The Rancho Murieta Association board of directors will revisit its decision to charge rent for a public-safety radio antenna tower at Tuesday night's board meeting, and the fire district chief who called the fees "inappropriate and outrageous" plans to be there.

Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District Chief Don Mette made the comments in a letter to the RMA earlier this month.

Mette's letter said the RMA first led the district to believe there would be no charge to place the tower, but in a letter dated March 25 the RMA asked for rent of $12,000 a year for the first 10 years, $24,000 a year for a second decade and $36,000 a year for a third decade.

Talking about his letter, Mette said by phone Monday, "I'm very passionate about the people who work for me and I'm very passionate about the citizens that we provide service to. Radios are something that's taken for granted. If you're in trouble you want to be able to get out. If you need help, you need to get out on them and we've had those issues out there. ... I was very concerned about the Rancho Murieta area and pushed it very hard that they need to upgrade their antennas out there."

RMA Director Dick Cox defended the board's position in a comment posted on RanchoMurieta.com about Mette's letter. "RMA leases tower space to other agencies and they all pay more than $1000 per month for this privilege so why should the county be any different," Cox wrote. "Leasing tower space to the county may be the only way RM ever gets any return on our tax dollars."

The community heard about the proposal to construct a 140-foot tower on the community's antenna site on Stonehouse Road at the November 2007 RMA meeting. President Jack Cooper reported in open session that the county would build the tower and retain ownership. The tower would provide communications coverage for law enforcement, fire and other public service personnel, officials at the meeting said.

The tower would be part of a network Sacramento County developed in the 1990s "so that we could all talk to one another," Mette said. "Interoperability -- that's a big buzz word that you hear after 9/11. We were kind of ahead of that back in the ‘90s. The county put the system together and it's run by the county, and we pay the county to run the system."

The Sheriff's Department and the fire district are among the public agencies that participate in the Sacramento Regional Radio Communications System.

Sheriff John P. McGinness, in his own letter to the RMA about the fees, wrote, "Our department depends upon our voice radio system to quickly and effectively call for support. ... Our radios do not work within RMA's buildings, and work poorly on the streets."

"We're looking to invest over $1.5 million to build this radio site in Rancho Murieta, so it isn't that we're getting it for free," said Chuck Parker, chief of the radio and electronics division of the Sacramento County Office of Communications and Information Technology.

"The county of Sacramento actually owns the system, but no county funds are used to support the system. The system is supported entirely by the subscribers who use it," Parker said. "... Sac Metro Fire and the Sheriff's Department -- they're my customer if you want to look at it that way, and they are keenly interested in improving radio coverage in the Rancho Murieta area, so I'm basically trying to improve that to be able to satisfy their requirements."

Parker called the Stonehouse Road site an "excellent location" for the tower, which would have a triangular base 17 feet long on each side.

There are already two 100-foot towers on the site that were put up by cellular communications companies, with ownership and leasing rights reverting to RMA. Anticipated income from leasing space on the towers is an $81,600 item in the current RMA budget.

The county's proposed tower would be 40 feet taller than the 100-foot towers now on the site.

"I know there was some concern that the county was going to lease it out to cell people. ... We already told (the RMA) we wouldn't do that," Mette said. "The county's not into putting the tower out there for other people to attach onto or to make money off it."

As for using space on the existing towers, "It's not like hooking a cell phone antenna microwave thing up to the tower. They need to get the height," he said.

Parker said there are seven tower sites at present and with one exception they are either county-owned property or City of Sacramento property. The exception is a Walnut Grove site where space is leased on a private company's tower.

Towers are being added in Rancho Murieta, Galt and Folsom to improve the network of coverage, Mette said. "With all these together, they will give us better reception."

Mette said Sac Metro will respond to issues -- including the $100 special assessment residents pay for fire protection -- at a community forum that will be scheduled soon. "We're going to show what the $100 does. I think people would be surprised to see how much service they do get. ... Basically Rancho Murieta is getting two full-staffed stations," he said. "Our funds are totally off of property tax. ... Last year (the county) reassessed 50,000 homes and we took a hit of $1.6 million. ... We're going to take another hit on that (this year)."