Vanderlaan given another year as LAFCO chair

Andy Vanderlaan has been re-elected to another year as the chair of San Diego County’s Local Agency Formation Commission.

An 8-0 vote November 6 by the LAFCO board elected Vanderlaan as the 2007 chair and Bill Horn as the 2007 vice-chair. Horn had also been the 2006 LAFCO chair.

“I’m just honored that they want me to serve for another year, and I also give credit and thanks to Supervisor Horn for agreeing to it,” Vanderlaan said.

Normally the vice-chair becomes chair for the following year. However, LAFCO is in the process of reorganizing fire protection and emergency medical services in unincorporated San Diego County, and the retention of Vanderlaan and Horn in their 2006 positions allows for continuity.

The fire district reorganization will be a two-phased approach. The first phase would consolidate 17 of the 28 fire protection agencies and seven volunteer fire departments, providing service to the unserved and most underserved areas. The remaining agencies will be evaluated in Phase II to determine whether or not consolidation is the most beneficial option. The current schedule has the Phase I draft micro report before the LAFCO board in April 2007.

Vanderlaan is not the first LAFCO board member to serve two consecutive terms as chair. Mike Gotch and Brian Bilbray also served as LAFCO chair for two consecutive years.

“When there are jurisdictional matters that haven’t reached closure yet, the commission has extended the leadership for an additional year to see the projects through,” said LAFCO executive director Mike Ott.

LAFCO handles jurisdictional boundary changes including incorporations, annexations, consolidations, and detachments. Vanderlaan also has previous fire department consolidation experience; he was the fire chief of the Fallbrook Fire Protection District in 1986 when that agency became the North County Fire Protection District after it merged with the County Service Area which provided fire protection to Rainbow and added the previously-unserved Gavilan Mountain area. The North County Fire Protection District now covers 92 square miles, but the Fallbrook Fire Protection District covered fewer than 60 square miles when Vanderlaan became fire chief.

Vanderlaan replaced Ed Thurber, the original chief of the Fallbrook Fire Protection District, in 1976 and retired at the end of 1995. Vanderlaan began his career with the Covina Fire Department and spent 3 1/2 years with the Covina firefighters and 9 1/2 years with the Huntington Beach Fire Department before joining the Fallbrook Fire Protection District.

Vanderlaan’s tenure as fire chief included two attempts by Fallbrook citizens to incorporate as a city before those efforts failed in 1981 and 1988 elections. Because the fire district covered enough territory to make conversion into a city department unallowable, the fire district would have remained independent. Vanderlaan also formerly served as executive director of the Western Fire Chiefs Association.

The LAFCO board consists of two County Supervisors (currently Dianne Jacob and Horn), one City Council representative from San Diego (currently Donna Frye), two City Council members from the county’s other 17 incorporated cities (currently Betty Rexford of Poway and Ron Morrison of National City), two members from special districts (currently Bud Pocklington of the South Bay Irrigation District and Andy Menshek of the Padre Dam Municipal Water District), and one public member.

Vanderlaan’s work with LAFCO led him to apply for the public member position when that seat had an opening in 1996. Vanderlaan was appointed as LAFCO’s public member in 1996 and was reappointed for additional four-year terms in 2000 and 2004.

Vanderlaan took over as LAFCO chair in 2006 from Pocklington. He was also previously the LAFCO chair in 2001, when he succeeded Julianne Nygaard (as vice-chair in 2000 he chaired one meeting in Nygaard’s absence).

During Vanderlaan’s 2006 term as LAFCO chair, San Diego LAFCO hosted the state LAFCO conference and also completed the Upper San Diego River reorganization involving the merger of the Lakeside and Riverview water districts along with the detachment of the combined district from Padre Dam and direct San Diego County Water Authority membership for the consolidated Lakeside district. Vanderlaan’s 2007 LAFCO term is also expected to include the potential water district reorganization which will determine the water-related administrative future of the San Luis Rey Municipal Water District area.

LAFCO’s Fiscal Year 2006-07 budget also calls for municipal service review and sphere of influence update studies for the county’s sanitation districts and cemetery districts and for the Harmony Grove and Borrego communities. LAFCO’s current budget also anticipates the initiation of a master sphere of influence and municipal service review data base covering all agencies in San Diego County.

Although consolidations have occurred infrequently in recent years and no city has incorporated since Encinitas and Solana Beach in 1986, small annexations and detachments result in San Diego LAFCO processing numerous boundary changes each year.

In 1999 LAFCO addressed the issue of property tax transfer to fire protection districts for annexations by forming the Task Force on Fire Protection Services Funding, which also addressed other funding needs affecting the fire service. In 2000 the task force became independent of LAFCO in order to allow for the advocacy of recommendations, and the task force was renamed as the Task Force on Fire Protection and Emergency Medical Services. Vanderlaan has served as vice-chair of that task force for its entire existence.

“Nice to have that kind of a vote of confidence,” Vanderlaan said of being selected to return as LAFCO chair. “I’m just very appreciative and honored.”