Citizens committee: Lacey, fire district should part

Dispute: City plans own department after fight over money, control

CHRISTIAN HILL; The Olympian | • Published October 29, 2009

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LACEY - A citizen advisory committee has recommended that the city part ways with Lacey Fire District 3 as contract negotiations between the two public agencies have broken down.

City and district officials met more than a dozen times in formal and informal settings to talk about ways they could continue a contractual relationship after the existing service contract expires at the end of 2010.

The City Council unanimously voted in February not to renew the contract after hearing a recommendation from the city manager to start a separate fire department.

That decision appeared to end a dispute primarily based on money and control, highlighted by the city suing the district earlier this year over its closure of the Hawks Prairie fire station as a result of budget cuts. The lawsuit has been settled, and the station has reopened. City officials said they opted to revisit the issue as a matter of “due diligence” while negotiating the division of jointly owned equipment and fire stations with the district.

The talks collapsed Oct. 8 after city officials said the terms of a service contract proposed by the district starting in 2011 were unacceptable. They suggested that future talks will focus solely on dividing up jointly owned assets, not continuing a service agreement, and ended the meeting.

“There doesn’t seem to be a workable alternative,” Mayor Graeme Sackrison told the City Council last week during a presentation about the status of the talks. The presentation was added to the agenda at the beginning of the meeting.

Minutes later, Tom Dozal, acting on behalf of the citizen committee, presented the committee’s unanimous recommendation for the city to start its own fire department. It agreed that a department would improve service to city residents, allow residents to vote on the future of the service, and allow for better management of money and operations.

Lacey fire commissioners mailed district residents an open letter updating them on the status of negotiations, or the lack thereof. Residents received the letter this week.

Both sides expressed surprise at the abrupt end to negotiations.

Lacey Fire Commissioner Skip Houser said the district’s response to the city’s contract proposal was not presented as a take-it-or-leave-it offer. He said he’s a “little perplexed” that Sackrison identified in his presentation major issues of disagreement in the respective proposals when the process never went far.

Sackrison said he was flabbergasted that the district didn’t treat issues identified in the city’s contract proposal with the same level of importance. As such, he said, continuing negotiations didn’t make sense given the deadline under the current contract.

ELECTION ISSUE

Emergency response in Lacey has emerged as a major campaign issue in the three contested races for council seats to be decided Tuesday. The three challengers, well funded and supported by the Lacey firefighters’ union, oppose creating a new fire department and support either annexing the city into the district or creating a regional fire authority.

Besides Sackrison, Deputy Mayor John Darby and Councilwoman Ann Burgman are up for election. Both returned to the fence after their votes in February. They said they wanted to hear from the citizen advisory committee before deciding whether to remain with the fire district. Neither responded to a phone message seeking comment Wednesday.

Both sides have expressed a willingness to return to the negotiating table. There’s little additional evidence that will happen, however.

In 2011, under its proposed contract, the city offered to pay the district $4.86 million – the amount it plans to pay in 2010 in the final year of the existing contract – plus an adjustment for inflation. The district countered with a proposal for the city to pay $5.4 million.

Money has been at the root of the dispute. The district maintains that the city isn’t paying its fair share for the services it receives under the contract. It calculates that district residents pay $1.04 per $1,000 of assessed value for emergency response services, while city residents pay less – $0.87 per $1,000 of assessed value.

The city says it does pay its fair share and should be getting better service for its money. It faults how district leaders are managing the district budget and operations. It also notes that the annual contribution under the contract has risen 90 percent in six years, while revenue from the tax levy paid by property owners in the district has risen 19.3 percent during the same period, according to Sackrison’s presentation.

Another issue raised in the city’s proposal is governance. The city wanted the same authority vested in fire commissioners to make decisions related to the district budget and its operations.

“The amount of money we spend keeps going up and the voice we have keeps going down,” the mayor said during an earlier interview.

Frank Kirkbride, a fire commissioner, said the district would welcome the city’s involvement in those discussions but said negotiations over a new contract and governance are separate discussions.

“Somehow, it got confused; it got mixed up,” he said.

Another major issue the city raised was faster response times. The city wanted response times of eight minutes or less 90 percent of the time, closer in line with the standard recommended by the National Fire Protection Association. The district offered nine minutes in its counterproposal. The city’s proposal includes one minute for dispatchers to alert firefighters of the call; the district’s does not. Consultants’ reports prepared and paid for by the city and district concluded that district response times met the NFPA standard of six minutes about 40 percent of the time.

Houser said the city’s request was an unrealistic goal without additional manpower and fire stations because the district’s response area, including the city limits, is 71 square miles.

City staff members asked 34 people to serve on the citizens advisory committee while the city and district continued their negotiations. They said the committee represents a broad cross-section of the community.

Dozal said in a later interview that an average of about two dozen committee members attended the meetings. Twenty were present Oct. 21 when they cast the committee’s unanimous recommendation, he said. They first met April 15 and held meetings in June, August and September before last week’s vote, Spence said.

Dozal said the process wasn’t “a one-sided feeding of information” and that the committee made an objective decision. Asked whether the council’s vote earlier in the year influenced the deliberations, he responded: “I never felt any pressure at any time. I never felt that we were being pointed in any direction, either.”

Two other committee members interviewed Wednesday echoed his sentiments.

Christian Hill: 360-754-5427

chill@theolympian.com