Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/194060
4B Daily News – Thursday, October 17, 2013 Second year fire fee billing begins As the State's Fire Prevention Fee continues to be implemented, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection is providing property owners multiple resources to answer their questions about the fee. This outreach effort is being implemented as a result of Assembly Bill X1 29, which was signed into law July 7, 2011 establishing a fee for fire prevention services in the 31 million acres of State Responsibility Area. The revenue generated from the fee pays for vital fire prevention services within the SRA. Fire prevention services funded by the fee include strategic fuel reduction activities, defensible space inspections, fire prevention engineering, emergency evacuation planning, fire prevention education, fire hazard severity mapping, implementation of the State's and local Fire Plans, and fire related law enforcement activities such as fire cause determination and arson investigation. Cal Fire has established a website, www.FirePreventionFee.org, which contains comprehensive information about the fee and helpful links to maps, the law language, and answers frequently asked questions. Additionally, a customer ser- vice call center is staffed Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. except holidays to further aid homeowners that have questions about the Fire Prevention Fee at 1-888310-6447. Under the law, the Board of Equalization is responsible for collecting the fee. The bills scheduled for mailing this summer are for Fiscal Year 2012/13, which includes July 1, 2012 through June 30, 2013. The fee applies to the homeowner of record as of July 1, 2012, for all habitable structures within the SRA. The BOE began mailing the bills alphabetically by county on July 19. Logue to hold office hours in Orland SACRAMENTO – North State Assemblyman Dan Logue has announced that his district representatives will once again be visiting a community in the 3rd Assembly District to assist constituents with state related issues. Staff will be on hand to answer questions about legislation or help in dealing with state agencies 2-4 p.m. Friday at Orland City Hall, 815 4th St. "My staff and I are dedicated to solving to the problems the people of the North State have with state agencies," stated Logue. "Fighting for the district that I am honored to represent has been the central focus of my time in the State Assembly. My mobile office hours are designed to take my office's services directly to the people in order to help address any situations with the state that people may have run into." Assemblyman Logue's mobile office hours will be taking the services provided by his office to the people of Orland. 5 California mayors advance Crash tests use Center for Pet Safety's dummy dogs pension reform plan LOS ANGELES (AP) — To ''Because of the lack of over- keep the spine fairly stable,'' SANTA ANA (AP) — Mayors of five California cities have filed papers with the state to place an initiative on next year's ballot that would amend the state's constitution to allow local governments to negotiate changes in pension benefits for current and future employees. The initiative would allow cities to scale back future pension benefits for current employees through union bargaining or by taking reforms to local voters. The proposal would not allow cities to touch benefits that current employees have already accrued, San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed said Wednesday. A number of cities struggling with skyrocketing pension costs have already sought to lessen their obligations by reducing pension benefits for future hires — but that isn't enough, he said. ''If you're making changes for future hires, the savings are way in the future. It takes years, many years, before the savings get to be significant but the problems are in the present and in the near future,'' said Reed, who added that San Jose's annual retirement obligations have increased $199 million since 2003. ''You have to go where the significant costs are and that's with current employees.'' The plan, which is also backed by the mayors of Anaheim, Santa Ana, San Bernardino and Pacific Grove, was swiftly denounced by public employee unions and drew resistance from the California Public Employees' Retirement System, which administers pension benefits for the state's public employees. The initiative needs more than 800,000 petition signatures to qualify for the ballot and opponents promised to fight hard to keep it from becoming law. In California, citizen-generated initiatives that gather enough signatures qualify for the ballot and can be voted into law. The proposal breaks a promise made to public employees, including teachers, firefighters and police officers, when they were hired and attacks the so-called ''vested rights'' that are an integral part of the pension guarantee, said Steven Maviglio, a spokesman for Californians for Retirement Security, which represents 1.6 million public employees. ''This is pretty extreme,'' he said. ''The kitchen sink and everything in the house will be thrown into this battle because not only does it undermine the retirement of a couple million Californians, but it also sets a terrible precedent for the future of collective bargain in the state.'' In a statement, CalPERS said it was bound by both state and federal law to protect pension benefits and would ''continue to support and defend our members' vested rights.'' If it makes the ballot, the initiative promises to be hotly contested and followed in other states where pension costs have also come under scrutiny. make the world safer for pets, Lindsey Wolko had to design an indestructible dog. Two years and hundreds of thousands of dollars later, her nonprofit Center for Pet Safety in Reston, Va., has a set of crash-test dog dummies that were battered, throttled and sent flying to test several car safety restraints. The rare study of travel products marketed to animal owners was released earlier this month and will be followed by tests of car crates, carriers and barriers. Lifejackets are on the short list of products to be tested as soon as funding is found. Inspiration for the center and its inaugural test came nearly a decade ago. Wolko's dog, Maggie, was seriously injured when Wolko braked to avoid a traffic collision. Despite a restraint, the English cocker spaniel smashed into the back of the driver's seat, spraining her spine and hip and getting her back legs tangled in the harness. Once Maggie recovered, Wolko decided to sell dog products on her for-profit website, caninecommuter.com. She sold only products her dogs responded to positively. Often, however, she found the safety equipment, toys and cleaning products were mostly untested and either failed to work as promised or fell apart. sight and the lack of testing in the industry — it is quite the 'Wild West' out there — you are consistently putting consumers and their dogs at risk,'' Wolko said. Just as the popularity of pet products boomed, Wolko split with sales. She got her nonprofit credentials, officially opened the safety center in July 2011, met with engineers and started building a boxer dummy. The 55-pound boxer is anatomically correct, stuffed with computer equipment and has the same center of gravity as the real animal. The model was used in the pilot project reviewing four products. MGA Resource Corp., an independent lab in Manassas, Va., conducted all the crash tests using Wolko's dog dummies. When the pilot results were released, Subaru of America Inc. signed on to fund the rest of the study. The final tests included a 75pound golden retriever, 45-pound border collie and a 25-pound terrier mix. The Sleepypod Clickit Utility Harness was the only one out of seven that protected all the dummies in 30 mph crashes. ''This was the only brand that consistently kept the dog on the seat for every test. It prevented the launch of the dogs and prevented side-to-side and fore-andaft rotation of the dog and helped Wolko said. The rest had hardware problems, construction issues, connection point failures, the stitching broke or there was catastrophic failure and the dog flew off the seat or out of the harness, she said. Representatives from all the product manufacturers were invited to attend the testing, and four showed up, she said. Consumer Reports magazine published the center's results. It's not surprising that attention is being focused on safety because a huge number of car buyers want to drive with their pets, said Michelle Krebs, a senior analyst with Edmunds.com. ''A pet that isn't harnessed in a car is really dangerous. That animal propels through a car like a missile.'' Subaru, which markets its cars to pet owners, plans to feature the winning safety harness in a newsletter that goes out to 5 million people and to offer it for sale in its gear catalog, said Michael McHale, director of communications for the car company. Wolko is an associate member of the Society of Automotive Engineers, with a bachelor's degree from George Mason University. She is CEO and heads the product research division of the center, which contracts with a few part-time consultants but otherwise is run by volunteers. Glitch known before changes delayed jobless checks SACRAMENTO (AP) — California officials knew a computer upgrade for the state's unemployment insurance program was vulnerable to problems before it was installed. The Sacramento Bee reports that officials underestimated how many unemployment claims would be affected by a glitch in the $188 million system upgrade. The data-conversion problem eventually delayed jobless benefits for nearly 150,000 Californians. Employment Development Department officials initially believed the problem would only affect a small number of people whose claims could be approved by hand. 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