Fire District to limit tax levy

Spokane Valley Fire Department commissioners have curtailed their regular tax levy next year, but hope voters will renew a special levy.

The special levy for maintenance and operation supplements the base levy, and has long been a major component of the autonomous district’s budget.

“This is an important part of who we are because it is about 50 percent of our overall budget,” Chief Mike Thompson said.

Despite its name, the department is an independent fire district that receives no financial support from any of the cities it serves. The district includes unincorporated areas as well as the cities of Spokane Valley, Liberty Lake, Millwood.

Commissioners voted last week to place a three-year maintenance and operation levy before voters on Feb. 3.

The measure asks for a specific tax rate rather than fixed amounts of money. Voters are asked to approve a rate of $1.59 per $1,000 of assessed property value in all three years of the levy.

Thompson said the proposed maintenance and operation levy rate is calculated to maintain the district’s traditional goal of an overall property tax rate about $3 per thousand.

Districts that provide emergency medical service and have full-time employees may collect basic tax rates up to $1.50 per thousand. Anything beyond that must come from special M&O levies that voters approve from time to time.

Thompson said the proposed M&O levy rate would raise an estimated $15.8 million in 2010, $16.1 million in 2011 and $16.4 million in 2012.

The current levy rate of $1.36 per thousand is expected to generate nearly $13.4 million next year.

The proposed rate increase would cost the owner of a $200,000 home $46 more per year.

However, district commissioners have imposed a one-year freeze on their basic tax rate, at $1.43 per thousand, forgoing a permitted increase to $1.50.

Voters last year authorized the district to restore its basic tax support to the statutory maximum of $1.50 per thousand and to keep it there for six years. But commissioners elected not to take the automatic increase next year while taxpayers cope with a recession.

Without a voter-approved lid lift, the basic tax rate tends to fall every year because of rising property values and state limits on spending. Special levies aren’t subject to those restrictions because they require 60 percent voter approval.

Freezing the basic rate for a year will curtail plans to build a new fire station, but the district relies on its M&O levy to finish filling the coffers for equipment replacement and day-to-day operations.

Thompson said the M&O levy is essential to the $26,857,809 budget commissioners recently adopted for 2009. The budget is up 4.5 percent from this year’s $25,689,899.

Thompson said the major capital expenditure in the budget is $480,000 for a new fire truck next year.

Wages, fuel and other operating costs also figure into the increase, but health insurance is probably the biggest factor in the budget increase, Thompson said.

“We saw almost a 21 percent increase in our health insurance costs from 2008, going into 2009,” he said.

For the first time, firefighters have agreed to start paying part of the premiums for their dependants: $25 for a spouse, or $50 for a spouse and children. Also, Thompson said, insurance co-payments will quadruple to $20 and prescription costs will increase.

The department’s contract with its union firefighters calls for a 3 percent raise in April, followed by a 4 percent raise July 1, for a total of 4.75 percent over the year, Thompson said.

He said the contract calls for raises in 2010 and 2011 that are 1 percentage point larger than the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers on Jan. 1 of those years.

Senior, nonunion officers are to receive the same raises, Thompson said.

Under state law, which substitutes binding arbitration for the right to strike, firefighter wages are guided by those in other Washington departments that are considered comparable.

The Spokane Valley Fire Department’s new three-year contract is designed to bring firefighters up to the average in their eight-department group, Thompson said. He said the group includes Spokane, Yakima, Everett, Shoreline and Bellingham among others.

The Spokane Valley department’s one-year freeze on the basic tax rate is expected to cost the district about $685,000 next year, Thompson said. As a result, plans to build a new Station 10 at 17217 E. Sprague Ave. will be placed on hold for at least a year.

Station 10 currently consists of a doublewide mobile home and a garage.

Thompson said the district relies on its basic tax rate to build new stations without borrowing money.

A new Station 9 at 12121 E. 32nd Ave. was built that way. The station, which replaces a converted house at 11514 E. 16th Ave., opened last week.

Thompson said department officials hope to sell the house this spring after city officials restore its residential zoning. He said a sale fell through when a bank refused to grant a loan because the city had changed the house’s zoning for public safety use.

It will take several months for the city Planning Commission and the City Council to restore the old zoning, Thompson said.

Meanwhile, commissioners have authorized a department mechanic to rent the house for $1 a month.

Thompson said the arrangement is intended to benefit the department as well as the mechanic, who hasn’t been able to sell his home in Olympia or buy a new one since he was hired last year.

The mechanic is to perform maintenance work, including painting, and keep the house safe from vandalism while it awaits sale.

Thompson said the department lost money when it hired a property manager and rented out a couple of fourplexes at market rates while they awaited demolition in preparation for construction of the new Station 9.

“When people knew their lease was running out, they quit making payments,” Thompson said. “We were afraid we weren’t going to be able to get them out in time to start the construction of the new station.”

Also, he said the income was diminished by maintenance costs during short-term rentals.

Contact reporter John Craig at 927-2165 or by e-mail at johnc@spokesman.com.