Fire District May Cancel Budget Vote Concerns Raised Over Inadequate Notice

A controversial election that could nearly double the budget of the Sagle Fire Protection District may be postponed.

The election was scheduled for Tuesday, but the fire district commissioners are having a meeting at 7 p.m. today to consider canceling the election.

The election may be postponed until May.

Fire Chief Dean Raynor said a question about the district’s eligibility to conduct the election is the cause of the delay.

The district had come under fire because the election was not well-announced. Commissioners decided less than two weeks ago to have the election and did little more than place a legal advertisement in the newspaper.

Raynor said the lack of advertising was not intentional. “Maybe we tried to act too fast,” he said.

The ballot measure, if approved, would increase the fire department’s budget from $260,000 to about $500,000, Raynor said.

Normally, a taxing district cannot increase its budget more than 3 percent above the prior year, but Raynor said the increase would not change the mill levy rate of .00175, because the new income would come from undeveloped properties in the district that are not now being taxed.

The Bonner County Commissioners, at the request of the fire district, recently expanded the taxable property in the district from only structures to undeveloped property.

The increase in the budget could allow the department to continue the additional services it now performs - such as extrication at motor vehicle accidents and medical transportation.

The fire department has three full-time employees, a few part-time firefighters and a number of volunteers. Raynor would like to have a regular two-person team staffing the fire station at all times.

“We ran 255 calls last year,” Raynor said. “We can’t do that with an all-volunteer fire department. If all they want us to do is respond to their structure fires, then leave it as it is.”

MEETING Sagle fire commissioners will meet tonight at 7 p.m. at the district offices at 2639 Gun Club Road.