By ANNELI FOGT

Editor

Two women are vying for a spot on the five-person Vashon Island Fire & Rescue board of commissioners, and VIFR Fire Chief Hank Lipe said Thursday that the new commissioner will face a “jigsaw puzzle” of finances upon election.

The department is in the midst of a longer-than-expected transition to a new paramedic program that would make the department’s paramedics part of the larger South King County system. VIFR board commissioner Rex Stratton, who is moving and leaving his position on the board open, said Thursday that the transition is taking so long because of the negotiations between the county and firefighters’ unions. When completed, the transition is expected to take some of the strain off the department’s overworked budget, especially in overtime costs. However, the plan has been controversial within the department because of worries that it would leave the island with insufficient emergency medical service (EMS) and fire coverage.

Lipe said that currently only two paramedics and two EMTs work a shift on any given day. Because of Vashon’s location, patients sometimes need to be transported off the island and when that happens, one paramedic and one EMT can be off the island for two to three hours.

The setup is an exception to King County’s regulations that two paramedics must always transport patients.

While the one paramedic is gone, another paramedic and one EMT remain on-island. If a second medical call requiring transport comes in during those hours, a medical helicopter is the only option. Overtime costs are racked up when a paramedic is on vacation, sick or on leave and another one needs to fill one of the two paramedic positions. Paramedics result in roughly $200,000 of overtime pay yearly, according to Lipe.

Meanwhile, he said that the volume of medical aid calls is on the rise. The department responded to 828 EMS or rescue calls between January and September 2014. In that same time period this year, the department has responded to 929.

“The cost of advanced life support (ALS) is a lot for us,” Lipe said. “ALS care gets money that was supposed to go toward other things like maintenance or replacing equipment. This integrated approach (with the new paramedic program) will be better and help establish a long-term sustainable plan.”

He continued to say that the department needs to focus on coping with this increased demand before addressing any other issues.

While the new program is expected to help curb some overtime costs, it may be all for naught in four years. Lipe and Stratton said that the largest hurdle standing between the department and their successful financial future is the passing of the Medic One levy that the county will vote on in 2019.

Medic One has been historically funded by six-year tax levies, but Stratton and Lipe said that if the upcoming levy does not pass, the department could be facing a significant monetary shortfall and the loss of their medics.

“There may not even be a levy,” Stratton said. “If that were to happen, we’d have to figure out how to provide emergency services. Our medics wouldn’t belong to us, and they wouldn’t belong to Medic One. It would then be a lot of work to re-organize the fire district.”

Many King County municipalities are joining together and consolidating to help better provide for all fire services. For example, communities such as Enumclaw, Black Diamond and Maple Valley, who are already served by Medic One, are combining with Kent’s larger fire district to create one “huge regional fire authority,” Stratton said.

The worry for Vashon is that by being an island, there is no chance for consolidation with a larger entity. If no levy is passed, funding for the Medic One program falls through.

“The moat is a big hurdle for mutual aid,” Stratton said. “In the next few years, we’re going to have to be thinking about our plan.”

He said the levy is a “critical issue” that will not be able to be solved alone, and stressed the importance of collaborating with off-island districts and departments to come up with a solution.

On top of the unknown future of paramedic funding, the department is facing another funding problem that stems from an outdated fire department operations levy. The last fire operations levy was passed by voters in 1998 at a rate of $1.50 in taxes for every $1,000 of assessed home value. The levy is completely separate from the Medic One levies and deals only with fire department expenses.

Stratton said the 1998 levy is “permanent” and will not have to be voted on again, but the levy rate has not been updated to account for inflation of home prices. The levy rate does not automatically update as home values rise, so the levy rate has stayed the same even as home values have risen.

“People think that (the levy rate) automatically rises as home values rise, but that’s not true,” Stratton said. “Our own operating levy is $1.50 per $1,000, but because of inflation, it has eroded down to $1 per $1,000.”

The levy rate cannot be bumped back up to $1.50 without knocking the Vashon Park District’s funding down to nearly nothing. The current state system lists the fire, park and cemetry districts as “junior” tax districts that, when combined with the county taxes, cannot take more than $5.90 per $1,000 of home value altogether.

“That’s the system we have. It’s a horrible system,” Stratton said.

Lipe said that funding for the department is going to have to be responsive to the public, regardless of where it’s coming from.

“Forcing (tax) increases doesn’t work,” he said.

Meanwhile, VIFR board chair Candy McCullough said that levies have fallen before, and the department has survived.

“If it fails, we’ll just have to figure something else out,” McCullough said. “What we have is what we have, and we have to work with it. We’ll make it work; we have before.”

She said that part of the problem may be the expectations of islanders. McCullough said that she moved to Vashon with the expectation that the emergency services would be slower and the departments would be smaller. She said that the issues are the trade-off for living somewhere rural.

Stratton seconded her thoughts, and said that residents are expecting big-city response on Vashon, which is not possible.

“Our residents expect to stay rural, but they want the service and the response times of living in Seattle,” Stratton said. “In the end, (local districts) are all in competition for a small pool of money: whatever the public is willing to pay.”

The two candidates running to replace Stratton and take on the department’s finances are Tamalyn Nigretto and Brigitte Schran Brown. They will make statements and at the end of tomorrow’s 7 p.m. school board debate at the Penny Farcy building on Bank Road.