By Pat Jenkins
The Dispatch
Two months after voters approved a Graham Fire and Rescue levy, they’re being asked to do it again.
This time, the request from the fire district is for an excess property tax measure that would collect approximately $17 million over a four-year period to help meet the cost of personnel and equipment.
Supporters say the maintenance and operations levy is necessary for fire protection and emergency medical services to keep up with a 19 percent increase in the last 10 years of the number of people living in the Graham Fire service area. In the last five years, the number of calls for help has risen 41 percent, according to district officials.
Voting on the measure will begin after ballots are mailed to voters Jan. 26 by the Pierce County elections department. The last day of the election will be Feb. 13, when ballots will have to be mailed back or deposited in official dropboxes provided by the county.
The special election comes a little more than two months after the 2016 general election, in which Graham Fire and Rescue voters gave the district permission to continue a levy that pays for training and other expenses at a rate of $1.38 per $1,000 of assessed valuation of property in the district. That measure is in effect for six years.
Like the levy that passed last November, the one that’s now being proposed isn’t a new tax. Approving it would continue taxation that voters authorized in 2014.
A proposed tax rate of 60 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value would, for instance, add about $61.50 to the taxes on a home valued at $300,000, according to the district. The 60-cent rate could decrease as valuations increase.
The approximately $4.3 million per year that would be collected from 2019 to 2022 would be spent on hiring more firefighters and buying new fire trucks and medical aid vehicles. The levy revenue would also go toward district reserve funds.
If the levy doesn’t pass, fire stations will be closed, personnel will be reduced, and responses to calls will be longer, according to levy supporters.
At a meeting Nov. 13 of the district's fire commissioners, and again on Dec. 11 when they formally approved Proposition 1 for the ballot, the consensus was that the levy is necessary. They expressed concern about what voters would support, however.
One commissioner, Gerald Gustafson, is on a committee that wrote an opposition statement against the levy for a voters pamphlet produced by the county. The opponents claim the district can meet service demands within its existing budget.
Graham Fire has six fire stations that serve a population of about 60,000.
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