At a meeting of the Vashon-Maury Community Council last Thursday, both supporters and detractors of Vashon’s August Prop 1 ballot measure for a “lid lift” for Vashon Island Fire & Rescue (VIFR) squared off in front of a packed audience of almost 80 islanders attending in person and via Zoom.

The levy lid lift, if approved by voters, would authorize VIFR to increase its levy rate from about the current $1.13 per $1,000 of assessed value this year to $1.50 — the maximum allowed by state law — in 2024.

For the following five years, through 2030, the district could increase its property tax collections by another 6 percent each year, but the rate could not exceed $1.50, even if properties increase in value.

Vashon voters approved a similar six-year measure in 2017. That measure expires after this year, and if voters don’t give their blessing to another lid lift this year, VIFR’s property-tax revenue increases would be limited, by state law, to 1 percent in 2024 and each succeeding year.

If the levy passes, the cost to an owner of a home valued at $700,000 would be approximately $21.70 more per month in taxes to VIFR next year.

Staffing at VIFR

VIFR’s staffing, as of next week, will stand at 18 career firefighters/EMTs, with seven recently hired recruits graduating from fire academy training and joining the force.

According to Fire Chief Matt Vinci, if the levy passes, VIFR would maintain six career firefighters/EMTs assigned per shift, with a minimum of five every day.

If the levy fails, the district would maintain four career firefighters/EMTs per shift, and the Burton Fire Station, currently unstaffed, would remain so, he said.

“As of this morning, we are covering all four shifts with 11 career staff, a minimum of three per shift, and struggling to fill shifts with overtime and experiencing delayed responses, due to the over 130 simultaneous calls since January 1,” Vinci said on Tuesday.

​​Currently, Vinci said, the district also has 15-17 active volunteers which include EMTs, firefighters, and support members.

Upcoming ratings review

The community council meeting was part of a rollout of information about the levy. VIFR also held a community forum on Saturday with Eric Cunningham, representing the Washington Surveying & Rating Bureau, a property insurance rating organization.

At the meeting, Cunningham detailed a possible consequence of the levy’s failure: a downgrade of properties in Burton and a significant swatch of the south end from its current protection class 5 rating to a 9 — a higher protection class that some home insurance companies charge higher rates to cover.

WSRB is set to conduct its next survey of island properties in August. Ratings are based on numerous factors, including proximity to fully staffed stations, proximity to hydrants and access to water tender operations.

At the meeting on Saturday, Cunningham showed maps of Vashon-Maury, prepared by WSRB, that showed how fire protection ratings are expected to change in August, if the Burton Fire Station remains unstaffed.

Some islanders have already felt the pinch of price hikes for home insurance following a downgrade in ratings from WSRB.

The bureau’s last review of the island, in 2019, resulted in a rating downgrade of some areas of Vashon and Maury Island with properties slipping from 5 to 9. The expanded downgrade in August, if the Burton Fire Station remains unstaffed, would impact a far greater number of households.

At the community council forum, Nick Simmons, operator of the Burton Water Company, spoke in support of the levy, saying he had met with WSRB to learn more about the possible downgrade.

“I think that if [the Burton station] can’t be staffed without the levy, then the levy is a no-brainer for anybody who lives in Burton or south of Burton,” he said. “Because they are going to pay more than that in insurance anyway. I come from the water supply side — it doesn’t matter if you have a hydrant in your yard if there’s nobody to pump water out of it onto your house. The answer that I got is that station is not going to get staffed without the levy lift. So I’m satisfied.”

Community forum

At the community council’s forum, the citizen’s committee, “For a Safer Vashon” supporting the ballot measure was represented by islanders Dr. Jim Bristow, a retired pediatric cardiologist and co-coordinator of Vashon’s Medical Reserve Corps, and Gary English, a retired Deputy Chief of Seattle Fire, with 30 years of firefighting and EMT experience.

Representing the “No” camp was Scott Harvey, a retired small business banker, community activist and former park district commissioner, and chairperson of the “Islanders for Vashon Safety” committee that opposes the levy.

At the meeting, English and Bristow spoke first, pre-calling many objections to it that Harvey would raise later, in his presentation.

Both said that passage of the levy lift would enable VIFR to fulfill its newly-approved strategic plan, aimed at modernizing its fleet and hiring sufficient staff to more reliably serve the island’s emergency needs, after decades of underfunding.

“Passing Proposition 1 will continue the recovery of VIFR that started in 2017, after 27 years without a levy lid lift and inadequate funding,” said English.

The levy’s failure, they said, would have serious safety consequences for the island — a place where mutual aid from other fire departments can take more than an hour to arrive.

Bristow pushed back on what he called “a fiction” circulating in the community — “that VIFR should just rely on [King County] Medic One’s two paramedics to respond to life-threatening emergencies like heart attacks.”

Bristow, saying that both he and English had personally performed CPR hundreds of times, described CPR as a team effort.

“It takes seven first responders to perform modern, effective CPR,” Bristow added. “When paramedics are dispatched to a cardiac arrest, a VIFR ambulance is dispatched and VIFR sends every available responder. But if two or more responders are transporting a patient to an off-island hospital, the team is reduced and the net result is that fewer lives will be saved.”

English said levy funding was crucial to staffing the Burton Fire Station, describing that as necessary to improve response times island-wide. Dividing staffing between Bank Road and Burton, he said, would be a bad idea because it would degrade service to the most densely populated north end of Vashon.

Leaving the Burton Fire Station unstaffed, he said, would have the likely result of raising insurance rates for hundreds of islanders living in Burton or south of there.

Both English and Bristow also pushed back on the idea that the staffing of the Burton Fire Station and VIFR’s other staffing woes could be addressed by increasing the number of volunteer firefighters on Vashon.

“Volunteers are simply not a realistic solution to solving VIFR’s staffing shortages,” Bristow said, adding that the number of Vashon volunteers has been falling for years, following a national trend.

“A big reason for that is that it takes 600 hours of training to become a volunteer firefighter/EMT,” he said, turning to ask the audience, “Does anybody out there or on Zoom have an extra 600 hours to spare this year to become a volunteer?”

English also detailed another costly endeavor that VIFR now faces: its fleet is the oldest in the county, with two of VIFR’s fire trucks now 23 years old, with parts no longer available.

“Agencies in our region replace fire engines before 20 years in service,” he said. “At that age, it costs more to continuously repair vehicles than to replace them.”

In summarizing the “Vote Yes” platform, Bristow said, “In the end, it boils down to what your life is worth and what your home is worth.”

“We’ve all noticed that our tax bill has gone up,” he added. “I personally hate paying my property tax. But I also understand that it’s the way we pay for essential services. The extra 80 cents a day the average homeowner [will] pay is the price we pay for living in this wonderful community.”

Vote No

Harvey’s presentation, following that of Bristow and English, detailed his research and conclusion that VIFR was already providing excellent service to Vashon, with staffing adequate to meet Vashon’s needs.

Citing a survey of islanders detailed in VIFR’s new strategic plan, he said that 77 percent of those who had used VIFR’s service in the last five years had rated the services as excellent.

He also said that in the same survey, 78 percent of islanders and 98 percent of first responders had indicated that a 911 response time of 5-15 minutes was acceptable.

(After Harvey’s presentation, “Vote Yes” committee Ron Smothermon pushed back on this assertion, calling it a falsehood.

Smothermon was correct — there was no question on the surveys, both to the public and internally, that posed the question of whether respondents deemed that a response time of 5-15 minutes was acceptable. Rather, it asked respondents to select various time frames of what they considered to be acceptable responses. In the community survey, 19.33 percent of respondents choose 10-15 minutes as an acceptable response time, while in the internal survey, 29 percent of respondents chose 10-15 minutes. Approximately 60% of respondents in both surveys said a response time of 5-10 minutes was acceptable.)

Contrasting with Bristow and English’s explanation of King County Medic One role in the district, Harvey said that in cases of life-threatening injuries or illness, Medic One paramedics, not VIFR, provided primary care following 911 dispatches.

“Of course, VIFR always will be present to assist,” he added.

Harvey also proposed a staffing plan for the Burton Fire Station that would place two current career first responders at the station, avoiding “an insurance rate increase with no need for extra funds, unless the VIFR board decides to punish the island for not supporting the levy lift,” he said.

Regarding VIFR’s aging fleet, Harvey said that VIFR could use some of its cash reserves and borrow to replace vehicles that needed to be replaced.

“While VIFR does not have the cash to purchase five vehicles in 2023, it will have more than $1 million this year in its fleet reserve,” he said. “If these vehicles need to be replaced, why are we delaying? When the Central Whidbey Island Fire Department needed to replace three vehicles, it floated a bond. With $600,000 as a down payment, leaving $481,000 in the fleet reserve, the annual payments for replacing these five vehicles would [have been] $250,000 — if VIFR had applied to use the Washington State Local financing program that was offering 2.55% loans just four months ago. Those payments would have been equal to the $250,000 VIFR plans to add to the fleet reserve this year.”

Displaying an Excel spreadsheet graph, Harvey said that incidents and calls to the district had remained constant, with an eight-year average, excluding the pandemic years, of 1630 calls — the same number as were made in 2022.

The graph also showed that EMS incidents during the past four years were less than in the previous four years.

“The number of calls does not support the need for an even greater levy,” he said.

Other islanders speak

At the meeting, other islanders spoke in favor or against the levy. Most notably, these include Dr. Steven Nourse, a retired educator, longtime islander and disabled person who spoke of the inequities that disabled, low-income and people of color would face in paying for its costs through increased rent and property taxes (see Letters to the Editor, page 6), and Brigitte Schran Brown, a fire district commissioner and longtime VIFR volunteer.

Schran Brown detailed her own experience in answering numerous emergency calls to the station alone, when all other staff members were already engaged in simultaneous calls.

“I know I’m going to vote for this levy,” Schran Brown said. [My husband] and I are retired and the taxes hurt a lot of us. But what hurts me, even more, is when I get to a call and I have to sit there and wait for an hour for an aid rig to arrive to take a patient to a hospital. Fires double in size every minute. And a brain without oxygen goes into permanent brain damage within 10. I’m out there doing it. You can help by voting yes on the levy.”

Correction: A previous version of this article stated that volunteer EMT Brigitte Schran Brown stated that “fires double in size every 10 minutes.” The quote should have been “fires double in size every minute.” We strive for accuracy and regret the error.