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John,

I get your point about the cities merging, however, that is an entirely different animal to tackle. Merely merging the fire departments took multiple years of work to come up with a ballot initiative. Merging cities would be magnitudes higher in terms of time and work involved, and I can't think of any city (minus tiny little cities perhaps) that have combined in this state. While on paper this would be more efficient, I don't believe we can realistically consider it as an alternative to the RFA in any way.

As to why the fire/EMS need to split off from the cities, I would refer you to the letter the OFD union president wrote several months ago. Between that and what I've heard other firefighters say it boils down to the cities not allocating proper funding. Call volume is up over 50% in the last ten years with no proportional increase in staffing, equipment is years behind on replacement, and the fire department has to ask for special budget enhancements all year long just to get necessary gear and equipment. People point the class 2 rating of OFD specifically (I can't remember what Tumwater is--it's not as highly rated) and say that everything is fine and dandy why do they need more money, but if you talk to the guys on the line it sounds like things are about to fall off a cliff at the current trajectory.

I'm with you that I would prefer the fire department be a part of the city and get what it needs, but it sounds like the cities are either unwilling or unable to allocate to the fire department(s) the money they need to sustain their high level of service. In my opinion, the cities blow millions on wasteful pet projects and the transient population that would plug the holes in the fire department budgets, but I've given up all hope that the city leadership will stop wasting money and focus on the core services they are obligated to provide to the taxpayers.

That leads me to the conclusion that it's either the RFA which divorces the fire departments entirely from the drunken-sailor spending and mismanagement of the cities or each city passes their own levy which is a bandaid until we're back in this position again in 5-10 years as the cities continue to waste money.

As to your comments on the board rubber stamping whatever the firefighter's union wants I agree that the board would likely have a healthy share of retired/ex-FF types on it, but that is not far removed from any of our local fire districts; browsing the voter pamphlets each year reveals that many fire district board members are retired/current FFs themselves, and the impression I get from some of the county fire people I've run into and talked with over the years is that their boards aren't into rubber stamping whatever the union wants.