On the Fire Levy

The fire commissioners seemed to use scare tactics at their recent town hall meetings, pitting the future of their properties in Key Center against the need for the maintenance and operations levy, while saying they want both. It is true the two are not connected, but the department knows damn good and well why people feel slighted and are taking it out on the levy.

It’s about accountability, and the department has zero.

Out of the five stations on the mainland (there is a sixth on Herron Island) only three are staffed due to budget constraints, according to the fire chief. We have the lowest paid firefighter/EMS staff in the area while our chief is well paid. At the meeting, I argued that instead of trying to frighten the public with scare tactics, maybe build a volunteer corps back to how it was 15 years ago instead of making excuses.

The current chief said at the town hall we have 14 volunteers, currently four of whom are motivated enough to want to become full-time professionals. However, 10 minutes earlier he told me it doesn’t pay to have volunteers because they get trained and move on to different departments.

Well, which is it? So you bring on four people who will leave once they graduate. It used to be we hired locals right out of the volunteer corps because they wanted to serve their community. Is the financial grass so much greener on the other side of the Purdy Bridge, or is there another reason? And what’s wrong with recruiting more volunteers to fill vacancies? That worked for decades.

This doesn’t seem like it’s about money but more like covering some butts from legal action. They spent millions on property they probably can’t even use and that would cost in the neighborhood of $10-17 million if they did to build a new headquarters and training center when they have unstaffed stations? Their fire trucks are about 20 years old and will need to be overhauled or replaced and that is roughly $750,000 per truck. Where do they think that money is going to come from?