prior terms.
The Tuolumne County Board of Supervisors voted 4–1 to ask county staff to return with revised language and to remove an annual "fair-share" emergency-services fee from the permit condition for two resort projects after supervisors debated whether the charge had been presented as voluntary or as a de facto condition of approval.
The disputed memorandum of understanding would have required Under Canvas, which is opening a 75-unit resort, to pay a prorated fee equal to $338 per unit in its first year — roughly $25,000 — to be split among ambulance (26%), county fire (46%) and the sheriff's office (28%). Liz Peterson, the county's deputy administrator, summarized the fee methodology and said the money would go directly to those department budgets and could not be used for other purposes.
"That payment represents the project's fair share of costs associated with the provision of emergency services," Peterson said, describing the six-year effort to calculate a fee that reflected lodging-related demands on local services. She told the Board the MOU also included a 2% annual inflator.
Board members raised legal and fairness questions. Multiple supervisors said that while they supported finding revenue for fire, law enforcement and ambulance coverage in the Groveland corridor, they were uneasy about asking one or two developers to pay an amount that similar projects had not been required to provide. One supervisor said the projects had been under the impression the payment was a condition tied to a use permit; others called the arrangement effectively voluntary and therefore unenforceable.
Representatives of local emergency providers told the board the funding had been envisioned in 2020 as a way to help create a reliable emergency footprint in the area. "This was about conditions, not donations," said Bill Caldera of Mantiq Ambulance, recalling early discussions to secure additional ambulance capacity in Groveland.
After public comment and more than an hour of discussion about alternatives — including community facilities districts or broader tax programs that would spread costs across users — the board directed staff to return with cleaned-up condition language. The motion instructs staff to remove the annual fee from the project's conditions and to present options that would make any obligation consistent and equitable across future developments.
The vote to send the item back was 4 in favor, 1 opposed.
