My wife and I suffered a severe house fire in 1993 when the house next door caught fire and was completely destroyed. It spread to our house and we lost our roof and we out of the house for several months during reconstruction. The local firefighters saved our bacon for sure. So we have absolutely nothing but great regard for firefighters, as firefighters.
And I was trained in damage control and firefighting in the Navy both as a sailor and later as a damage control officer. So I have huge tremendous professional respect for firefighters - as firefighters.
But this debate is about administration and funding, not about “trusting” anyone.
There’s no magic that happens if we create a whole new special district and the attendant layer of administrative overhead. This seems similar to what is happening in higher education all over the country — we get more and more administrators for our money, rather than front line troops who deliver the goods.
The virtue of the property tax is that it is ultimately a wealth tax, and those with the most wealth to protect pay the most — it could be more progressive, sure, but at least it is not regressive. The “fire benefit charge” being proposed is a truly strange regressive mechanism — I would love to have been in the room when someone came up with the bizarre idea of basing the charge on the square root of the area instead of on the total value of the property at risk of fire. It makes no sense except as a way to shift the costs off the largest property owners and onto others.
The bottom line that comes clear when you research this long enough is that the proposed new district seems simply to be an effort to get out of the bind imposed by property tax limitations without having to level with the voters and ask the voters for a levy lift. In other words, the trust that is lacking is the trust that the voters will make the right decision on funding the existing fire services.
We, the voters, will end up supporting three local governments (the RFA, Oly, and Tumwater) where today there are two (Oly, Tumwater) — there is no way that is more efficient. If the RFA passes, we will have to pay for a new local government, which will compete forever more for voter support with the host cities and the schools, which are struggling terribly right now. The real question should be whether Olympia and Tumwater should merge, or whether Tumwater should disincorporate, thus merging its fire services with the county.
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