Image courtesy Pagosa Fire Protection District website.
We’re going to dig into some interesting financial details concerning the ‘impact fees’ proposal announced to the Town of Pagosa Springs and the Archuleta County government at the beginning of December.
The Pagosa Fire Protection District is required, by changes to Colorado law, to invite comment from our local governments before imposing impact fees, and they’ve given the Town and County until February 3 to share their concerns.
The fees would not directly affect existing residents, until they decide to build a new home or apartment or commercial building. And even then, the impact would be modest, compared to — for example — the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) Capital Investment Fee, which is similar to an impact fee. But the Fire District fee, if implemented, would have an impact nevertheless, especially for starter homes and multifamily housing aimed at working families and individuals.
Having a properly-funded fire department is essential to a community — even if the community rarely experiences an actual structure fire.
And we do, in fact, rarely experience structure fires. I don’t yet have the data for Pagosa Springs, but in Colorado in 2019 (the most recent data I could find) only 0.66% of the service calls made by fire departments involved a fire in a structure.
Less than 1% of all service calls.
But if you pay for fire insurance, your annual premium will be much higher if you don’t have a fire department serving your neighborhood. So properly subsidizing a local fire district potentially benefits every homeowner and business property owner, even if structure fires rarely happen.
So, if Colorado fire departments are almost never responding to actual fires, what are they doing?
Two out of three service calls in Colorado are “rescue calls” related to Emergency Medical Treatment. Here in Pagosa, a rescue situation typically attracts our EMS ambulance service, operated by the Pagosa Springs Medical Center… plus the Pagosa Police Department or the Archuleta County Sheriff’s Office, or both… and one or more Fire District vehicles.
In about 95% of those situations — according Colorado data — the fire department does not provide any aid. But they show up.
A couple of questions come to mind, after spending the past month thinking about the Pagosa Fire Protect District’s proposed ‘impact fees’:
Does our Fire Protection District really need to extract more money out of taxpayer pockets?
Are fire districts in general becoming another example of excessively-funded government jobs programs?
I will be the first to admit, I haven’t been paying much attention to the Pagosa Fire District, except to pull off the road when their modern, well-equipped emergency vehicles coming barrelling down the highway, lights flashing.
This happens surprisingly regularly, although I almost never see any smoke, or buildings on fire.
So I take the blame for failing to pay closer attention. I haven’t written an op-ed about the District, here in the Daily Post, since 2015, when the District approached the voters with a property tax increase that was soundly defeated. I voted against the proposed tax increase, because I thought the District had failed to make a compelling case for more money.
A few years later, under slightly different leadership, the District put a similar ask in front of the voters, and it passed easily, due to a better-designed and better-executed election campaign. (And a better local economy?)
Because the District is “de-Bruced” and its budget is no longer limited by TABOR restrictions (as discussed yesterday in Part Three) the Fire District budget grows and grows, not necessarily related to service performed, but in direct proportion to the increase in local property values and property taxes.
Back in 2015, during the District’s failed property tax increase effort, an op-ed submitted to the Daily Post by the chair of the election campaign committee, Linda Lattin, included this information:
The Pagosa Fire Protection District has a tremendous volunteer firefighter program, but overall volunteerism is on the decline. It is hard for a young family to find time to volunteer with the economy dictating that most households have to be at least a 2 income family. New volunteers are asked to complete approximately 240 hours of training in their first year to become certified as a firefighter. They are subject to call at any time, day or night, weekends, holidays and special occasions are no exception. They are expected to risk their lives to save the lives of their neighbors, friends and total strangers. No other volunteer opportunity asks this much of their people…
Pagosa Fire Protection District depends on their volunteers and will always need volunteers to “get the job done.” They are not looking to replace the volunteers, however, but to supplement the volunteers with qualified personnel…
Here we have one of the issues facing a small town fire department: the challenge of finding and training volunteers. In Pagosa, it’s a challenge even to find and retain paid firefighters.
When I arrived in Pagosa in 1993, the paid staff at the District consisted of, I believe, three or four people. The department consisted almost entirely of trained volunteers who had ordinary jobs but who dropped everything to respond to a fire. (As I recall, in those days, the District did not provide much in the way of Emergency Medical Service responses. They were pretty much a “fire department”.)
A visit to the Pagosa Fire website suggests that the District now employs at least a dozen Administrative staff, and eight “shift personnel”.
I’ve never worked as a firefighter. My hat is off to anyone willing to approach, and possibly enter, a burning building in an effort to save lives — human or animal — and protect property.
But I also wonder, if you’re a well-paid, certified professional, trained for a dangerous job — firefighting — but where your services are needed… maybe once a year?
…would you get kind of bored?
Might you be looking for other ways to help people? Even if the EMS and law enforcement were showing up at the same calls, and even if 95% of the time, you didn’t provide any aid?
And how would the community pay for this?