Julia Park
The Peninsula Gateway (Gig Harbor, Wash.)
(TNS)
Jul. 23—The $800,000 maintenance and operations levy (M&O levy) for the Key Peninsula Fire Department may face more scrutiny this year from voters when they see it on the Aug. 6 ballot.
Since the fire department purchased the site of what was formerly O’Callahan’s Pub & Grill at 15610 92nd St. NW and the two parcels behind it in 2021 for $2.1 million, some residents have expressed concerns about the department’s fiscal transparency and responsibility.
Those frustrations came to a head July 10 at a town hall meeting at the Key Center Station as the public asked questions about the levy.
The full name of the levy is Proposition No. 1 — Property Tax Levy for Maintenance and Operation Expenses in the Pierce County Voters’ Pamphlet. Key Peninsula voters have approved the same $800,000 levy in each four-year cycle since 2012. If it passes again this year with the required 60% supermajority, it will maintain existing levels of fire and emergency medical services for communities on the Key Peninsula. The last time it was on the ballot, in 2020, it passed with 65 percent.
The peninsula covers about 60 square miles and will have a population approaching 25,000 by 2025, according to Pierce County’s community plan.
The levy is a property tax of about $0.17 per $1,000 of assessed property value, according to the voters’ pamphlet. That’s about $85 in taxes each year for the owner of a $500,000 home.
What will the levy pay for?
Key Peninsula Fire Chief Nick Swinhart said the levy will pay for three things: staffing, maintenance of existing facilities, and the purchase and maintenance of equipment. It’s the smallest of the three levies supporting the department, according to a breakdown of the department’s funding in 2023 that Swinhart shared in a presentation at the July 10 town hall meeting.
Swinhart told The News Tribune that the $800,000 levy isn’t a huge portion of the fire department’s budget, so it’s hard to say if the levy would pay for a specific vehicle or repairs on a specific fire station. In a blog post addressed to Key Peninsula residents about the levy, Swinhart wrote that the levy will support services including paramedic units at the Wauna and Longbranch stations and a fire engine and battalion chief at the Home station.
According to the presentation, the department received about $6.3 million from a fire levy, about $1.6 million from an EMS levy and just under $800,000 from the M&O levy in 2023. It also received $500,000 from ambulance billing and $400,000 from a Ground Emergency Medical Transportation program.
Staffing may take the biggest hit if the M&O levy doesn’t pass. Swinhart said that almost 80% of the fire department’s budget is devoted to staff salaries and benefits. Losing $800,000 could lead to cutting five or six firefighters from their workforce, which currently has 33 full-time firefighters. The department also has 20 volunteers including firefighters, tender operators and support staff, according to Key Peninsula Fire spokesperson Anne Nesbit.
“The loss of staff would be inevitable,” Swinhart said. “I don’t know how we could even plug that sort of hole.”
Losing that many staff could also potentially lead to the department closing one of their staffed stations. There are currently three fully-staffed stations: Station 44 at Wauna, Station 47 at Home and Station 49 at Longbranch. Fully-staffed means the station has at least two staff members at the Wauna and Longbranch stations and at least three at the Home station, 24/7. The other stations at Wright Bliss and Herron Island are volunteer stations and the station at Key Center is staffed during business hours and has vehicles for volunteer use. The Key Center station also has the department’s administrative offices.
Whether or not a station is staffed depends in part on the call volume around that area.
“Some agencies will build stations in areas where they anticipate growth in the future, and so it remains unstaffed until that growth materializes,” Swinhart said. “Sometimes other agencies will have a location that is used for volunteer response and at some point in the future can be staffed full time.”
They might not have to close a station if they shuffled their staff around to try to keep at least one responder in the third station, but they likely wouldn’t be able to keep an ambulance at that station, Swinhart said.
The reduced staffing could also impact fire department response times. Swinhart said he couldn’t generalize how much longer response times would be because it depends on where a person is calling 911 from. A person who calls 911 near the Wauna station might be able to expect an ambulance in a couple of minutes, but if the station in Longbranch was hypothetically no longer staffed, a 911 caller in the Longbranch area might have to wait several more minutes for help to arrive, Swinhart said.
He said that if Proposition No. 1 doesn’t pass on the Aug. 6 ballot, that doesn’t mean staff will be laid off immediately. The fire department plans to file the levy for the November ballot ahead of time so that voters have another chance to approve it if the vote fails in August.
If the levy passes in August, the department will ask Pierce County to pull it off the November ballot, he said.
If the department didn’t purchase the properties in Key Center, would they still need the levy?
Swinhart said the purchase of the Key Center properties and the levy are based on totally different funding mechanisms. The department took out a low-interest loan to purchase the Key Center properties rather than using funds from their budget.
In a blog post on the Key Peninsula Fire website, Swinhart directly addressed rumors that if the department had not purchased the Key Center properties, they wouldn’t need the fire levy.
“The M&O levy has been supported by the community since 2012, long before the properties in Key Center were purchased,” Swinhart wrote. “The reality is that even if the District had not purchased those properties, the M&O levy would still be needed to maintain our current level of service.”
With the approval of the District Fire Commissioners, the department bought the two parcels of land known as the Olson estate behind the O’Callahan’s building with the aim of building a new fire station and training facility there. The department bought the O’Callahan’s building for a new health clinic, but abandoned that plan after Peninsula Community Health Services opened a location about 2 miles away and the department decided that they did not have the financial ability to run a health clinic at that time, according to District Fire Commissioner Stan Moffett.
The department says there’s a need for a new headquarters building. The existing Key Center station, at 8911 Key Peninsula Highway NW, is old and too small for the department, Swinhart told The Gateway a few months after he was hired in 2022. Commissioner Board Chair Randy Takehara said at the July 10 town hall meeting that the building is 51 years old and beyond its natural lifespan. The building also lacks sleeping quarters for staff, Commissioner Moffett said at the meeting.
None of the plans for new facilities have come to fruition yet. Some residents have expressed concerns that the original purchases were made without broad community support and communication. Swinhart said that there has been talk among the commissioners about interest in selling the O’Callahan’s property, but for now the decision has been to hold on to the properties.
Moffett said that he thinks the board is generally in agreement that when the opportunity arises, the O’Callahan’s property will be sold. They don’t currently have a timeline and he said he thinks the decision hinges on the local economy, interest rates, demand and other factors. He doesn’t think putting it up for sale is economically prudent at this time, but that it potentially could be in the next few years, he said.
Several residents at the July 10 meeting shared opinions about how they believed the fire department should handle the property decisions moving forward.
“It’s a matter of trust,” one resident said about what she described as the department’s lack of transparency with the public about the property purchases. She asked why the department couldn’t sell the aging Key Center station and move their staff to the Wright Bliss station, which is not staffed by career firefighters. Commissioner Shawn Jensen said at the meeting that if this were to occur, the department would still need a place to put their administrative staff.
“My wife and I are talking about not voting for the next (levy) and it all is about this property,” another resident said.
Other residents emphasized the need for their neighbors to understand that the M&O levy is separate from the bond that the district took out in 2021 to pay for the Key Center properties, and not linger on decisions made in part by those no longer with the department.
Former Fire Chief Dustin Morrow made the decision to buy the Key Center properties with the board of commissioners and left to lead Central Pierce Fire & Rescue just as the property sale went through, according to spokesperson Nesbit.
One resident asked why others are pushing the fire department to rush to sell the Key Center properties.
“Do we need to have basically a fire sale and take a loss? No, we don’t,” she said. “It’s just sitting there. The loan is what it is. It’s already guaranteed. That ship sailed three years ago, almost.”
Alyssa Johnstone, a local resident, offered around January to buy the O’Callahan’s building from the department and use it for an early learning child care center, but those plans fell through. According to Moffett, the reason was because her bids for the property were too low.
How will community members be kept informed about upcoming decisions for Key Peninsula Fire?
From 9-10 a.m. on Aug. 1, residents can attend the monthly “Coffee with the Chief” event to ask questions about the levy before the Aug. 6 election.
Moffett said the commissioners are working on a strategic plan for the fire district that he estimates will be completed in the next few months. He’s hopeful there will be more town hall meetings to get community input in the fall and winter. Information on those meetings and the finished plan, which will include plans about the department’s capital facilities, equipment and services, will come via the department’s Facebook page and website, he said.
He said he believes the next town hall meeting could happen in October or November.
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