Paradise >> The Butte County Fire Safe Council is in danger of insolvency because an agency is denying reimbursement for an already completed project.
“The Fire Safe Council has legal counsel reviewing the demands by a pass-through entity which could ultimately lead to the insolvency of our fire safe council,” Butte County’s 5th District Supervisor Doug Teeter said at a Jan. 9 town hall meeting.
The council, which works on fire safety projects countywide, such as clearing brush, is concerned about $125,406 in grant funding that was approved but hasn’t been reimbursed.
“We are a local, nonprofit, grass-roots organization,” Executive Director Cali-Jane DeAnda said. “Our average annual budget is about $350,000, but that depends on how many grants we have been awarded.”
In response to the 2008 fires that destroyed 80,960 acres and 206 structures, the Butte County Fire Safe Council applied for the notoriously competitive Wildland Urban Interface grant in July 2013. The $260,855 in funding was approved and came from the U.S. Forest Service. The grant passed through an independent, nonprofit entity, the California Fire Safe Council.
According to Teeter, the grant was originally designed to be a partnership with the Yankee Hill Fire Safe Council due to the proximity of the fires and a successful partnership from past projects.
The grant was approved and work on the 18-month project began. Components of the grant, according to the state’s website, were to reduce hazard fuels and provide education and monitoring through community and landowner action.
Teeter explained the original state grant was later converted by California Fire Safe Council staff into an electronic online filing system, ZoomGrants. In the conversion process, the partnership language was dropped from the administration narrative. Later correspondence confirmed the pass-through entity determined a series of expenses were disallowed because Yankee Hill was not considered a partner in the project.
At the time, grant components were being carried out with tense communications between the pass-through entity and the two councils.
“Payments were being delayed,” Teeter said. “So we spent the money to run the program out of our general fund, in faith.”
A secondary issue arose when DeAnda went on maternity leave. In her place, a representative from the Yankee Hill council, Brenda Rightmyer, was appointed as interim director. Eventually that was deemed a “perceived conflict of interest” by the pass-through entity, which contributed further penalties, totalling $125,406 in disallowed costs.
According to Rightmyer and DeAnda, the key change in the midst of the grant was informally approved in email correspondence initially, and soon after officially with proper paperwork and signatures by the California Fire Safe Council.
Meanwhile, over the life of the grant, the state council went through a series of six grant managers and three executive directors. Through the changes, communications between the organizations became extremely murky.
The California Fire Safe Council could not be reached for comment.
“Our saga has been one of changing people and changing stories,” Butte County Fire Safe Council Treasurer Jim Broshears said. “We chased the story over a year and three months because it’s been so inconsistent.”
Four weeks before the project closed, the Butte County Fire Safe Council was issued formal notice of a desk audit.
“Through the process of grant management we were always sure to ask for guidance, not forgiveness,” Rightmyer said. “To have been told this in the last four weeks of closing, it has crippled the organization.”
The disallowed costs and the perceived conflict of interest led to a tertiary snag — the denial of another grant Yankee Hill had applied for and been preliminarily approved for. According to Rightmyer, the state council told Yankee Hill it was not equipped to handle the grant.
“The project was still extremely successful,” DeAnda said. “We are celebrating our 20-year anniversary of our organization and we are about where we started (financially). We have to build back up now. We are struggling and if people can join us, we would welcome it.”
According to DeAnda, the council is looking for creative ways to raise money, keep the chipper program running and continue to protect the community from the destruction of fires.
The next Butte County Fire Safe Council meeting, open to the public, is 9 a.m. Tuesday, Feb. 8 at Town Hall, 5555 Skyway, Paradise.
