Rolling Brownouts: Fire Protection in Sutter County Area-F is a 7-Year Documented Emergency

Are we being played?

The funding problems in Sutter County Service Area-F are no secret. Sutter Fire is County Service Area-F.

The 2018–19 Grand Jury found County Service Area-F “dangerously understaffed and alarmingly underfunded.” The 2020–21 Grand Jury repeated that the 1997 special fire tax had never received a cost-of-living adjustment and that the Board of Supervisors had already agreed the district was underfunded. Sutter LAFCO’s 2025 fire and EMS review said the same thing: a frozen 1997 tax, growing reliance on the county general fund, and the risk of staffing cuts.

By October 2025, Interim Fire Chief Richard Epperson warned that stations could become partly or fully unstaffed.

The Board of Supervisors is the governing body of County Service Area-F. For years it has had the authority to place a replacement special tax, with an annual adjustment, on the ballot. A special tax requires a two-thirds vote of the people, and the money is locked to fire and emergency medical service in the district. Instead, the Board placed a general sales tax on the 2022 ballot (Measure A). It failed. The Board is trying again in November with Measure G, a 1% general sales tax that needs only a majority, and deposits the money in the general fund. Fire stations appear in the ballot title but the dollars are not dedicated to County Service Area-F.

That is a structural choice, not a mystery. General-fund revenue is more flexible for a county facing sheriff, road, and state-cuts pressures. Dedicated fire money is not. Supervisors have a structural incentive to prefer the second option even when they talk about fire stations in the ballot title.

At the April 28 Board meeting, an emailed public comment from Dan Yeager urged firefighters to drop their parcel-tax effort and get behind a sales tax.

What prompted a closer look was the Aug. 11, 2026 board meeting.

During the August 11, 2026 Sutter County Board of Supervisors meeting the union put the current staffing emergency on the record when a letter from the union president, Brandon McReynolds was read as public comment to the board.

Mike Ziggenmeyer, board chairman wanted it to be noticed and appear on the agenda of the next BOS meeting “We’re going to invite them to the next meeting,” he said. “We’re going to discuss it so we can have some dialogue going back and forth and let’s come up with some solutions together.”  The County Administrative Officer, Steve Smith cut into the conversation and said he’s already spoken to the union president — meaning keep it off the dais and inside his channel. Yet the Board chairman had already directed staff to put it on the agenda. 

The tell is the County Administrative Officer’s redirect itself. The chairman asked for sunlight. The County Administrative Officer claimed the relationship and pulled it back into a closed loop. Combined with years of Board inaction on the dedicated fire tax, a general-tax measure already on the November ballot, and service cuts arriving right after the parcel tax died, that sequence looks like the discussion was steered off of the public agenda on purpose.

County Administrative Officer Steve Smith is the Board’s labor contact, budget gatekeeper, and the person who has been selling Measure G as the fix for fire, sheriff, water, and state cuts. A noticed public item on “emergency fire staffing” two weeks after Measure F failed would have forced supervisors to answer, on camera, why they never replaced the 1997 tax and why a general sales tax is the only option. Private talks with the union president do not substitute for a noticed Board item.

It was never added to the agenda for the August 25th board meeting.  That same day the county began rotating brownouts at Oswald Station 8 and Sutter Station 6, citing vacant engineer positions and firefighters on leave. Officials say they are recruiting. Residents should still ask a simpler question before November: if fire protection in County Service Area-F has been a documented emergency for seven years, why was the dedicated tax never placed on the ballot by the Board that governs the district?

Now we have rolling brownouts of two fire stations – probably just a coincidence?

Author’s note: I do not live in the CSA-F district and I’m not a union member or have any public service pension coming… or ever worked for a government.