Fire Protection Districts Spheres of Influence: Santa Cruz County, California, 2015

Description:

This polygon shapefile depicts the spheres of influence associated with the 13 Fire Protection Districts with elected Boards in the County of Santa Cruz, California. The specific services Fire Districts provide are: (from pg 75 A Guide to Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) Procedures San Diego LAFCO 1995) 1) Fire protection services; 2) Rescue services; and 3) Emergency medical services. Fire Protection Districts qualify as special districts in the state of California, usually independent of any city or county government and funded by a portion of property taxes and special tax assessment on properties within its Fire Protection District. An SOI is a physical boundary inside of which a local governmental agency is expected to provide services and is generally set by LAFCO with a 20 year time frame. SOI boundaries are designated in order to help discourage urban sprawl, limit boundary disputes between local agencies and provide indications regarding future development potential. A district or city's SOI should not to be construed as "referral" areas or as bestowing authority and control within the SOI boundaries. LAFCO can amend an SOI if there are sound reasons to do so. LAFCO was created in 1963 to encourage orderly formation of local government agencies, preserve agricultural land resources and discourage urban sprawl. LAFCos are responsible for coordinating logical and timely changes in local governmental boundaries, conducting special studies that review ways to reorganize, simplify, and streamline governmental structure and preparing a sphere of influence for each city and special district within each county. This layer is part of a collection of GIS data created for Santa Cruz County, California. The Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Unit falls under the purview of the County of Santa Cruz Information Services Department. The GIS Unit serves all County departments and external customers and provides data on land, features and people of Santa Cruz County. Santa Cruz County encompasses 4 cities and approximately 265,000 people. This coverage can be used for basic applications such as viewing, querying and map output production, or to provide a basemap to support graphical overlays and analyses of geospatial data. County of Santa Cruz Information Services Department. (2015). Fire Protection Districts Spheres of Influence: Santa Cruz County, California, 2015. Santa Cruz County, California. Available at http://purl.stanford.edu/tz626sm4032. GIS Layer Number = 7H/ Boundaries were first converted from Local Area Formation Commission (LAFCO) paper maps to AutoCAD drawings. These were plotted and reviewed by the LAFCO executive officer. These data were compiled from many different sources; therefore, the accuracy of the individual layers varies significantly, and some layers do not align exactly with others. In the urban areas, data are generally accurate within five to ten feet of their true geographic coordinates, but in the rural areas, data may be accurate to only within three hundred feet. With these limitations, the County of Santa Cruz disclaims any responsibility for the accuracy or correctness of this data. This disclaimer is exclusive and in lieu of any warranties, fitness for particular purpose, and/or any other type of warranty, whether expressed or implied. This layer is presented in the WGS84 coordinate system for web display purposes. Downloadable data are provided in native coordinate system or projection.

Resource Link:

https://purl.stanford.edu/tz626sm4032

Identifier:

https://purl.stanford.edu/tz626sm4032

Language:

English

Creator:

Garcia, Paul and Price, Matt

Publisher:

County of Santa Cruz Information Services Department

Provider:

Stanford

Resource Class:

Datasets

Subject:

Fire protection districts, Fire prevention, Spheres of influence, and Environment

Temporal Coverage:

2015

Date Issued:

2015

Spatial Coverage:

Santa Cruz County (Calif.)

Access Rights:

Public

Format:

Shapefile