The creation of a new fire district to cover the Sweet Home area would benefit Sweet Home residents by providing a stable source of funding to reserve funding for future equipment purchases, according to the Sweet Home Fire Chief.
The proposal, the Sweet Home Ambulance and Fire District, which goes before voters on Nov. 7’s mail-in ballot. The proposal will include three measures. One would dissolve the ambulance district. Another would dissolve the rural fire district, and the third would create a new fire district, which would encompass most of the developed land in the ambulance district.
“Approximately $200,000 in additional revenue would be generated each year for fire department operations,” Chief Gray said. “With the increased revenues, the fire department’s funding would become stable affording them the opportunity to standardize their operations and equipment. They would have the ability to purchase state-of-the-art fire apparatus on a standard replacement schedule, maintain the current fleet of ambulances, retain current levels of fire and EMS personnel and allow them to plan for future growth.”
A good example of specialized equipment the fire department needs that it has been unable to purchase is a rural response engine, Chief Gray said. That would give the department the ability to quickly respond to hard-to-reach rural homes current fire equipment may not be able to reach. The department’s current equipment is designed for street use. The department could also purchase special “engine-tenders” that would have the ability to shuttle larger volumes of water into rural areas while maintaining firefighting capabilities.
Other items include aerial equipment to help deal with fires at Smurfit, Sweet Home High School or Willamette Industries, for example, which otherwise are not protected well, Chief Gray said. At this point, a serious fire at either place would require specialized equipment to respond from Lebanon or Albany.
“We can’t afford to lose businesses in town,” Chief Gray said. “We don’t dare lose businesses as a result of fire. Our job is not simply sitting here waiting for the whistle to blow. Our job is to plan for growth and protecting what we have.”
With or without the new district, Chief Gray is forming a committee to research local fire protection needs and develop a master strategic plan for the department.
The proposed budget for the new fire district would provide $100,000 in equipment reserves each year in addition to $28,500 spent in capital outlays, or general equipment, each year. In the current budget, 2000-01, the department has budgeted $37,000 to make the final payment on its newest engine. It also budgeted $18,500 and put away $25,000 for the purchase of a new response unit. The ambulance division budgeted $8,000 for equipment. In the 2000-01 budget, a total of $88,500 is to be transferred to equipment reserves or spent on equipment. The proposed district would spend $128,500 each year in those two areas, a $40,000 increase.
The proposed budget also reflects an increase in personnel of one paramedic in its first year, 2001-02. The current budget for personnel is approximately $695,000. The new district’s project budget is for $726,844 for personnel. That would also reflect an increase in staffing to deal with finances.
With current call volumes upward of 20 percent over last year’s, staffing has become an issue for the department, Chief Gray said. The last increase in paramedic staffing levels was seven years ago. “That’s amazing to think that we’ve been able to keep up with it,” but the call load is “killing them.”
Paramedics work a 24 hour shift every three days, Chief Gray said, but they get called back on their days off and are often unable to leave work on time. One paramedic Thursday morning was called back before he could leave the building and did not leave work until after 10 a.m. “As the call volumes increase, the guys put extra time in.”
As they get more and more work, “the guys have to get away from it,” Chief Gray said, and they have to leave town to do that, meaning that they are not available for call back. Many people think a paramedic’s life is easy when they walk in and see them relaxing, watching TV; but what people do not see is that they just returned from a stressful call where a patient died or they were working on people they know, and in a small town, their friends.
After calls like that, paramedics may be relaxing, but they are also coping with the mental stress, Chief Gray said. Staffing “probably wasn’t quite as serious an issue when we started this districting issue.”
Call volumes were not too high, Chief Gray said. Now, staffing is an issue.
The proposed district’s budget would address the equipment issue as well as staffing, Chief Gray said.
Fire department tax revenue comes from three sources, $248,306 from a four-year local option levy shared with the police department, $57,000 from the Sweet Home Rural Fire District and $574,721 from the Sweet Home Ambulance District, which includes all of Sweet Home and extends from the Brownsville area nearly to the Santiam Pass. The department also receives revenue through billing and its FireMed subscriptions.
The rural fire district includes rural property near Sweet Home. The proposal would bring areas unprotected by fire services, including Cascadia, Mark’s Ridge and the Santiam Terrace, Mountain Home Drive, McDowell Creek, Sunnyside Road, Quartzville Road, Liberty Road and Upper Calapooia Drive area into a fire district.
The new district’s permanent tax rate would be $1.50 per $1,000 of property value, meaning that a $100,000 home would have a tax of $150. Residents in Sweet Home pay approximately $1.43 and would see a seven-cent increase in their taxes as a result of the new district.
Those living outside Sweet Home but in the rural fire district would see an increase of about 62 cents from about 88 cents.
Those living in the ambulance district outside the City of Sweet Home and the rural fire district would see an increase of approximately $1.07.
Proponents of the proposal say that persons without fire protection now could expect a decrease in their fire insurance, offsetting the cost of the tax increase.
The Committee for Adequate Fire and Ambulance Service, the political action committee supporting the proposal will hold several public information meetings about the fire district proposal.
Meetings will be held at the Holley Grange on Oct. 14, East Linn Christian School on Oct. 19 and Cascadia Church on Oct. 26. The meetings all start at 7 p.m.