Clark County Fire and Rescue will host two meetings to share their opinion on a possible 9 cent rise of the fire levy that would result in several new firefighters and one more station staffed around the clock should voters approve a measure that could go up to vote in August.
On March 21 and April 13 CCF&R will be hosting the meetings, each at a different fire station according to a release from the department.
The proposed levy lid lift was announced by the department last month as a possible solution for staffing issues. After being forced to cut almost a dozen officers in 2016 due to a loss of funding from a contract with the city of Battle Ground, response times in the department’s jurisdiction have risen on average 28 seconds in the past year, with some stations’ response times going up by as much as a minute on average.
Apart from an increase of about seven to nine firefighters, the lid lift would also allow for the Charter Oak station, one of two to host the meetings, to be constantly staffed. Currently the station is unstaffed, instead requiring firefighters to head to the station from other, staffed, locations.
If a lid lift from $1.41 per $1,000 of assessed value to $1.50 — the maximum allowable for fire levies — were approved by voters the result would be an increase of about $27 to the average homeowner, according to CCF&R’s release.
Hosting informational meetings to inform the public of the need for a tax hikes was one of the ways CCF&R Chief John Nohr hoped for a successful voting measure. Another local department head, Clark County Fire District 3 Chief Steve Wrightson, has attributed the failure of a lid lift measure in his own department last summer to a lack of public information on its need.
