And now it will be up to the voters.
The City Council on Dec. 14 unanimously passed an ordinance placing plans for the Regional Fire Authority on the April ballot, combining the Renton Fire Department and King County Fire District 25 into the Renton regional Fire Authority, complete with it its own ability to control its revenue stream and, perhaps more importantly, to reduce response times across the system.
“Ultimately, it’s about protecting people, their property and their lives,” Chief Mark Peterson said during a public hearing. “Without additional funding it’s going to impact the service delivery we’re providing today.”
The measure requires a 60 percent approval total across both districts.
The City and Council have been working on the plan for about two years. If approved, it will remove the fire department from the city’s control and budget and give the new authority the ability to go directly to voters for revenue.
It will also create a new way of funding fire service in the area, changing from a purely assessed value model to one that includes a “fire benefit charge,” based on the size and nature of the structure on a property.
The city and fire department also promise that if approved a new fire station in the Kennydale neighborhood would finally be built to help deal with the rising response times in that area.
A Regional Fire Authority would also free up city revenues to be used for other needs as the city continues to look for ways to deal with a projected budget gap in 2017.
“We will need to manage that gap,” said Administrative Services Administrator Iwen Wang during a presentation that preceded the hearing.
Wang and Peterson both highlighted the need for providing the fire department with its own revenue stream by talking about the cuts that have been made over the past several years as the city has dealt with a recession and the effects of Tim Eyman’s voter-approved initiative that capped revenue increases at 1 percent, no matter what happens on the expenditure side, where contractual obligations and inflation often rise at a faster rate.
Peterson said the department has been “pulling off a magic trick” to make it work in recent years, including cutting a deputy chief, two fire inspectors and outreach/preventive programs. In 2008, there were 164 members of the department. By 2010, that dropped to 152.
Since 2011, the department has used federal SAFER grants (Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response) to keep the staff at 161 people, but Peterson told the council there was a “train wreck coming for us” as population and calls for service continue to increase.
“Grants are not a sustainable funding mechanism,” he said.
Peterson said calls for the fire department and emergency services are increasing at about 3 percent per year. For example, in 2010, the city logged about 13,000 calls for service. In 2015, that number will be more than 15,000.
In addition, Peterson said two new senior housing facilities are opening this year, which will add to calls for service, as will three large, new hotels being built around the entrance to Gene Coulon Park.
“Our ability to get out to these places is getting tougher and tougher and tougher,” he said.
Wang also explained that tax revenues have not been keeping pace with requests for services in the city and things will only get difficult in the next few years as the city will loose annexation sales tax revenues soon for the Benson neighborhood that became part of Renton in 2008.
Wang said the Fire Department presently accounts for 24 percent for the city’s general fund budget, second only to the police.
The city has been clear that while the fire department would be coming off the city books, the new fire service would cost the average home or business owner a little more overall in taxes than they are currently paying. The difference will be that a fire benefit charge is based on how many firefighters it would take to put out a structure fire.
According to estimates from the city, an average Renton homeowner with a 2,180-square-foot house and a $291,000 assessed home value will pay approximately $10 more per month for fire and emergency services.
In 2017, the average Renton homeowner would pay the City an additional $12 per month for the construction of the new station in the north end, but that amount would drop to a much lower rate – but not disappear fully – once the station is paid for.
“It’s a huge change from what we’ve done in the past,” Peterson said, adding,
“We need a viable funding mechanism that will sustain us through good times and bad times.”
The city has created a calculator so residents can see how much their rates would change if the RFA is approved. The calculator accesses 2016 assessed valuation data and provides estimated costs for any property in the city. It can be found on the FAQ page at Renton RFA.org, under a link at question No. 6.
During the public hearing, four people spoke, all in favor of sending the RRFA to the voters.
Charles Seil served on both the RFA citizens advisory committee and the mayor’s citizen budget committee and said because of the projected shortage and the need for additional stations, as well as growth within the city, that and RFA made the most sense.
“I’m convinced an RFA is the answer,” he said.
Kerry Abercrombie, who serves as the on the FD25 Board of Fire Commissioners said he came into the discussions with “lots of questions” about the process and what it would mean, but is now convinced it is the right thing to do because of the growing population and the increasing response times, According to him, even 30 seconds difference can mean the difference between life and death.
“Thirty seconds doesn’t seem like a lot,” he said. “But 30 seconds your heart is not beating, 30 seconds your house is still on fire … is pretty serious.”
Following the vote to place the issue in front of voters, Mayor Denis Law thanked the council and staff for their work on the project.
“This is a very complicated process,” he said. “We need to have the discussion and allow the citizens to make this decision.”
For more info, visit www.rentonrfa.org.
