The Edmonds City Council spent about 90 minutes Tuesday evening, Dec. 3, discussing the details of a possible City of Edmonds annexation into the South Snohomish County Regional Fire Authority (RFA). If the council decides to put the proposal before voters, it would likely appear on a special election ballot in April 2025.

Council President Vivian Olson started by introducing the team that has been negotiating the RFA contract with the city. In addition to Olson, a former certified contracting officer, negotiating team members included Councilmember Neil Tibbott, who chairs the council’s public safety committee; Edmonds Mayor Mike Rosen and City Attorney Jeff Taraday. Appearing in the council chambers to answer questions Tuesday night were RFA Board Commissioner Ed Widdis, Fire Chief Bob Eastman and Communications Director Christie Veley.

Before going into details of Tuesday night’s special meeting, here’s a refresher on how we got here.

The City of Edmonds started its own fire department in 1904. But after more than 100 years of service, the increasing costs and administrative burdens associated with maintaining an in-house department prompted the city to explore other options. One of these was to contract with what was then known as Snohomish County Fire District 1.

In November 2009, the city council voted 6-1 to disband the Edmonds Fire Department and enter into a 20-year contract with Fire District 1 to provide these services. Agreement terms called for the city to retain ownership of the fire stations and land, and also keep the emergency medical services transportation fees the city now charges to residents. In addition, the city sold all of its fire apparatus (engines, aid cars and equipment) to the fire district.

The contract cost for the first year was $6.2 million, and was executed on Jan. 1, 2010. Under the terms (see the original contract here), Fire District 1 would provide fire and EMS services to the city for 20 years. The contract included a provision whereby either party may terminate the contract before the 20-year period is up by giving two years’ written notice to the other party.

In the years that followed, cost increases for labor and operations, and the challenge of serving an ever-growing population have pushed up the price tag of providing fire and EMS services. To address these challenges, Fire District 1 reorganized into what is now the South Snohomish County Fire and Rescue regional fire authority (RFA) — also known as South County Fire.

With its new status, the fire authority no longer had to rely on funding from the jurisdictions with which it contracts for services, but rather allows it to be funded directly through property taxes.

While this had little impact on unincorporated areas, which had been paying for fire and EMS services through property taxes all along, the big change came for the separate jurisdictions – like Edmonds — with which the RFA contracts for these services. While these contracts remained in effect with the transition to the RFA, these jurisdictions now had the option to join the RFA. By doing so, these jurisdictions would no longer pay for fire and EMS from city budgets. Payment would instead be shifted to property owners, who would fund the RFA directly through increased property taxes.

In recent years, voters in nearly all jurisdictions in the fire authority’s service territory agreed to be annexed to the RFA (unincorporated areas becoming part of the RFA by default), including Lynnwood, Mill Creek, Brier and Mountlake Terrace. The exceptions are Mukilteo, which operates its own fire department, and Edmonds, which has continued as the lone holdout with a separate contract.

In September 2023, the Edmond City Council approved a resolution telling South County Fire that the City of Edmonds officially intended to investigate the advantages and disadvantages of annexation. Then, in December 2023, the city received notice that South County Fire intended to terminate its current 20-year contract with Edmonds, effective Dec. 31, 2025. In response, the council retained consulting firm Fitch and Associates to analyze its options.

After reviewing the Fitch report recommendations in spring 2024, the council in June approved a resolution expressing the city’s intent to proceed with annexation. Councilmembers stressed that the resolution didn’t commit the city to proceeding with annexation but would allow the city to begin negotiations with the fire authority to determine if the council wanted to proceed.

The city’s negotiating team has been engaged in that process for several months. In September, the council signaled its support to retain in 2026 the money that the city has been collecting — via property taxes — for fire and emergency medical services to help with the city’s significant budget deficit. The council directed the city attorney to draft a resolution stating the city’s intent in 2026 to collect the taxes, a collection that would occur regardless of what both the council and Edmonds voters decide about RFA annexation.

Given that backdrop, here’s the summary of Tuesday’s meeting:

City Attorney Taraday gave an overview of what the council would be considering Tuesday night as part of its agenda packet, including these two documents:

The plan amendment

 This is essentially “the legislative document of the fire authority,” Taraday said, and is analogous to the city’s Comprehensive Plan, although limited to fire and emergency medical services. The document describes the terms of various annexations that have happened over time with other jurisdictions and also the terms of annexation as it would apply to Edmonds. Among the items it includes are the transition of property and assets from the City of Edmonds to the RFA, including the three fire stations that Edmonds currently owns.

The plan amendment also includes information on finances. Taraday noted that if voters approve annexation, starting on the annexation effective date the RFA would be entitled to both bill and collect for the transport fees originating within Edmonds. That differs from the current interlocal agreement between Edmonds and the RFA, under which the city receives those transport fees. However, since the city would continue to make its current contract payment for the balance of 2025 even if annexation passes, that payment would be reduced by the amount of the transport fees that the RFA collects during the balance of 2025.

There are also three categories of liabilities that the city currently has, which the RFA would be assuming on the annexation date: payment obligations related to Sno911; the LEOFF 1 firefighter retiree obligations and the city’s payment for the Snohomish County Department of Emergency Management from 2025-27. 

The pre-annexation agreement

This agreement includes several attachments, including a quick claim deed for fire stations 16 and 20 and a separate agreement for fire station 17, which stays with the city because it is part of the Edmonds Public Safety Complex; a master bill of sale covering the the transfer of fire station furniture and fixtures; and a fire prevention interlocal agreement that addresses payment of the fire marshal’s salary and the collection of fire permit fees or permits that are being processed by the City of Edmonds.

Taraday then addressed portions of the pre-annexation agreement that he has heard community concerns about, including:

– What happens if the annexation measure fails in 2025? The RFA on Jan. 1, 2026 “by mutual agreement of the two parties” would begin providing services on a contract basis, referred to in the council packet as a temporary interlocal agreement. This agreement would “potentially” become the terms of the city’s contract with the RFA in 2026, and Taraday said he used the word “potentially” due to that “mutual agreement” wording. “The city does not have an automatic right to those terms in the event that election fails,” he said. “It’s essentially a pre-negotiated contract, but at the very end of the day, both sides have an opportunity to confirm that they are willing to agree to those terms.” Taraday added that the city “had asked for that to be a unilateral option of the city, and the RFA would not do that.” What that means is, if the city holds a special election on RFA annexation in April 2025 and taxpayers reject it, the city and the RFA would have to come to “mutual agreement” on contract terms by July 1, 2025. Because of that wording, “there’s no guarantees that that those {terms in the temporary interlocal agreement] would, in fact, be the contract terms,” the city attorney explained.

– What about the transfer of the existing fire stations to the RFA if annexation is approved? Edmonds would not receive a payment for stations 16 (located at 196th Street Southwest) and station 20 (located in unincorporated Esperance but owned by the City of Edmonds) if the annexation is approved. “I think reasonable minds can differ over whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing,” Taraday said. “But the fact of the matter is, is that no city that has entered the RFA through annexation was compensated for their stations, so that needs to be treated similarly to the other cities that are part of the RFA.” If the RFA ceases to operate the properties as active fire stations, title and ownership of them would revert to the City of Edmonds “upon payment of fair market value, reduced by the fair market value of the property on the date of the city’s annexation, as annually adjusted by inflation,” Taraday said. “The gist of it is that, should we be in a position of buying these back at some point in the future, the city should only be paying for improvements made to the station by the RFA, because our equity is established.” (Fire station 17, located in downtown Edmonds, is treated differently in the contract because it is part of the city’s Maxwell-McGinness Public Safety Complex and does not have land associated with it as a stand-alone entity. This station will be retained by the city and a no-cost lease negotiated for the RFA’s use, as a fire station only, until the RFA may choose not to use it.)

– What happens to the rolling stock (fire engines and aid cars)? Taraday said that all of the rolling stock is now owned by the RFA, and the draft pre-annexation agreement states that the city “may, with the concurrence of the RFA, purchase any rolling stock owned by the RFA” at a city fire station, “at fair market value.” This provision “was, frankly, one of the most contentious points of the negotiation,” Taraday said, as it “significantly increases the uncertainty and expense of the city ever being able to restart its own fire department.” That’s because there’s a significant wait time to order new rolling stock from the factory, and the city must seek concurrence from the RFA to purchase engines and aid cards and requires payment of fair market value for those engines and aid cards. Taraday said this contract provision represents “a significant change in the language in the current interlocal agreement the city has with the fire authority.” The agreement now in place says that all rolling stock used at the city fire stations at the time of contract termination “shall be purchased back at a price that considers the fair market value of the asset — and adjustments to the fair market value that would be fair and equitable. That latter point includes city contributions to apparatus replacement, “which we have been making for 15 years,” Taraday said.

– What would be the contract payment under the draft agreement? The actual contract payment would be based on a formula that has three components: The first two are the RFA levy rate for 2025 which is the rate collected in 2026, which is unknown, multiplied by the city’s assessed value, also currently unknown because that changes every year, and the RFA emergency medical services (EMS) levy rate for 2025, also unknown. And the third component is the amount that would be generated by applying the RFA’s benefit charge formula within the city. (The benefit charge is described further below.) “You have to make certain assumptions about what the city’s assessment is going to be next year…and you have to make certain assumptions about what RFA levy rates might be,” Taraday said. “So anyone who who looks at this and tells you that they know what your contract payment is going to be in 2026 is not telling the truth because it’s an unknowable number.” That said, the city attorney said he has estimated a cost of $20.7 million for contracting with the RFA,” noting that others have estimated $19 million. “I don’t know. No one knows.”

Councilmembers began a round-robin format of questions with Councilmembers Tibbott and Olson and City Attorney Taraday from the negotiating team providing answers, along with input from the regional fire authority representatives attending.

Councilmember Chris Eck: Can you outline any benefit or advantage to the city by annexation other than fire and ambulance services?

Tibbott’s response: “One of them is the all of the emergency preparedness that that the RFA contributes to the participating cities. They do preplanning. They have resources in place in the event of catastrophic emergencies, and they have resources that would be available to us for emergency service response as well as emergency planning.  And then a second one, it’s maybe a little bit more obscure, but their reserve fund is also available to us. So in the event of a…major response, they’d be able to throw a lot of resources at it. They’d be able to pay overtime for the firefighters, and they’d also be able to…provide a backstop to any of the costs that are involved with a catastrophic response.”

Olson’s response: “The community paramedic program, I think it’s a really strong program in general, and one that benefits the kind of frequent callers…that have high emergency medical needs. And as a community that is older than all of the other Snohomish County cities that are in the RFA, we actually have a high propensity of those calls.” On the topic of reserves, Olson said, fire station 20 is close to end of life and needing to be rebuilt. If the city were under contract with the fire authority rather than annexed, that rebuilding would be the city’s responsibility. “But if we were in the RFA, that’s one of the projects the RFA would take on,” Olson said.

Councilmember Will Chen: Regarding fire stations 16 and 20, those stations will be transferred to the RFA at no cost, but in the future, if they are no longer in service, the city would have to pay fair market value to get them back. “So to me, it’s double standards. It’s not fair terms. If we want to pay fair market value, then we’ll transfer from city to have a fair market value. If we want to transfer no cost, then you should go vice versa and no cost.”

Fire Chief Bob Eastman’s response: “From a fire chief’s perspective, the way we look at the fire stations is, the taxpayers purchase the fire stations and they’re the citizens’ fire station. It’s designed to provide fire service. Taxpayers have already paid for it. And if we no longer going to use that as a fire station, from the fire department’s perspective…we can’t just abandon the fire station. We have to build another one someplace to do that. There is a cost to the taxpayer, one way or the other.” Eastman also added the draft documents for Edmonds annexation are “very similar to what we’ve done with all the cities that have been annexed in that want the ability to get their fire stations back.”

Councilmember Michelle Dotsch: “As things are moving and growing and expanding, if one of the fire stations that goes through is no longer needed by the RFA, they’ve abandoned it but yet they’ve made upgrades, and Edmonds gets first rights back, but does not want to use in a fire station, I don’t think we should be paying for any of the upgrades.”

Taraday’s response: “If upgrades have been made, you’re likely going to be paying for those upgrades if they have market value. I mean, if upgrades were made and they’ve been fully depreciated, then maybe you wouldn’t be paying them. But the way it’s worded now, you’d be paying for any upgrades made by the RFA.”

Tibbott’s and Olson’s responses: Tibbott said that it was likely if the city reaquired the building it would be for fire service although Dotsch said that wouldn’t necessarily be the case. Olson added that “I do think it’s value to the building. So even if you’re using it for a different purpose, you know, your brand-new building is obviously worth a lot more than you know the 20- or 40- year-old…or 100-year-old building.”

Councilmember Susan Paine: If annexation is approved, how do the council and the city’s residents ensure that Edmonds’ interests are represented?

Tibbott’s response: Once Edmonds is annexed into the RFA, the city would have a non-voting representative appointed to the RFA governing board of commissioners “until positions open up, and then we would be just like any of the other cities, we would have an opportunity to put forward a commissioner from our city.” Voters would also vote on all the board commissioners representing the other participating cities. “So that’s our opportunity to influence at that level.”

Eastman’s response: “Outside of the fact that the [appointed commissioners] don’t vote, they have equal say, and their their input is valued by the board…they’re treated as a member, and they have a voice, and a very strong voice.” The RFA board votes on recommendations from the fire chief, so the city council wouldn’t have direct control, “but your citizens would have a voice at the board meetings… just like they do with the city council.” 

Councilmember Jenna Nand: She invited RFA representatives the opportunity to explain to taxpayers “exactly how an EMS Levy works, the benefit charge, the assessed value, because there’s a lot of fear mongering and tax fatigue in Snohomish County right now.”

Eastman’s response: “We have three main funding sources that the plan identifies. One is our general fire levy that’s capped at $1 per thousand over your assessed [property] value (AV). We have the ability to do an EMS Levy, which is capped at 50 cents, so the most we can, we can charge on property taxes, is $1.50 per thousand of the AV. We have the privilege to do a fire benefit charge. And what that does is, it’s not a property tax. It takes the improvements to your property, and then what your property is used for. We have four classifications. We have commercial, multi-family, mobile home and residential. And there’s different fire needs and fire resource needs for each one of those categories of property. And then we look at the improvements by square footage, we’re able to take the benefit charge and proportionate amongst those property classes.” The property, whether it’s $500,000 and $2 million, pays the same benefit charge, Eastman added.

Councilmember Eck: “One of the concerns I’ve heard — one of the common themes — is…not understanding the need to send so many vehicles and personnel out to specific emergencies that occur.”

Eastman’s response: The most common question is, why send nine to 11 firefighters to a CPR call, he said. “One of the most important things in the CPR call is, good CPR. I don’t know if any councilmembers have actually done CPR. Two minutes of CPR becomes exhausting and and the survival percentages drop with poor CPR, and they drop exponentially. We try to get five firefighters on the scene of the CPR call to rotate doing CPR. They rotate every two minutes and the reason for that is to maintain good quality CPR, which is the most important thing you can do.” He also explained the other activities that happen during a CPR call: “You have to ventilate — in other words, you have to breathe for the person, and most of the time they don’t have a clear airway, so you have to suction. That takes one to two firefighters to actually manage an airway appropriately, along with the one you know five people doing CPR. You have somebody that needs to defibrillate, which is a shock the heart.” That takes one or two people, depending on the type of patient. A person is also needed to pull medicine, draw it up, verify it and hand to the person giving it. Another person is also needed to get the patient’s history. “And then, inevitably, if we have to transport, we have to have somebody go get the gurney, and that takes one or two people to do that. So it doesn’t take very long, when you add up all that, you get to nine to 11 people. I’m happy to say that our cardiac survival rates are twice what the average in the country is. If you did it with less people, our survival rates would drop.” Eastman added that the same requirements for response are true on the fire side. “We need a lot of people to do that too.”

Councilmember Dotsch: What additional service benefits would Edmonds citizens receive “if we join the RFA at twice the price we’re currently paying.”

Tibbott’s response: “National standards have changed across the country as to how emergency response is provided, and so at the time that we made our contract, we set a level of service that was consistent with six or seven years ago, and…then as those standards changed across the country, their level of service changed for the entire fire district, including us. So we were getting services that we did not contract for, but we were getting them.”

Eastman’s response: He added that the RFA has provided Edmonds with additional resources that have also been incorporated throughout the RFA services area, such as community resources paramedics and medical services officers on shifts and three battalion chiefs instead of two. The current contract with Edmonds doesn’t allow the RFA to charge Edmonds for those additional services.

Councilmember Paine: She asked how the fire authority determines the salaries of its staff, noting that Edmonds aims to pay at 50% of comparable cities.

Eastman’s response: “So the board [of commissioners] is very clear. They work at the mid-range of the comps. So if you look at the contract settlements we’ve had specifically with the bargaining unit, they are in the middle. And we’ve been very successful at having them in the middle of the comp range. We have 10 comparable fire departments that we look at, and the last three contracts that we’ve settled — and most of those were through arbitration — they landed at the middle — five comps below five comps above.”

Councilmember Eck: “One of the major concerns I’ve heard from our community is also around response time, and in particular, why does it need to be so high? Why is it important, and could we reduce your commitment that you make to us as part of annexation, to make it not as high a response time. To me, I think a higher response time is what community members and Edmonds would expect for any traveling through who may be in a car accident or something like that, but I’d love to hear your perspective on all of that.”

Eastman’s response: “Our goal in RFA is to have an eight minutes total response time. That’s from time dispatch receives the call to the first unit arriving on the scene. We don’t actually meet that — we’re right around nine minutes and 40 seconds. And that’s RFA wide, that includes the calls within the City of Edmonds.” Other factors, he said, include fire behavior and situations where people aren’t breathing “and and the quicker we get there, the better. And so you know, me, as the fire chief wants faster response times within reason, rather than have response time start creeping longer, longer, longer.”

Councilmember Dotsch: “About benefit charge revenue model, it should allow for lower overall property tax levy rates as a burden of providing fire suppression services distributed more fairly based on fire risk. So why not increase the benefit charge percentage and reduce the fire levy rate for the benefit of majority taxpayers in participating municipalities?”

Eastman’s response: “I would say that our [RFA] board is currently looking at that, and the strategy to put a little bit more burden of the resource needs onto the benefit charge. And so that’s a conversation that’s ongoing. One of the things that I’m careful of is with having different classifications and commercial multifamily taking a little bit larger burden of the benefit charge, as you increase it, you need to make sure that those commercial properties — which I think are vital for all of us — that we take that into account. The problem is, is you may have a hard time attracting commercial properties if we did that, so there’s a balance there. But the RFA is looking to put more burden on the benefit charge in the future.”

Councilmember Nand: “I was wondering if the administration and the RFA is planning town halls or other venues that would be a little bit more relaxed than this format, so that our citizens and our constituents and taxpayers can get answers to their questions directly from our fire commissioners and chiefs and meeting firefighters.”

Tibbott’s response: “Yes, very definitely. If we move towards a ballot a measure, then there’ll be multiple town halls. There will be interactions with directly with fire chiefs.”

Eastman’s response: “If the city chooses to move forward and put [RFA annexation] on the ballot, we will do everything we can to make sure people have all the information to make informed decisions on on the ballot measure, and we’ll work hand in hand in hand with the city to do that. And we have the opportunity to go meet with individual groups at that point in time if they want.”

Additional response from Communications Director Christie Veley on property taxes and benefit charge: “Just by virtue of having a benefit charge, property taxes are reduced. The maximum fire levy that we are allowed to collect goes from $1.50 to $1 per thousand just because you have a benefit charge. The board has historically taken a very conservative approach to taxation, trying to keep taxes as low as possible to continue providing these very important services. Since the RFA was formed, we have kept taxes below inflation, and that’s something we’re very proud of, and we’re proud that we’ve been able to hold the line. We look forward to answering residents questions, because we know there are a lot out there. Annexation gives residents a direct voice and a direct vote in their emergency services, and allows you to have a voice in what your taxes are and how your emergency services are operated.”

As for next steps, the council will discuss the RFA proposal during its next meeting Tuesday, Dec. 10, “but I don’t expect that we’ll be taking action or making a decision about whether we move forward with an annexation vote or with a contract until [Dec.] 17th,” Tibbott said. If the council votes to move forward with an annexation vote, that would appear on the ballot in April 2025.

— By Teresa Wippel