I’ve been fire chief at Clark County District 6 for seven years, and both an assistant chief and deputy chief for nearly five years before that. Our service area includes the communities of Hazel Dell, Salmon Creek, Felida, Mount Vista, Lakeshore, and the Fairgrounds. This is a professional, compassionate organization that does everything it can to save lives and property – but we’re starting to have problems.
Some of our equipment and apparatus is outdated and breaking down more frequently. One of our stations is no longer suitable for modern-sized emergency response apparatus and the building is past its usable life. We also need to improve our training programs for our firefighters and community.
These issues have contributed to the fire district being downgraded by the Washington Surveying and Rating Bureau (WSRB) earlier this year, which could impact area home or business insurance rates. When this happened, my administrative team and our Board of Fire Commissioners decided to alert the community before things got worse.
The way we see it, there’s no fire yet, but we definitely smell smoke.
It is important for our community to understand that Clark County Fire District 6 is debt free and operates under a balanced budget. We chose to focus our resources on responding to emergency calls as opposed to new stations or additional training. We cut expenses and spent down reserve funds, but the demand for and cost to provide service is higher than the revenue we receive. That’s understandable when you realize that call volumes have increased 31.25 percent in 10 years (10 percent in the past year alone), and we are limited to a 1 percent budget increase without voter approval.
At this point, we have two options: taking on debt to fund what we need to do or asking voters to restore funding through a levy lid lift. Our board members decided on the lid lift because debt costs taxpayers more money in the long run. Assuming a lid lift passes, we eventually would be able to petition the WSRB for a reclassification to help local home and business owners with their insurance rates.
The lid lift would fund emergency operations, replace or improve some of our facilities and fund the firefighter training program we need. The average homeowner in our area would pay an additional $4.79 per month for these improvements. There are more details on our website (www.ccfd6.org) or please contact me with any questions. Thank you for the opportunity to serve.
Jerry Green is fire chief of Clark County Fire District 6. He can be reached at (360) 576‐1195 or jerry.green@ccfd6.org.
