Read What Phil Richardson Says About Golder Ranch Fire District

Phil Richardson, our Oro Valley neighbor and friend, has studied the entire Golder Ranch Fire District ("GFRD") issue from before their merger with Rural-Metro Fire Department until the present time. Please read what Phil has to say----especially if your neighborhood has not yet been annexed.

Before any property owner signs to be annexed into the GRFD, wait. There may be an alternative on the horizon.

Art
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Fix The Fire District Fiasco

The attempt to disguise by slight-of-hand semantics an ever-encroaching Golder Ranch Fire District Property Tax during the first part of the Council election is annoying, and sure to prove very costly in a short time. Those who garnered fewer votes than Salette Latas and Bill Garner, namely Helen Dankwerth, Barry Gillaspie and Terry Parish, said they were opposed to a “Primary Property Tax,” but not to a property tax that goes to the Golder Ranch Fire District.

We are certainly inviting ridicule when we feel a need to contend with them or any other person about whether a tax on our properties is anything other than a property tax.

In any case, what the reader may not realize is that this “Secondary” tax item on your bill from the Pima County Tax Collector is based on the full assessed value and not the “discounted” valuation from the Assessor. So, it’s even worse than you might have supposed.

When you get your tax bill, you need to look at the items listed thereupon. Believe us please, when we predict that far worse is yet to come – that is, if we can’t persuade the Town Council to rescind a monopoly given to the Golder Ranch Fire District

Our serious bit of advice to those in areas not yet annexed is included in this mantra: “When Fire Districts Compete, You Win.”

Yeah, we plagiarized and paraphrased this apt slogan from a very successful Mortgage Banking advertising campaign.

Folks living in areas annexed into GRFD have already gotten a bitter taste of what is bound to come in future Pima County Tax bills: A far heavier tax rate will be imposed to if the Catalina Based Fire District is allowed to capture the rest of the OV precincts stretching from mid-town down to the newly annexed areas south of Magee Road. In a few words, Council Members beholden to Golder Ranch Fire District have protected a little known measure that precludes us from inviting other eligible and competent Fire Districts from competing with Golder Ranch Fire District.

The Chief Architect of protecting GRFD is Council Member Barry Gillaspie, who killed a report from practically every staff member working for Oro Valley which, in a long-researched but little known official report, soundly trashed the idea of giving Golder Ranch a monopoly.

With the results of the Town election in, what we are faced with now is the famous “Lesser of Two Evils” conundrum. Terry Parish, a candidate who will now contest with Gillaspie, demonstrated at a forum sponsored by the Suffolk Hills Property Owners Association that he would not even listen to a plea to let those not yet annexed by Golder Ranch FD pick another Fire District that contracts with Rural Metro Corp for Firefighters and equipment. Parish is the self-described lapdog for developers bent on despoiling the desert round about, and then making us pay the cost of infrastructure, if not the loss of some of the prettiest views, not to mention the unique ambiance of Oro Valley.

We hope that Barry Gillaspie might relent in his adamant position; and give thought to a better alternative to the prohibitively expensive Golder Ranch Stealth Annexation Plan. It is designed to put an unbreakable lock guaranteed by law well into eternity on the ability to exact an ever-increasing property tax RATE that is sure to grow in quantum leaps.

–Phil Richardson