Whether the Julian Cuyamaca Fire Protection District will dissolve and be taken over by the county comes down to a couple dozen signatures.
On Tuesday morning, 615 signatures of registered voters who live in the district were submitted during a rare “protest hearing” at a meeting of the Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO).
The residents are trying to overturn a decision last month by LAFCO to transfer control of the county’s last volunteer fire department to the regional Fire Authority.
LAFCO is responsible for overseeing changes to local governmental boundaries, including the formation, consolidation, merger and dissolution of special districts.
If all the signatures are valid, they represent 26 percent of the registered voters in the 52,000-acre district and as such would force an election to decide the ultimate fate of the volunteer department.