In a pair of Dec. 19 letters to Edmonds Mayor Mike Nelson, South County Fire Acting Chief Robert Eastman and South County Fire Board Chair Micah Rowland put Edmonds on notice that the agency intends to terminate the current interlocal agreement for fire and EMS services effective Dec. 31, 2025.

While the present contract between the city and South County Fire still has seven years remaining, a key provision allows either party to terminate by giving the other two years’ notice. With the receipt of these letters, the two-year clock is now ticking, giving Edmonds until the end of 2025 to put in place a new plan for fire and EMS services.

The current 20-year contract was executed in 2010. Since that time a range of factors — including increased traffic, higher density, population growth and higher labor costs (largely the result of new labor contract agreements) — have driven up the cost of providing these services.

Partially to gain the necessary flexibility to remain financially sound as costs increase, South County Fire in 2017 reorganized into what is now the South Snohomish County Fire and Rescue Regional Authority (RFA). As a fire authority, the agency can be funded directly through property taxes rather than receive payment from the individual jurisdictions that contract for fire and EMS services. In essence, this means that property owners would fund the RFA directly, rather than pay taxes to the city, which would use these funds to pay for emergency and fire services from the RFA. To move from an individual contract to being part of the RFA, voters in each jurisdiction need to approve this change.

Edmonds maintained its own fire department until 2009. Then, in an effort to cut costs, the city council decided to sell city equipment and transfer fire personnel to what was then known — prior to the fire authority’s creation — as Snohomish County Fire District 1.  Edmonds joined the cities of Brier, Mill Creek and Mountlake Terrace in contracting with Fire District 1 for these services. In recent years, all jurisdictions in the fire authority’s service territory agreed to be annexed to the RFA (unincorporated areas became part of the RFA by default) with the exception of two cities: Mukilteo, which operates its own fire department, and Edmonds, which contracts with South County Fire.

In his letter to Mayor Nelson, Acting Chief Eastman said that as South County Fire costs have continued to increase, “better strategic planning needs to be supported by stable funding.” While fire and EMS costs are rising and putting a strain on the city’s budget, Edmonds still is “paying less for service under the current contract than the rest of the RFA,” he said. “South County Fire is committed to providing rate parity moving forward, so everyone we serve pays the same rate for the same service.”

The issue of increasing costs for fire and EMT services is not new, and in 2016 – after receiving an unexpectedly large $1.6 million invoice for fire and EMT services – Edmonds contracted with Fitch and Associates to study the issue, develop options and make recommendations for how the city should proceed (see Fitch’s 2016 presentation to council here). In its final report, Fitch concluded that Edmonds could cut costs while improving fire and EMS services, and the council voted in 2017 to amend the interlocal agreement between the two entities to change the staffing model. The amended agreement reduced the total number of firefighters on duty at any given time from 11 to nine, with the goal of saving an estimated $1.4 million annually.

But in 2021, the council agreed to pay the fire authority an additional $1.5 million annually to rectify what the RFA identified as a service imbalance between Edmonds and neighboring cities.

Earlier this year, the city council approved a resolution to explore the benefits of annexing to the RFA, and in November voted to again contract with Fitch — at a cost of $44,500. (See scope of work here.) The intent is to have Fitch evaluate the current fire service delivery models and the efficacy of the Regional Fire Authority (RFA) proposal and also to review the pros and cons of returning to an internal fire department or a potential contractual relationship with another provider.

Upon receipt of this week’s letter informing him and the city of the fire authority’s intent to terminate the contract, outgoing Mayor Nelson immediately responded. In an email to My Edmonds News, the mayor accused the city council of “losing our fire department” and deriding its decision to “waste time and money” on hiring the same consultant to further study the issue of annexing to the RFA. Nelson stressed the critical importance of maintaining these services at a high level, concluding that “scraping the bottom of the barrel for fire and EMS services is a risk we cannot afford.”

In a statement regarding the matter, Councilmember Jenna Nand said she disagrees “with the mayor’s statement that we will be ‘losing our fire department’ due to the actions of city council,” adding she believes “that this inaccurate claim will cause confusion and consternation among the public at a time when public safety is of paramount importance to Edmonds.

“By providing us with two years notice of the intent to terminate Edmonds’ contract for fire services, the RFA is signaling that they would like us to come to a final resolution about whether we wish to be annexed into the RFA or seek fire services elsewhere within the next two years,” Nand said.

— By Larry Vogel and Teresa Wippel