This Regional Fire Authority, or totally new layer of local governmental - another new agency with its very own bureaucracy and its own elected officials - originally appointed by our current elected officials - takes us one big irreparable step away from what we currently have and have had for about 100 years: What we have is funded by property taxes which are legally limited to increases of no more than 1% per year. What they're propositioning us with is a sort of blank check substitute for a straightforward honest fire department answerable to our elected officials.
Money's always short at the City of Olympia, especially when you spend such big bucks on fancy consultants like these special RFA consultants. And our elected officials - rather than accept responsibility for our fire department and make their budget work better through smarter use of monies they have available, our officials would dearly love to unburden themselves and get that troublesome and expensive fire department monkey off their backs.
Finally, Rep Dolan
Proposition 1 unloads the many problems that go along with providing fire and emergency services. First, it makes the property tax support for fire and emergency into a "fee" instead, with big potential cost increases that wouldn't be allowed if it met the definition of a tax. But by making it a fee, it also prevents it from universally providing services for every citizen through tax dollars. Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement for emergency services might not be high enough to cover costs for some people for whom the city might come up short and need to make up a shortfall. A fee could be the full cost for everyone; a tax would limit spending by those least able to pay for essential emergency services.
Second, the RFA removes the burden of pent-up needed capital expenditures on the City's budget. There are new fire stations, new equipment and increased workforce as population expands which will need to be addressed long before the 7 years that they'll be addressed by the RFA's plan. Opponents of the RFA have offered to work with the City and firefighters to help design a levy lid lift that would meet future needs. We want to see our firefighter's needs met optimally, absolutely. However, we would like to see those future needs med in a much more cost effective way than bloating the bureaucracy as this Proposition 1 will do. We respect our firefighters and will work in good faith to find excellent solutions. But the solutions need to be fair to the taxpayers and citizens as well as to the firefighters.
Finally, former Rep Dolan is only one of a chorus of elected officials saying such things as "Whenever a new, better idea is introduced to any community, there will be an opposition group that forms to frighten voters away from the “unknown.”" She and other elected officials portray this Proposition 1 as support for firefighters and nonsupport for the Proposition as a frightening opposition group fearful of the unknown. Good grief! Give me a break!
We are civil society who watch the inner workings of the City of Olympia and see the big picture. We want fairness for all in our tax structure and services. We want a city that is affordable and livable for the people who live here right now and for our children's future in a changing climate and world. We want real solutions and not some half-baked obtuse scheme that offloads the hard work of finding best solutions in a way that's easiest on the most affluent of us.
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