Big hike in Orcas fire tax levy

The Orcas Island Fire Department’s tax levy will be going up 13.7 percent, bringing the 2004 budget to $1,566,017, and pushing island property owners’ tax bills up by 13 cents per $1,000 assessed valuation, from 96 cents to $1.09, according to estimates provided by county Assessor Paul Dossett. Fire commissioners are doing this without a vote of the people.

Tax districts are required to limit their annual levy hikes to 1 percent, but fire commissioners had previously “banked” another 10 percent by refusing for several years to take the maximum amount allowed by law. Still more money will be coming to the fire department in 2004 in the form of tax dollars generated this year by new construction, Dossett said.

The vote setting the 2004 budget was 2-1, with Commissioners Harvey Olsan and John Erly voting “yes,” and Bob Phalan voting “no.” The budget was approved at the Nov. 11 meeting of the commission.

Phalan didn’t object to the dollar amount; his concerns were about some of the expenditures. “I have some nagging misgivings about the things we should be spending money on,” Commissioner Bob Phalan said, contending that more money will be needed in the next few years to replace “rolling stock” -- fire engines, tankers and a much-needed new fire station facility in Deer Harbor. More money could be allocated for these items if less went for salaries, and for what Phalan described as “high-tech” items that, he feels, are beyond the needs of a small, rural department.

Rolling stock doesn’t come cheap. New fire engines, for example, run $360,000, tankers cost $200,000, while construction of new facilities on the island is always very expensive, Chief Gary Bennett said. Phalan fears that the department won’t have enough money to purchase the equipment when it will be be time to replace it, beginning in 2006.

Bennett, however, insisted that the department will be able to buy all its needed equipment. He explained that there will be a problem only if it decides to pay cash. “We can do a lease-purchase, or we can extend the life” of the equipment, he said.

Departmental salary expenditures have risen 105 percent since 1999, Phalan noted. The main reason, Phalan admitted, is because the department has added a full-time Emergency Medical Services coordinator (Garth Eimers) and a public safety officer (Max Jones). But Phalan believes that some of the other salaries are too high.

Overall, money for salaries will increase by about $5,000 this, from $541,450 in 2003 to $546,655 in 2004. Bennett is slated to receive a pay hike of $3,000 next year, from $61,000 to $64,000. But that still leaves him with less money than his counterparts on Lopez and San Juan Island. (See chart below.)

Among the items in the 2004 budget described by Phalan as “high-tech” are two laptop computers for the ambulances, and one Lifepack-12. The laptops, which will cost the department $8,800, will allow paramedics to place each patient’s records in a single file, “and not in 45 sheets of paper,” Bennett said. The Lifepack-12, which has a price tag of $28,500, is a sophisticated diagnostic tool that’s used in a variety of medical conditions. It can do heart monitoring and pacing, the chief added. Both were recommended by the Emergency Medical Services division of the department.

Local fire chiefs’ salaries

Lopez $75,000

San Juan $72,000

Orcas $64,000 (in 2004)

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