Yachats fire board discusses how to proceed after Nov. 2 levy defeat, but uncertain on what to do next or how to do it

 

By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com

The board of the Yachats Rural Fire Protection District is not sure what it’s going to do about its levy proposal that voters turned down last week.

One week after its big money request was soundly defeated by voters, the five-member Yachats Rural Fire Protection District board met Monday to discuss what to do next.

Not much immediately, it appears – other than to blame itself for allowing it to get into poor financial condition over the past five years, poor communication with the public, and for at least one member to chide voters for not understanding more about what the department could lose.

“What’s going to happen to the district if we don’t get the money we’re asking for,” Ed Hallahan, the longtime board member who put together the levy request, said at the beginning of a inconclusive, hour-long discussion. “The people out there don’t realize what they’re going to lose. If we don’t have people here we don’t respond.”

The fire district last week asked voters to approve a new levy of $1.59 per $1,000 assessed property value – which would have added $477 to the tax bill of property assessed at $300,000 its first year, then drop to $300 its second year. That would be on top of a tax base, two other much smaller levies and a bond measure previously approved by voters.

But it was rejected by a margin of 56 percent to 44 percent, the first defeat of a money measure in the district’s history.

The Nov. 2 levy request came after years of financial missteps, lack of board oversight and leadership, the district not being clear why it needed so much money, and  not asking for smaller, more gradual increases in the two other levies that have been OK’d by voters every three years, board members said Monday.

Now the district borrows money between April and November to help make ends meet and pays that back when property taxes arrive in the fall. It has little money in an equipment replacement fund and no yearly cash carryover to use instead of the bank loans, which cost it $25,000 a year in interest.

Betty Johnston, another longtime board member who has continually wondered aloud how finances got so bad, said voters told her they simply couldn’t afford that large of a property tax increase.

Donald Tucker, who has been on the board for two years, said while the levy constituted a “significant” tax increase, there was confusion in the public’s eye with what the district planned to do with proceeds from the sale of its former station in downtown Yachats, and that voters outside the city of Yachats seemed less connected to the district.

“This is a significant tax increase, but there are other issues,” Tucker said.

Board member Drew Tracy urged the district to investigate a two-year grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is awarding millions nationwide to beef up fire services by paying for firefighters and equipment. So far in 2021, it has made grants to 28 mostly rural Oregon fire departments.

Tracy also urged the board to have a larger discussion about the district’s relationship with South Lincoln Ambulance, a nonprofit controlled by district administrators Frankie Petrick and Shelby Knife and is staffed by Yachats firefighters/paramedics in return for equipment purchases and $150 a month rent. He said the board should at least talk with Pacific West Ambulance, which serves the rest of Lincoln County, to ask if and how it might cover the Yachats area if the board decided to absorb the nonprofit into the district or drop it entirely.

The chair of the district’s budget committee and at least three other board members have previously requested that discussion – but it has never taken place.

“We need to have that conversation,” Tracy said. “We need to look at all the alternatives.”

Board members discussed having each of them find someone who voted “no” on the levy and ask them to meet to let the board know why, so it could address those issues. But it didn’t formalize any effort or suggest a method for sorting out the district’s financial issues.

In campaigning for the Nov. 2 levy, the board and district administrators did not specify how it would use the $944,000 the new levy would bring in its first year. Nor did it detail how it will use the $338,000 in one-time proceeds it got in September for the sale of its former station in downtown Yachats. It’s current operating budget is $1.62 million a year.

Hallahan and Tracy previously said the district wants to hire 1-2 more firefighter/paramedics – it has six now – to help staff its station up the Yachats River and to cut overtime costs when a firefighter is on vacation, sick or in training. The total cost of one firefighter is about $100,000 a year.

The board indicated during budget deliberations in June that it needs to put money into reserve to replace or repair equipment – there’s just $25,000 in there now – and to establish a cash carryover to end the $350,000 to $500,000 it has been borrowing each year to cover operating costs.

Petrick asked the board Monday – but did not get an answer – on how it wanted to proceed.

“Can we go back to voters and ask for less, and will that be effective?” she asked.

The board has said if the Nov. 2 levy failed that it would try again in May. The deadline for filing with the Lincoln County clerk is Feb. 25.

“We have to go back to the ballot, we have no choice on that,” Hallahan said. “But we need a better plan.”

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For a previous, more detailed look on Yachats Rural Fire Protection District financial issues go here