EDITOR’S NOTE — This has been corrected to show that the fire district has six resident volunteers, not 21.
QUILCENE — Jefferson County Fire District No. 2 commissioners are in the process of determining whether to accept a grant that would fund three new full-time firefighter/emergency medical technicians.
The new personnel would be stationed at Station 21 at 70 Herbert St. in Quilcene.
The district was awarded July 10 with a $396,000 Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, known as FEMA.
The district applied for the grant in March.
The grant would fully fund the new firefighter/EMT positions during 2016 and 2017.
The district’s commissioners will hold a special board meeting and public forum at 7 p.m. Thursday at Station 21 to discuss whether or not to accept the grant.
The public is encouraged to attend and participate in the meeting.
“The SAFER grant will allow the district to adequately staff Station 21 so that the Quilcene community may receive the best possible service,” Fire Chief Larry Karp said.
“Receipt of this SAFER grant is potentially a watershed event which will allow the district to permanently transition to career firefighter/EMT positions at Station 21.”
Karp is currently the only full-time employee at Station 21.
The remaining personnel consist of six “resident volunteers,” he said.
Those firefighters-in-training work about 56 hours a week and earn approximately $3.80 an hour for their efforts.
Finding trained individuals interested in taking these positions is becoming increasingly difficult in Quilcene and within the fire service in general, Karp said.
“Not everyone can afford to work full-time hours for less than $4 an hour and no benefits,” the chief said.
“It is really hard for them to raise a family on that.”
He added: “Typically I have six of those positions available. One became vacant last summer, and we had a very hard time filling it.”
To make up for the vacancy, “one of my current residents offered to work double shifts, and that is the only reason we came up to full staffing because he is working . . . 96 hours on and 48 hours off, which is brutal,” Karp said.
And next week, Station 21 is losing a second resident volunteer who is moving back to Alaska.
“So technically I will only have four guys filling the six positions at that point, and I have absolutely no applications on hand,” Karp said.
“Because of vacancies in the program, we had approximately 40 shifts in 2014 that were not covered with an EMT. This lack of trained personnel on duty places the Quilcene community at greater risk.”
The grant money will change that, Karp said.
“The progression would be to hire career folks who are more likely to stick around, because obviously you are paying them a hire wage.”
And a byproduct of that “is I can train our full time guys up to a higher level because this is their main career,” Karp said, noting such training could consist of fire engineering or wild land fire courses.
“A lot of times with volunteers, their normal lives get in the way. They can’t take three weeks off to go to school because [they] have a full time job.”
“Hiring the full time guys will give me the opportunity to demand a little bit more out of them.”
2-year term
After the initial two-year funding period expires, the conditions of the grant require the fire district to continue funding the new employees through other sources.
Such funding would after 2017 will require passage of a permanent property tax levy for emergency medical services, Karp said.
“We are the only fire district in the county, and one of the few in the state, that don’t have one,” he said.
Currently, “we are operating solely on a fire levy,” Karp added, noting it imposes a property tax of $1.25 per $1,000 of assessed property valuation.
An EMS levy would impose a property tax raise up to 50 cents per $1,000 of assessed valuation, he said.
A measure to create the levy would likely go to the ballot some time in 2016.
If the levy passed, “that would raise us most of the necessary funds that we would need to sustain the full-time employees,” Karp said.
“That would raise us, roughly speaking, about $167,000 annually.”
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Chris McDaniel can be reached at 360-681-2390, ext. 5052, or cmcdaniel@peninsuladailynews.com.
