A fatal heart attack, Ripon Fire tax proposal & those still slamming Measure Q (original) (raw)

My father’s death per se on Aug. 3, 1965 is highly unlikely to mean much to anyone.

But the conditions connected with it does have an illustrative context for Ripon Consolidated Fire District property owners and the dedicated bashers of Manteca’s successful Measure Q three-quarter cent sales tax approved for 20 years.

And to be clear, my father’s death was ultimately driven by a collection of DNA, the diet he had for much of his life, lifestyle choices, and the simple undeniable fact we are all going to die.

Fred Beerman Wyatt died at age 53 from a heart attack while he was cutting the grass on a riding mower in Lincoln Cemetery.

He had been working as superintendent of the Lincoln Cemetery District that includes the Sheridan and Manzanita cemeteries. It is the job he took almost two years prior after selling his interest in Wyatt Hardware to his brother Pershing.

And, in an ironic twist is sorts, he suffered the heart attack when he was cutting the grass literally feet from the grave of Millie Beerman Wyatt, his mother and my grandmother.

The cemetery was less than a mile from the fire station and even closer to where Lincoln Funeral Home & Ambulance Service housed the community’s one and only ambulance in the carport at the home of mortuary owner Sam Clark.

Lincoln Fire at the time was an all-volunteer department.

The City of Lincoln, that oversaw and funded the department, thought it was redundant to provide the community with a rescue squad that carried equipment the private ambulance did, let alone transport patients, even though the next closest ambulance to the then city of 3,200 was 20 minutes away either in Roseville or Auburn.

Lincoln Police were contacted two minutes or so after my father collapsed.

The fire department was dispatched and the ambulance service was called within the minute.

But a key wasn’t put into the ignition of the ambulance for another 12 minutes. That’s because the part-time ambulance crew was working other jobs in mid-afternoon of that Thursday nearly 61 years ago.

They had to first drive to Clark’s home to get the ambulance.

It is safe to say government regulations and in-field medical care has changed drastically since 1965.

But the common denominator was Lincoln, at the time, had the level of fire and ambulance service that property owners and taxpayers as a whole were willing to pay for.

I do not have a dog, so to speak — at least not directly, in the hunt when it comes to what property owners in the Ripon Consolidated Fire District opt to decide with a pending fire service funding proposal.

I did live for 9 months in 1993 on North Ripon Road, some 2.5 miles north of where the North Ripon Road station was built in 2014 and is currently unstaffed.

Rest assured if I was still there and the 218 benefit assessment tax passes, the farmer that is the landlord would pass the $269 per house annual cost on in the form of a rent increase.

As for the indirectly part, since 2008 I have resided within three blocks of the Powers Avenue fire station in Manteca.

It is the station most likely to respond to an automatic aid call to Ripon.

If it is in Ripon — or even elsewhere in Manteca — on another call, other Manteca engine companies would respond to a call in my neighborhood.

And to be clear, Ripon Fire often responds to fire calls within the service area of the Powers Avenue station, primarily in the accident laden Highway 99 and 120 Bypass corridors.

Whether automatic aid should be rethought is a growing political question in Manteca.

That said, it would be foolhardy to not at least have mutual aid, which is a step below automatic aid where the closest engine company is dispersed to a call regardless of the emblem on the engine doors.

Automatic aid, given the growing call burden within Ripon Consolidated Fire District and the serious financial woes of the Salida Fire District that could lead to shuttering that district’s closest fire station to Ripon, is more likely to be detrimental to Ripon residents as it would be highly dependent on Escalon to respond should an emergency occur when Ripon Fire responds to an accident on Highway 99 in Manteca.

As for Measure Q detractors, the three quarter cent sales tax has enabled the City of Manteca to increase its 24 hour fire staffing 20 percent by bringing on nine firefighters for a sixth engine company.

The fact that not even a full penny of every taxable dollar spent in Manteca can improve the chance of trained professionals arriving at a medical emergency, fire, or accident in a timely manner to save lives is a big deal.

That said, there is only so much a community can afford or not afford to have.