Recently, when I was in Alpine Meadows, I saw a sign on the side of Alpine Meadows Road that read: “Fire Station Closed.” Curious, I reached out to the North Tahoe Fire Protection District, which has contracted with the Alpine Springs County Water District for 30 years to operate the fire station. This includes providing a two-person engine company for a minimum of 150 days
per year.
However, NTFPD Fire Chief Steve Leighton told me, “The Alpine Springs County Water District Board voted to terminate the fire contract.”
So why did the Alpine Meadows fire station temporarily close? Here’s the timeline of the relationship between the two agencies:
1964
Alpine Springs County Water District (ASCWD) formed to enable construction of subdivisions.
1965-1994
Alpine Meadows Volunteer Fire Department staffed with one paid fire chief and varying numbers of volunteer firefighters and EMTs.
1994-1995
Alpine fire chief retires. ASCWD contracts with NTFPD for training and administration of volunteer firefighters.
2002
Alpine Meadows Fire Department reduced to three active volunteer firefighters; NTFPD appoints a resident firefighter to live at and respond from the Alpine station.
2005
Squaw Valley (now Olympic Valley) Fire Department turns down a request to provide contractual fire protection services to Alpine Meadows. NTFPD Chief Whitelaw says he would prefer annexation, but talks were unsuccessful. Whitelaw states he will not extend existing contract beyond December 2006, as Alpine is in effect being subsidized by NTFPD taxpayers because North Tahoe Fire property owners pay more for fire services than Alpine Meadows property owners.
2006
A local government consultant presents options and recommendations to ASCWD, which contracts with NTFPD for two full-time firefighters to staff a minimum of 150 days annually. This does not include ambulance service, which comes from North Tahoe’s main station in Tahoe City.
2021
Joe Mueller takes over as ASCWD general manager, signing a new 15-year contract with NTFPD Chief Michael Schwartz.
2023
ASCWD withholds payment of $25,000 chipping bill citing belief that chipping and ancillary tasks are already included in the contract amount. NTFPD does not agree.
May: NTFPD submits a revised contract to ASCWD.
June: ASCWD sends an email to the NTFPD stating, “In our opinion, they substantially deviate from the terms we had discussed, and we will need some board feedback on the next steps. We will discuss this at our July meeting and will follow up after that.”
July: NTFPD personnel attend the Alpine Springs Board meeting, but no discussion of the contract is brought up by the water district board or general manager. In a follow up phone call, the Alpine Springs attorney advised North Tahoe Fire to expect a notice to terminate the contract after the September ASCWD Board meeting.
October: NTFPD received notice to terminate the contract, which states that either or both parties may do so with a 3-year notice. The contract will now terminate in October 2026. “The next three years will be spent investigating options with NTFPD and other alternatives,” according to board minutes. Mueller forms a community advisory committee of local homeowners to review the contract and report to the board with input.
2024
April: The advisory committee submits recommendations to Mueller. The committee recommends that he “continue good faith negotiations with NTFPD.” Recommendations are forwarded to NTFPD Chief Leighton.
May: At the ASCWD Board meeting, Mueller was asked in public comment why the fire station was closed. Mueller replied that the contract does not reflect actual operations and needs to be clarified. Later in the same meeting, he went on to say that there were issues in the original contract, which he had signed in 2021, that should have been addressed when it was renewed but were not. Still later in the meeting, ASCWD issued deadlines to NTFPD and indicated that if those passed without a response from the fire district, Alpine Springs would move forward with negotiating services from other providers, such as Cal Fire or neighboring fire districts.
May: NTFPD closes Alpine Meadows Fire station 56 and places a sign along the road and another in the fire station to inform the community that the station is closed and to call 911 in cases of emergency.
July: With 30 days left in its 150-day contract, NTFPD re-opens and staffs the Alpine Meadows station. Chief Leighton and Mueller renew discussions.
August: Mueller and Leighton are scheduled to meet again before the next ASCWD Board meeting on Aug. 9, after Moonshine’s publication.
So what’s next for the community of Alpine Meadows? Mueller told Moonshine he expects to come to an agreement with NTFPD on a new, clean contract that clearly outlines the scope of service and costs well before the October 2026 deadline.
“Recent talks between Chief Leighton and I have been very positive. The old contract was rushed, with lots of side agreements that are hard to understand,” Mueller said. “We did not terminate our relationship with NTFPD, they’ve been a great partner all these years. We terminated an outdated, hard-to-understand contract. We’ve made good progress towards a new, cleaner document that provides transparency to our community.”
Janet Grant, ASCWD Board president and a former AMFD volunteer firefighter, said, “GM Mueller and Chief Leighton are having good, productive meetings now and we expect to have a new contract with NTFPD before the termination date in October.”
Meanwhile, there are fewer than 30 days left of the 150 days paid for by the contract with possibly 90 or more days left in a normal fire season. Chief Leighton has indicated that he will exceed the minimum days required to ensure that the Alpine Meadows engine is staffed for red flag days and fire weather watch, issued when the combination of dry fuels and weather conditions support extreme fire danger.
However, North Tahoe Fire would prefer that Alpine Springs reverse its decision to end the contract.
“NTFPD has proudly served the Alpine Springs community for many years with unwavering loyalty and dedication,” Leighton said. “We would like to continue that high level of emergency service to the residents and visitors into the future. Our hope is that the ASCWD Board will rescind the contract termination notice and return to the table to craft a solution.”
There are real consequences to changes to the current emergency response at Alpine Meadows. There’s the obvious threat to life safety and property, but neighbor agencies and constituents who rely on automatic and mutual aid, insurance rates, and Alpine’s hard-earned Firewise certification are all considerations as well.
So far this fire season, over 763,000 acres of California land has burned, 10 times last year’s total, and it’s only August. On Aug. 3, lightning caused a small fire above the Truckee River between Alpine Meadows and Tahoe City.
ASCWD Board meetings take place the second Friday of every month at 9 a.m.
at 270 Alpine Meadows Rd.
Pat Dillon does an excellent job of chronicling the history of fire protection in Alpine Meadows and the current negotiations to reopen the fire station in the valley. An unfortunate side effect of the passage of Prop 13 in 1978 was to freeze property tax allocations at the percentage at which they were then distributed. Since Alpine Meadows Fire Department was an all-volunteer operation at that time, no property taxes were allocated for its operation, a predicament that persists to this day. The 2005 request from ASCWD to what is now Olympic Valley Fire Department to assume fire protection responsibilities came with no funding and we concluded that we could neither fiscally or morally provide Alpine with a lower level of service than we provided our own community or commit Olympic Valley taxpayers to subsidize fire protection for their Alpine Meadows neighbors, so we declined the request.
The long history of excellence in providing professional, reliable and fiscally responsible fire services in the Tahoe-Truckee area is based on interdependence and mutual support across district boundaries and I wish Chief Leighton and Mr. Mueller the very best in their efforts to arrive at an agreement that is equitable to all parties and the community of Alpine Meadows. It is a challenging situation, but one that demands resolution.
Pete Bansen
Reno, Nevada