Nine days after the City of Edmonds officially joined the South County Fire Regional Fire Authority (RFA), the City has sent a letter to the RFA questioning whether Edmonds is obligated to continue making RFA payments for fire and emergency services for the reminder of 2025.
June 1 marked the start of Edmonds’ new status as a full member of the RFA, following voter approval of annexation during the April 22 special election. Annexation terminates the City’s previous contract with the RFA.
In a letter delivered Monday afternoon to South County Fire attorney Richard Davis, Edmonds City Attorney Jeff Taraday expressed “surprise” at the City’s receipt of an RFA invoice requesting payment of more than $850,000 to cover fire and EMS for June 2025.
In his letter, Taraday pointed out that the city’s contract with the South County Fire RFA for fire and EMS terminated on May 31, and that effective June 1, the RFA assumed full responsibility for providing fire and EMS to Edmonds. He added that the city’s understanding is that its payment obligations ended with termination of the previous contract and that Edmonds fire/EMS would be provided by the RFA beginning June 1.
Taraday’s letter further pointed out that the pre-annexation agreement “does not appear to create any new or continuing obligation [for the City] to make such payments after annexation.”
Read the full letter here.
In response, the RFA issued a statement Tuesday afternoon in which it “rejects the City of Edmonds’ position that it was unaware that it would be obligated to pay the remaining balance of the 2025 Contract Payment under the Amended and Restated Interlocal Agreement (ILA).”
In support of this, the RFA references the briefing provided by Taraday to the Edmonds City Council on Dec. 3, 2024, in which he discusses and quotes verbatim section 3.2.2 of the pre-annexation ILA which outlines the city’s payment terms for 2025 in the event of annexation approval, screenshot below:
The full video recording of Taraday’s testimony is located between 0:18:50-0:20:56 on the video of the Dec. 3 meeting here. In the video, Taraday went on to clarify this contract language as follows:
“So essentially, what that’s saying [section 3.2.2] is the city will continue to make the contract payment that we currently make for the balance of 2025 even if annexation passes,” Taraday stated. “Let’s use June 1 as the hypothetical annexation date [should RFA pass]. The city pays for the final seven months of 2025 for its fire and EMS service, and then starting on Jan. 1, 2026…there would be no longer any contract payment, because on that date, the city is no longer contractually obligated to make a contract payment, and the RFA is then receiving directly from Edmonds taxpayers.”
You can also read more in our Dec. 3 council meeting story here.
Regarding payments to the RFA for the remainder of 2025 under the terminated contract, Edmonds Mayor Mike Rosen confirmed Tuesday that these are on hold pending the outcome of this issue.
South County RFA, meanwhile, said in its statement that it “has no other comment at this time and intends to respond to the City as appropriate.”
Mayor Rosen, Councilmembers,
Well done. THANK YOU!
7 months at $850,000 per month? That’s the City payment amount that was left up in the air and subject to lawyers exchanging nastygrams, while at the same time brainstorming numerous other budget items with much smaller impact.
Somebody tell KEV, the City attorney just found $6 million that can be spent on becoming Vibrant. On top of everything else of course.
Ah hem…. The City Attorney did NOT find this $6M. An Edmonds resident did.
Wow, a huge win for Edmonds residents!
Thank you Jim Ogonowski, MyEdmondsNews, City Attorney Taraday, Mayor Rosen & City council members.
We appreciate our firefighters, but this contract dispute and the millions owed to Edmonds in ground transit fees, show a disregard for our community. South County Fire RFA as an organization is running a trust deficit.
What am I missing? The RFA breached the contract early. Why do we have to pay for the rest of the year. If anyone owes money it is RFA. They broke the contract and they still haven’t payed ground transportation fee to us. Maybe we should figure out what they owe us and see if that amount covers anything. Or will they owe us more instead.
The RFA didn’t ’breach the contract’. It was terminated in an orderly manner according to the terms in the contract. Either party had the ability to terminate the contract before the end of the term, and the RFA exercised that ability. Similarly as a hypothetical- the City of Edmonds could have contracted with Shoreline for fire/EMS services and then terminated the contract with the RFA.
South County Fire’s administrators should be squirming right now. This is the second legal issue they have in process with the City of Edmonds, and the dollar impacts are significant. The first issue is the recovery of the GEMT fees that are owed Edmonds- $8M as reported earlier by My Edmonds News. (That number is out of date. The City has been informed that the current number is much, much larger.) The fact that South County Fire’s response to the Edmonds attorney’s letter is to quote city council meeting minutes is so simplistic; I find it amusing. My perspective is that they need to instruct their attorney to brief them on the contract that they drafted, made minor negotiated changes on, and sent to Edmonds to sign. Edmonds was the 4th annexation they have done in the last three years. (Mill Creek, Brier, Mountlake Terrace). How could they miss something so basic as this concept of a mid-year annexation and the ending of invoicing under an ILA contract that has been cancelled? The good news for SCF is that they can just raise the property tax rate next year by 1% and earn more revenue that partially offsets this mistake in their annexation contract language.
I’m not exactly sure where all of the celebrating is coming from as this legal issue is not resolved? The GEMT fees should have been credited prior to any vote. The fact they are outstanding was a red flag for many but nowhere near enough. I’m afraid accepting the new contract and expecting the old to be null and void may affect a court decision on any outstanding GEMT balance? We may lose on both counts, depending on a court’s interpretation of the language.
Thank you Jim Ogonowski for continuing to pursue the GEMT fees. These are critical dollars we, the taxpayer, can use toward the budget crisis. I’m hopeful that with the November elections and the candidates running to replace some sitting CM’s we can elect folks that truly have the best interests of Edmonds and not their own. The RFA annexation was successful due to a number of reasons: the mayor hired a PR firm for the sum of $64,000 to help sell it to Edmonds. The Public Disclosure Commission issued a warning to the mayor to stop the illegal practice of “selling” annexation, however, it came a week before the vote and thus the many months of this illegal and predatory practice had been done. Also, some CMs were beholding to the RFA since the RFA had helped finance their campaigns. The RFAs “predatory practices” were in full display as well but most disturbing were their scare tactics – the texts that went out to Edmonds residents encouraging a YES vote and saying they “[Edmonds] ‘may’ lose services without a YES vote”. It worked! With a new council in November that truly represents the best interests of Edmonds, perhaps they can vote the RFA out, take back our local control and make fire/EMS more affordable. This would help make Edmonds VIBRANT without bankrupting low income families.
I’m sensing some comingling of issues in some of the comments. The above article talks about the city not needing to make any future payments to the RFA now that we were officially annexed on June 1st. Voters approved the annexation documents negotiated and signed by both the RFA and city. In those documents, our current contract with the RFA was terminated and after June 1st the RFA assumed full responsibility. There a no provisions for the city to make any further contract payments after it was terminated.
The Ground Emergency Medical Transport (GEMT) fee reimbursement is a different issue all together. Our contract had required that the RFA remit all transport fees they collected on our behalf back to the city. Over the years only a portion of those fees have been remitted back to the city. The fees that the RFA has collected through the GEMT program have not been remitted back. Hence the ongoing dispute. There could be significant dollars involved.
Hope this helps
RFA passing was the number one reason that we decided to move away. RFA will milk Edmonds for every last dime they can get and their costs to you will do nothing but escalate. Edmonds share of Fire/Ems service will go up and the costs in other cities served will stay the same or go down. You made a very bad deal, and if I read this article correctly, RFA claims your city attorney said in an open meeting on Dec. 3, 2024 that Edmonds would agree to pay directly for service thru the end of 2025 even if the annexation takes affect as of June 1. Someone correct me if I’m wrong. Now he’s saying the opposite and RFA will try to capitalize on that change of position I suspect. Even if you win this issue in Court you will most likely be paying legal fees to someone for either winning or losing the fight and that will be at least in the several thousands of dollars. Court fights with the very organization you just chose to take care of your Fire/Ems needs. You think they are looking out for you? Next the people who “negotiated” this great deal and got you to go for it are going to ask you for $20M more. Not too smart, I’d say.
Quoting from the annexation agreement:
“10.13 Entire Agreement. This Agreement contains all of the understandings between
the parties. Each party represents that no promises, representations, or
commitments have been made by the other as a basis for this Agreement which
have not been reduced to writing herein. No oral promises or representations
shall be binding upon either party, whether made in the past or to be made in the
future, unless such promises or representations are reduced to writing in the form
of a modification to this Agreement executed with all necessary legal formalities
by the respective governing bodies of the City and the RFA.”
Paraphrasing: If it isn’t written, it’s hearsay.
Thanks for pointing this out, Jim.
I think lawyers (and judges) call this the “four corners” rule~ if it’s not written within the four corners of the signed document, it’s not an obligation of either party. The RFA may wish they had included different language in their annexation agreement with City of Edmonds, but under law they have to live with the agreement they willingly signed.
Jim, So, if the RFA wants to make it’s claim stick for the continued monthly payments thru 2025, they will have to take the matter before a Superior Court Judge as a proposed modification of the voted upon and passed annexation as of June 1, 2025. There are some pretty important unanswered questions in all this. First, who was asleep at the switch and didn’t get the specific pay or non-pay clause thru 2025 in the final agreement? Seems like a sixth grader studying basic Civics would have caught that as an important aspect of the whole annexation deal. Second, what course of action would the city have taken if you hadn’t found this discrepancy in understanding and brought it to the attention of Rosen, Taraday and Council? Where is all this transparency and open communication that Rosen keeps talking about? Did they just suddenly decide it might be smart to listen to you for once? You seem to know way more about how to run a city than almost any of them do.
Is it time to resurrect the slogan … DropTheMike ???
…Just sayin’
Question? If one reads 3.2.2 above the RFA is entitled to transport fees from June 1 -Dec 31? Then they will credit those amounts to the 2025 contract. Since that conract is now done it may look like SCF will have to send us those $ as a refund to the now expired 2025 contract. $100k times 7 would mean a $700k rebate on the original 2025 contract.
The 2025 contract was in place until June 1 but they have agreed to credit us with the transport fees for the rest of 2026.
Parity pricing for 2026 is $19m up from the contract price of under 12m. That $7m extra can be used to offset the June 1- Dec 31 lack of payments. Around $6-7m. Then for 2027 that parity pricing model will get SCF to the $19m we voted for.
All will be fine at SCF it simply means it will take a year and a half to realize the full gain of parity pricing instead of 7 months.
It’s certainly odd that the RFA states they are no longer required to remit all medical transport fees to the city per the terms of our contract with them (which are payments we have relied on to pay part of the contract costs to the RFA) as of the effective date when Edmonds annexed into the RFA. At the same time, they maintain we are required to pay them the monthly fire/EMS contract payments as usual even though we are no longer a contract entity now that the voter-approved RFA annexation is in effect. These two positions being taken by the RFA seem directly contradictory. In any event, the attorneys for both sides will be the winners….
Unless it turns out RFA attorneys missed a $tep when they authored the documents. Hopefully all of the professional liability policies are up to date.
Darrol is correct. This is the RFA’s problem to solve, not the city’s. The RFA negotiated, drafted and agreed to the agreement before sending it to Edmonds for our review and signatures. No excuses.
Mmmm . . . . This gets more interesting all the time. Perhaps RFA didn’t specifically address the monthly payment continuing or not issue in the final documents on purpose? Edmonds was about their fourth annexation rodeo so they had to be pretty good at it legally speaking one would think. Of course Edmonds was the only place they had any real serious push back so that might have contributed to this fly in the ointment of the final papers too and their legal department might have been a bit rattled by it all. . Edmonds’ best hope is RFA realizes they “flubbed the dub” and drops the whole thing because anything can happen when stuff like this goes to Superior Court, assuming that’s where it all ends up.
Clint, I generalized in my comment above about the RFA writing the contract, and having done other annexation agreements. 1) Mill Creek was not served by this RFA before- they had a contract with a different RFA. So no annexation contract clauses about billing for services under a different ILA. 2) MLT’s ILA service contract expired. So no annexation contract clauses about billing for services. 3) I don’t know Brier’s situation. But They are such a small town that any numbers are almost immaterial in SCF’s huge pot of money. I watched the SCF board of commissioners meetings last November when Chief Eastman presented the various contracts and reported on the state of the negotiations with Edmonds. There were zero questions about needing explicit contract language requiring Edmonds to pay for the cost of Fire/EMS service in the latter half of 2025 for the contract that controls the provision of service after voters decided they were annexed into the RFA. The discussions were focused on the articles that were written down. No one took the broader view and asked about what was missing. (likewise the 2 Edmonds city council persons on the contract negotiation team missed this topic last winter, as did the Edmonds City attorney.) The issue for Edmonds voters in November- will the city disclose this big savings in their voters guide statement?