Members of the communities served by Central Oregon Coast Fire & Rescue District.  It has come to my attention that a member of the community has filed an against argument within the voter’s pamphlet regarding Measure 21-230, the upcoming levy increase requested by the District.  I have copied the argument and inserted corrected statements with links to correct the inaccuracies in that argument.  Please see my responses below in Bold/Italic font:

The proposed levy is a desperate fix being foisted on homeowners in order to correct serious fiscal mismanagement by fire district administration. 

“THE ANNUAL ADDITIONAL COST TO THE AVERAGE HOMEOWNER IN THE DISTRICT (using a median home price of $550,000.00 per Realtor.com 2024) WILL BE APPROXIMATELY $200.00.”

Mr. Holt is correct the median home price is $550,000.00 Market Value.  However, your taxes are not based on market value, they are based on assessed value.  Therefore, the statement that a house with a $550,000.00 market value will cost $200 annually is false.  If you would like to see your homes assessed value, contact the County Assessor’s office or visit www.zillow.com and find your property, under the Public Tax History section, your assessed values will be listed by year.

“Volunteers comprise 75% of ALL firefighters in the United States.  Rural districts like ours typically rely more heavily on volunteerism as a result of a smaller population and tax base.”

 According to the National Volunteer Fire Council.  Volunteers comprise 65% of firefighters in the United States.  10% less than Mr. Holts statement.  This can be found on their Volunteer Fire Service fact sheet here:  https://www.nvfc.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/fire-service-fact-sheet-updated-032024.pdf the section of the fact sheet identifying the statistic is number 1.  In addition, I would like to highlight number 5.  Many local volunteer fire departments are struggling to meet staffing needs.  The number of volunteer firefighters in the U.S. reached a low in 2020.  At the same time, call volume has more than tripled in the last 35 years, due in large part to the increase in emergency medical calls.  Major factors contributing to recruitment challenges include increased time demands, more rigorous training requirements, and the proliferation of two-income families whose members do not have time to volunteer.  Fire departments today are also expected to provide a wide range of services and multi-hazard response, creating further challenges for resource constrained departments.

“Central Coast has chosen to ignore this practice, employing ONLY full-time paid staff.  The volunteer program at Central Coast has been destroyed by a lack of follow-through and proper management by the current Chief.” 

Again Mr. Holt is false.  Central Oregon Coast Fire & Rescue has always maintained a volunteer program with active volunteers serving today.  Our volunteers are held to National standards, the same standards held by our career staff, and certified through the Department of Public Safety, Standards, and Training of Oregon.  These standards are continuously increasing to meet safety requirements and are hard for a person who is also trying to maintain a full-time job and family life.

“This business model is not sustainable.  The proof lies in the $300,000.00 “bridge loan” recently approved by the Central Coast Board to permit the district to survive fiscal year 202324.” 

Again, inaccurate information.  The Tax Anticipation Loan the District utilized during the 2024/2025 Budget year was required to provide funding from July to November when the Districts tax-based income arrives.  This was Identified in 2020 when the District opted to not increase the rate of the Operations levy currently held at $1.27/$1000 Assessed value.  This amount has remained the same since it was created in 2016 for the purpose of providing a single career responder per shift.  The option to keep the rate at $1.27/$1000 Assessed was decided during the 2020 renewal of the levy as the community was enduring the Covid 19 pandemic and the District felt raising taxes during this pandemic was a hardship on the taxpayers.  The District decided to “tighten its belt” and push the budget to the limit slowly consuming reserve funds in order to provide relief to the taxpayer.  As predicted the District would need to apply for funding for carryover funds to get to the taxable income before the next option to renew/replace the levy at a higher amount was available.

“With an existing budget of $1.12 million, Central Coast pays a whopping $877,000.00 in personnel costs, or 78% of their total budget.” 

The budget for 2024/2025 is $1.13 Million in Taxable Income.  Our personnel services budget is $966K including wages, benefits, taxes, PERS, Workers Comp Insurance, and Volunteer Incentives.  This utilizes over 80% of the budgets funding to maintain a guaranteed response and benefits for the Volunteer responders.  The wages for our responders are some of the lowest wages for firefighting personnel in the County and amongst the State.  Starting pay for a Firefighter/Engineer (entry level position) is $16.47 per hour.  The supervisor at Burger King responsible for ensuring your order is completed correctly is paid higher than the responder responsible for saving your life.  The District is constantly in jeopardy of losing highly skilled responders to other agencies who are able to offer better benefit packages and higher wages to personnel as the need for firefighters continues to rise in the decline of volunteer availability and the increased demand for guaranteed responses of agencies nationwide.

“By contrast, Seal Rock Rural Fire District operates on a total budget of $780,000.00.  Their personnel costs in 2023-24 were $126,000.00—just 16% of their budget.  How did they manage this?  The answer is simple: they have created and maintained and trained a robust crew of more than 30 volunteers, many of whom are professional firefighters.  They have tailored their staffing to what our local economy can bear.  They work within their budget.  Central Coast Fire has ignored their economic reality—and now they want US to pay for it.  Vote NO.”

As the Fire Chief of Central Oregon Coast Fire and Rescue District, I refuse to engage in a comparison of agencies between our District and the District of Seal Rock.  If you would like to know more about how we operate and why, please attend the upcoming town hall/Open houses we have scheduled in October. 

What I will say is I find it unfortunate that a community member has felt the need to place an argument full of inaccuracies in the voting pamphlet urging the public to vote “no”, essentially increasing the risk of life safety of our community members and responders.

It is my hope that as community members you will strive to make an informed decision when it comes time to fill out your ballot.  It is the Districts goal to provide information to the best of our ability to ensure you are informed and to make ourselves available to answer your questions as we continue to provide service the delivery of emergency services to our communities and the communities around us.  I encourage you to engage with the responders as you see them out and about and ask them questions in addition to attending our events scheduled for the purpose of providing information to you in the best way possible.

Respectfully Submitted By:

Fire Chief Jamie Mason

Central Oregon Coast Fire & Rescue District