Sonoma County fire agencies benefiting from a local half-cent tax have so far received a combined $45.7 million from the new resource, according to the first financial reports released since the measure was implemented at the end of 2024.
The 25 reports offer a first look at how the tax is performing and how local agencies in unincorporated and incorporated parts of the county are putting that influx of new dollars to use.
Sonoma County voters passed Measure H — the largest of several countywide voter-approved sales tax measures — in March 2024 with 61.71% votes in favor. It was a boon for the 29 local fire agencies set to receive shares of the tax revenue and firefighting advocates who have pushed for strengthened services since the 2017 wildfires.
Under the terms of the measure, the agencies can spend Measure H dollars on equipment and facilities; wildfire prevention, preparedness and response, including vegetation management; and the hiring, training and retention of firefighters. The agencies must detail their use of Measure H funds in annual financial reports submitted at the end of December.
“It’s one of those situations where the budget hasn’t really been there to do the level of work that these departments want to do,” said Jeff Okrepkie, chair of the Measure H Oversight Committee and Santa Rosa vice mayor. “Having their budget subsidized by Measure H is allowing them to go out to do more.”
Oversight of how those dollars are spent falls to an 11-member committee composed of appointees representing fire agencies that receive Measure H funds, the Mayors’ and Councilmembers’ Association of Sonoma County, and labor unions representing active-duty firefighters with local districts that receive the tax revenue.
Thursday marked the oversight committee’s first meeting of the year and third meeting overall since its creation last year. They are expected to submit a master annual financial report to the Board of Supervisors by June, ahead of the county’s budget hearings.
The committee’s work to that end over the next few months will lay the framework for how the committee works with local agencies and reviews annual reports in the years ahead.
Since its Oct. 1, 2024, implementation, the tax has collected $78.6 million, according to Erick Roeser, the county tax collector. To date, $61.9 million has been distributed and $16.7 million is due to be distributed within the next two weeks, Roeser said.
But the financial reports recently filed by fire agencies cover only FY24-25 — the first fiscal year the tax was implemented. In that period, $45.7 million was distributed to the agencies, according to Jennifer Larocque, an administrative analyst in the County Executive’s Office.
The full picture of how those funds were spent is still taking shape, Larocque said, because some districts did not receive their final payout for FY24-25 until after the fiscal year closed.
“This was the first pancake,” Steve Akre, the Sonoma County Fire Chief’s Association president and Sonoma Valley Fire District chief, told the committee Thursday. “We put in a lot of effort to try to come up with a reporting template that was consistent.”
One of the challenges, he noted, is that some participating agencies like cities, have dedicated finance teams, while smaller agencies are not as resourced.
As agencies continue to collect portions, and the landscape of local fire services changes as small agencies consolidate with larger ones like Gold Ridge Fire Protection District, the committee’s review process also likely will change.
“We’re kind of in a learning mode ourselves because we don’t know what we don’t know at this point,” Okrepkie said in an interview. “We’re probably going to need to adjust going forward.”