Fire District 3 Looking At Thrifty Ways To Upgrade

You could say he’s the MacGyver of the firefighting industry.

A little patch-up here, a little tweak of the budget there and … voila! Spokane County Fire Protection District 3 Chief Bruce Holloway has stretched his district’s resources once again.

Fire District 3, the biggest in area in the county, covers more than 550 square miles and 12,000 residents in rural southwest Spokane County. It has 10 stations, including Medical Lake, Cheney, Amber Lake and Chapman Lake. And it may be the thriftiest outfit around.

When too-few voters turned out to approve a $700,000 property tax levy last September, it left some wondering how much further the budget could be stretched.

Not a problem, said Holloway.

“We’re alive and well,” he said. “We’re progressing. It’s just going to be a little slower.”

The one-year excess levy would have allowed the district to replace several aging vehicles and make additions to some of its tiny stations.

The extra money would have freed up more of the annual capital budget to upgrade other stations and replace more trucks, updating the district by 2003.

It will take until 2010 to do the same without the levy.

The district could have chosen to place the levy before voters again in the Feb. 3 election. But Holloway said that wasn’t a popular option with the levy committee, composed of station commissioners and staff.

“I don’t think, at this point, the commissioners will be interested in running a levy again anytime soon - if ever,” he said.

“The makeup of the committee reflects the cultures in the district. Some are conservative, some liberal. It was remarkable even to vote to place a levy on the ballot in September,” he said.

During November’s election, both candidates for district commissioner voiced those concerns, saying the district was fine without expensive upgrades.

“I’m a taxpayer myself, so I don’t want to see a big increase,” said Amber Lake farmer Ronald McKinley, who won the race.

So the district got creative.

Need more stations to cover the vast rural district? Build simple, less expensive wood-framed structures at $100,000 a pop.

Not enough money for the new attack engines the district desperately needs? Buy used chassis and build the rigs in the district shop.

The district’s fleet includes several 1960s-era trucks and one apple-red 1959 Ford brush truck. (“A collector’s item,” Holloway laughs).

It’s in the district’s 10-year projection to replace them, but not with new rigs.

For example, Holloway recently found a used ladder truck. The plan is to add a new fabricated back end.

“It’s gonna save us bunches of money,” he says with the relish of the most ardent coupon-clipper.

Currently under the knife in the shop is a red attack engine, which is undergoing a conversion to add hoses and air packs, and increase pumping capacity.

This will add about 10 or 15 years onto the life of the truck, said Hollway.

Four or five more attack rigs are in line for similar transformations.

Also in the future: expanding the district’s emergency medical services from three stations to five. It would cost about $100,000 to add on EMS equipment at the Marshal and Tyler stations.

Since Holloway took over as chief in 1992, the district’s service calls have increased from 450 to 750 per year.

The district population is ballooning, he said, especially from the Four Lakes area, heading east toward Spokane.

It’s nothing they can’t handle, he said, where 95 percent of the staff is part-time, paid on a per-call basis.

“We’ve got some really dedicated people,” he said. “We do some things a little differently, and save quite a bit of money.”

, DataTimes