Leo Zuber — a Ripon councilman and retired Ripon Unified School District superintendent — will oversee the official counting of the Ripon Fire tax ballots.
Ripon Consolidated Fire District Fire Chief Eric DeHart said Zuber was selected as the tabulator to assure an accurate count takes place when the opening and counting of the mailed ballots starts at 9 a.m. on Friday, Aug. 14.
The results will be announced at a special board meeting on Aug. 14 at 5:30 p.m.
There were some 5,500 ballots mailed to property owners that own 6,700 parcels overall.
Unlike the previous election, separate ballots were not mailed for each parcel to make it easier on the property owners.
The ballots must be received by Aug. 13. A property owner that has not received a ballot is urged to contact the fire district.
To further assure the integrity of the count, ballots are being returned to a post office box.
Three different fire chaplains are sharing the duty of retrieving the ballots from the postal box and taking them to district headquarters where they are being placed directly into a locked box.
Ripon Council members:
$249 per home a bargain
The Ripon City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved the municipal ballot that covered 100 city-owned parcels that will have a $112,049 assessment as the city’s fair share if the parcel tax passes.
Several council members referenced the $24.98 annual assessment for a single family home is a bargain compared to potential insurance premium rate increases, losses from a home fire attributed to longer response times, and less than stellar outcomes in medical emergencies caused by potential response time delayed as the result of the fire district trying to juggle concurrent calls with one staffed fire engine company.
The money generated will give the RCFD the ability to hire six firefighters for 24/7 staffing.
It will not only address the need for another engine company to respond when the district’s only staffed engine is already on a call — that happened 986 times during 2025 — but it can also reduce response times to calls in the northern part of the city and the eastern portion of the district.
That’s because having a manned engine company at the now shuttered North Ripon Road station will cut upwards of two minutes off response times in a large swath of the district.
Federal safety standards require four qualified personnel for interior firefighting operations, but current staffing often requires waiting for mutual aid to meet these requirements.
In 2025, the District experienced 986 concurrent calls where the single engine company was already responding to one emergency when another call occurred.
In such cases, a mutual aid engine from either Manteca or Escalon is dispatched adding more than 12 minutes to response times.
The lion’s share of Ripon’s call are medical emergencies where delayed response time can be detrimental to the best possible outcomes especially such as when there is a stroke or a heart attack.
The proposed assessment would generate $1,761,404 annually to fund service enhancement including $1,567,395 in staff costs.
To contact Dennis Wyatt, email swyatt@mantecabulletin.com
