Rep. Jami Cate Discusses Local Fire District Levies

April 16, 2024 – Jami Cate: Facebook Post

The majority of local measure options on our Linn County ballots will be for our fire districts. Why?? I’m the first to want to keep my dollars, but special district funding is such a bizarre and usually misunderstood thing, so I think it’s worth explaining just a little about where the funding for most of our local fire and EMS services comes from.

Not all tax dollars are created equal, and each dollar that comes in goes to a specific “bucket” of money that can only be used for specific items. Just because you pay a lot in taxes, doesn’t mean that money gets to our fire districts–which operate on totally separate budgets and funding than our cities or state. But also, in Lebanon, for example, voters passed a bond option to build a new fire station–those dollars had to be used for that purpose, and cannot be used for operations costs, which is the measure being considered next month.

But why are our fire districts needing to ask us to approve more tax money for them–be it for upgrades or operations? Largely, because they are having to do more and more (services or just the cost of replacing equipment, both of which are astronomically more costly than even a few years ago), and their budgets are barely increasing in comparison. Jefferson Rural Fire, for example, has to provide emergency response services for a good chunk of I-5! And you all know how much traffic has increased on this main artery for the valley, yet how many of the people passing along I-5 are paying into the local property tax base that generates the funds for the fire district? Hardly any.

Factor in that volunteer fire fighters are harder and harder to come by, as training requirements increase and people’s lives are less conducive to volunteering in general, yet most of our districts’ operating budgets were structured to largely rely on volunteers to staff stations, leaving them in need to hire professional firefighters when volunteers aren’t enough anymore.

There is so much more that could be said about the brokenness of the funding structure for our fire districts (or special districts in general), and the disappointing priorities for tax dollars in our state that leave our fire districts having to beg us for money, but they are forced to operate in the tax structure we have currently as a state; and to maintain service levels in our communities, most districts simply need more dollars.

The choice of what level of services you want when it comes to fire and EMS is truly what these ballot measures are asking, and that choice is in voters’ hands. But I hope this helps explain a little why this is a growing issue for our fire districts, and why we will continue seeing these ballot measures for the foreseeable future.

For more info on each of these measures, follow the link to the Linn County Clerk’s page 👇

https://www.linncountyor.gov/clerk/page/measures-may-21-2024-primary-election-0

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