Make fire services fair to taxpayers | Guest Opinion

The Tri-Cities area has a long history of community fire rescue services backing each other up when large or multiple emergencies overwhelm a single community’s fire rescue capability. It was started years ago with a “Mutual Aid” agreement that had always worked well in the Tri-City area. And that was good for all Tri-City area taxpayers. Mutual aid was meant for backup, not first response. With all fire services that signed on to the mutual aid agreement making a good faith effort to provide for their own community’s fire rescue, to be fair to all taxpayer groups involved and avoid one taxpayer group subsidizing another.

But that mutual aid has been replaced with an “Automatic Aid” agreement in the Tri-City area. An automatic aid agreement that has joined together the emergency responses of eleven Tri-City area fire departments and fire districts. Not just back-up anymore. Unfortunately, this automatic aid agreement does nothing to combine these eleven Tri-City area fire administrations into a single regional fire administration. One regional Tri-City fire rescue response should only need one fire administration, with only one fire chief and one elected governing board.

This automatic aid agreement is an end run around state law that requires joining of area fire rescue services to be highly visible, with a detailed plan, and approval of the voters affected. Automatic aid only combines the front-line firefighters and does not combine the costly fire administrations at all. If state law were followed for combining these emergency services, a single fire administration would result at tremendous cost savings for all taxpayers. The tax money saved could hire more professional firefighters and better compensate volunteer firefighters for their time.

Simply put, this fire rescue “Automatic Aid” agreement bypasses state law for merging fire rescue services in a highly visible way, denies voters a voice in this important decision, self-perpetuates the bureaucracy, is not assured to be tax fair to all taxpayer groups involved and has communities dangerously relying on each other for their emergency first response.

Tri-City area taxpayers should let their elected officials know that they want to see a plan for the merging of their fire rescue services and to vote on that plan. One fire rescue response should only need one fire administration, not eleven. And the tax dollars saved could mean an additional 50 professional firefighters serving the area, maybe more. And that would improve the Tri-City area fire rescue response in a big way.

And while you are at it, you should let your Tri-City elected officials know you want to see Tri-City fire medic units go back to their property-tax funded, public service, no-fee past. Replace onerous fire medic unit fees with a voter approved EMS property tax levy. Currently, individual Tri-City taxpayers are being largely singled out for a morass of monthly fees and user fees for fire medic units. A monthly fee tied to a city water/sewer account is an advantage to Tri-City high-value business property owners.

An EMS property tax levy would have Tri-City business property owners paying their fair share once again to support Tri-City fire rescue services.

When you need your firefighter/EMT’s and firefighter/paramedics in an emergency, the last thing you need to worry about is another bill. Tri-City fire medic units need to go back to being fully propert- tax funded and no charge for Tri-City taxpayers. It is only fair that businesses pay their fair share for community fire rescue too. Something a monthly fee tied to home and business water accounts and user fees for fire medic units does not do.

This story was originally published April 26, 2021 at 11:58 AM with the headline "Make fire services fair to taxpayers | Guest Opinion."