Big Bear News – Big Bear Lake – After a months-long stalemate, the Big Bear Fire Authority board finally approved a budget Tuesday night. What finally got the board across the finish line after several failed attempts over two meetings was a motion by Fire Board Director and Big Bear Lake City Councilmember Rick Herrick who proposed to approve the budget with the condition that staff find a way to cut one percent or roughly $200,000 from it without affecting the salaries of firefighters, who are already a month overdue for a 3 percent pay increase due to the budget woes. This resulted in unanimous approval by the board, and ultimately tasked Fire Chief Jeff Willis and his director of business services to dig deep and find the savings.
Moments before the board rejected the budget in its original form with four directors voting no. Since April, a fundamental divide has kept the governing body from reaching the supermajority needed to pass a budget with those in the dissenting camp adamant that the agency’s poor financial health needs to be reevaluated and remedied, while the remaining directors leaned in favor of passing a budget to provide the department the security to continue operating unencumbered, and advocating for finding cost savings and make adjustments along the way. Stay tuned for more details on how the one percent cuts will impact the agency and the Valley’s residents, once they have been Identified.
