"It's always nice to have more protection," said Dean Alexander, who sits on the board of the Fig Garden Police Protection District.
Like the sheriff, Alexander said he doesn't like that the neighborhood is being billed for so much of the county's overhead.
Residents now are charged about $97 an hour for a deputy sheriff instead of the roughly $67 an hour they were charged last year.
Alexander said neighbors always are exploring alternative ways to get service less expensively, and private security, he said, remains on the table.
The special protection district was formed decades ago to provide around-the-clock policing in the neighborhood. The district, roughly bounded by Shaw, Palm, Maroa and Dakota avenues, includes a long reach of Christmas Tree Lane and represents some of the priciest homes in Fig Garden.
As an unincorporated community (within the city limits of Fresno), the Sheriff's Office also provides baseline service there.
About 750 property owners pay into the special district: $343 a year for homeowners and $450 a year for business owners, according to district officials.
Retired county Supervisor Susan Anderson, who preceded Borgeas, said keeping property owners in the Fig Garden district happy is probably in the sheriff's best interests.
"The tax base from the more valuable property in the county islands is important to the sheriff's budget," she said.
The Sheriff's Office manages a handful of other contracts for special protection in the county beyond Fig Garden, though none is quite the same.
For example, Central Unified School District contracts for a lower level of services from the Sheriff's Office at similar rates. Like Fig Garden, rates recently went up with the county's updated cost report. One of two deputy positions was eliminated.
Sheriff's officials said rates charged to the school district during the past five years were similarly below county-calculated costs. The extent of the discrepancy was not immediately available.
The reporter can be reached at (559) 441-6679, kalexander@fresnobee.com or @KurtisInValley on Twitter.
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