Dear Editor,
South County Fire wants to thank the voters for approving a benefit charge during the recent election. We sincerely appreciate your support and trust in us as we move forward with this new funding model to better serve our taxpayers.
Voters in more than a dozen Washington communities also have approved a benefit charge because they feel it is a fairer way to pay for service. With a benefit charge, the fire levy is reduced and a charge is assessed depending on a property’s size and use.
Smaller properties (such as single-family homes) pay less than larger developments because it takes fewer resources to defend them in an emergency. More than 95 percent of property owners in South County Fire’s service area will pay less or the same for emergency services in 2021 with the benefit charge.
The benefit charge will appear on 2021 property tax statements that the County mails early next year. In the meantime, we are always available to answer questions you may have about this or any issue.
Again, thank you for your support. It’s an honor for us to serve our residents and businesses.
Sincerely,
Chief Thad Hovis
South County Fire
Calling Darrol H. and Ron W. Doesn’t the assertion in this letter run contrary to your view(s) that smaller properties will actually end up paying more for services under a benefit charge system? Seems to me like a real disconnect here in what might be the facts of the matter for the individual home owner.
I’m paying no attention to the benefit charge issue because it does not apply to Edmonds since we are not a member of the fire district.
Fair enough Ron. It just seems strange to me that the district rep.s are saying one thing about the cost benefits of joining and Darrol H. is saying another or I’m misunderstanding Darrol’s point of view, which is entirely possible. My experience is that Darrol is most often right about things in general and knows good pathways for progress without being ideological in his views. Reading the tea leaves, I think the Council will soon be receiving quite a bit of pressure to actually join the district and I, for one, want to know how to lobby the council before that happens.
Clint the whole fire deal has a lot of moving parts. This first thing we all should do is understand what we pay for fire service today and what are the funding sources to pay that bill. With the help of a council member we have managed to get some of the financial data about “what does Edmonds pay, and what are the funding sources to cover those costs. These are the numbers I have were produced by the finance dept. We pay $8.5m The funding sources are EMS taxes $4.1m or $.37/1000 of assessed value. We also get the transport fees paid by insurance companies when we transport people to the hospital. Those transport fees are $1.01m. Those add to $5.1 to pay a $8.5 bill. The difference, $3.4m comes from the general fund. That is about $.31/1000. That translates to combined taxes of $.68/1000. We also also have to pay from some maintenance at the 3 stations but those numbers we not provided with the first request. I have asked for those costs but my bet is the cost Edmonds pays for maintaining the 3 stations is less than $1m.
Our friends with direct service from SCF pay $.50/1000 for EMS and $1.25/1000 on a levy. That levy will be reduced by $.25/1000 and partly replaced by the Benefit Charge.
Clint, the lobby effort with council should first be to “Show the public the numbers and do so as part of the budget package” We show more numerical information about the cemetery that we do for Fire!
I will discuss what I know about the Benefit Charge on the article that announces the public session to discuss the Benefit Charge. That discussion is too long for this thread. Lobby council to get the data first. Action later.
Darrol, you are amazing. Sounds like a plan – to prod the council and the new financial director( to be determined) for accurate and honest information about the real costs of contracting vs. joining. It looks like we now have some sort of hybrid system where we own buildings and equipment that we have to” account” while the District does the “accounting” for personnel and management costs. If so, no wonder it’s confusing. If I’m misconstruing anything here publicly please correct me. This seems to me to be way more important than citizens generally realize. I keep wondering why it is so great to contract out Fire, but hands off police under any circumstances. The best possible response is critical and often life and death in terms of both services.
Thanks Clint, for things like this we should all try to look at the numbers and alternatives. Subcontracting services can always play a role in what cities do. Typically the deal cut for subcontracting is something above the marginal cost to provide the service. The city doing the task get their costs back and some form of return. The city “buying” the service can get a better deal than doing all the imbedded cost stuff. Woodway subcontracts several services and has saved their citizens money as a result. I have not analyzed how much Shoreline charges it’s citizens for direct fires services but the I would guess it charges it citizens more per 1000 than it charges Woodway for fire. Shoreline is interesting because while they provide fire for others I think they subcontract their police services to King Co Sheriff.
Edmonds has in its current budget a note to increase the EMS tax from $.37/1000 ($4.1m) to $.50/1000 ($5.5m) or a $1.4m increase. The added $1.4m would have just flowed to the GF and in effect would have been a tax to increase the GF under the label of EMS. To raise such a tax I think Council would have had to pass a resolution and then we would have voted on that tax. Studies show that voters are more inclined to vote for EMS levies that they are to vote for a street overlay levy. Parks Levies also do well.
Now that the council is going back to “committee meetings” it may be helpful if some folks wrote to the Council folks who are on the Finance Committee and ask them to have staff provide a full report to the public about the cost of fire today and what are the revenue sources to support that cost?
Darrol,
Sounds like a straightforward approach to getting the answers. Who on Council is on the Finance Committee? Could this be a story Myedmondsnews could follow up on?
We will certainly cover this issue if/when council begins to talk about it.
Finance Committee is Adrienne Fraley-Monillas and Vivian Olson
Here are their respective emails:
adrienne.monillas@edmondswa.gov
Vivian.olson@edmondswa.gov
The numbers I cited for Cost of Contract and Revenue Sources came from the Acting Finance Director. The whole point of asking for some supportive numbers of what we pay today and where does the money comes from to pay the bill is to provide all council members and the public with a more through understanding of a major expense for the city. $8.5m. That number will go up in the very near future to pay for increased labor costs.
The point on increased EMS tax is also clear. That added $1.4m was factored into the future outlooks for the city and if we are not going to increase that tax the outlooks in the 2020 budget are overstated. It is not clear how that will impacts the 2021 budget and the respective future outlooks. The public would probably be better informed if the Finance Committee would help get these numbers presented in a consolidated way they the are not scattered in all the separate accounts.
Email the finance committee if you want more complete numbers.