First off, nobody is questioning whether we value our firefighters. We are extremely grateful for the work they do. That not the issue. The real questions are what are the problems and what needs doing? This RFA is definitely not the way to go.
Let’s get some things straight. 1) The RFA does not pay for any new firefighters, fire engines, or fire stations for the first seven years. 2) It does not provide 18 new firefighters. That is a program Olympia is already pursuing called Basic Life Safety (BLS) which is provide a more reliable EMS and ambulance service replacing the existing private sector business. This program is designed to be self-funding through insurance, copays, and other government funding. All the RFA does is repay a loan from Olympia to get the program up and running if the RFA passes. 3) The difficulty hiring firefighters is not a function of the government structure. It has to do with the pandemic, same as all other industries. In fact, Olympia was advertising for a firefighter with the low end of the salary at $82,000, and that’s for someone with a high school education. 3) It is expensive. The new fee raises $10.5M in the first year. And even though it’s on the property tax bill the fee can be raised without a vote to over $25M a year. The 1% limit does not apply because it’s called a fee, not a tax. 4) It is also regressive, charges apartments more per square foot than single family homes, penalizing renters and hurting affordable housing.
Part of what the RFA will buy is $2M worth of redundant administrative (overhead) positions. For that money we could hire 12 new firefighters or buy two new fire engines every year!
There are real budget issues that our cities face. But this is not the way to address them. It won’t help our firefighters with call volume; it’s wasteful, inefficient, won’t improve response times, is less transparent, and puts our good fire departments at risk. I encourage you to vote no, and tell our city governments to give us a proposal that will actually help our fire departments.
Please explain the inappropriate content below.
