Town, Fire District 13 in tense talks over fire hall

The three-man Fire District 13 board of commissioners wants to staff the La Conner Fire Station near the roundabout on Chilberg Road.

Meanwhile, the La Conner Volunteer Fire Department already has plans to man the station 24-hours a day with two firefighters of its own.

La Conner’s Mayor Ramon Hayes, Administrator John Doyle and Fire Chief Josh Morrison met with Fire District 13’s Chief Roy Horn and Commissioners Arne Fohn, Chuck Hedlund and Larry Kibbee on Friday, Dec. 16.

The outcome of that meeting led to setting another meeting at the La Conner Fire Station to be held Dec. 27 between fire and town officials without a quorum of elected officials.

Fire District 13 straddles the Swinomish Channel and surrounds the Town of La Conner, which has its own fire department. The vast majority of Fire 13’s calls are on the west side of the channel, an area that is mostly part of the Swinomish Indian Reservation and includes Shelter Bay, Swinomish Village and the Swinomish Casino and Lodge.

When La Conner’s Fire Station was built in 2003, it was funded and owned jointly by the town and fire district. Back then, according to Doyle, the two departments agreed that it would be staffed by town firefighters, who would respond to the farmland, Channel Drive and Pleasant Ridge calls in Fire 13’s sparsely populated territory east of the channel.

That changed in 2010, when Fire 13 decided it didn’t want La Conner responding to its calls anymore. After months of bickering, the two departments signed a new inter-local agreement, essentially dividing and defining their 50-50 ownership of the building.

Fire 13’s desire to staff it after all these years comes after recent developments.

There was a tax shift impacting about 300 homeowners in Fire 13’s territory east of the Swinomish Channel. Several of those residents — mostly people living in the Channel Drive area north of La Conner — are working to detach from the district to join neighboring Fire District 2 on McLean Road.

In 2015 the county removed 931 parcels from the local property tax rolls, and the burden was shifted to the remaining taxpayers in the fire district. Structures built on reservation land leased from the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community no longer pay taxes to Fire District 13.

That left a disparity for taxpayers on the east side of the channel, where there are few calls.

As of yesterday, based on 911 dispatch logs, Fire 13 had been called to emergencies in the 28 square miles of its territory east of the channel 44 times so far this year. Ten of those calls were “citizen assist” calls to a home on Pleasant Ridge owned by one of its commissioners, Hedlund.

On Tuesday, Dec. 20, a sign in front of Fire District 13’s Snee-Oosh Road headquarters stated the department had 2,547 total calls so far this year. The district’s own reports indicate that the majority of its calls are on tribal land and on the west side of the channel.

At Friday’s meeting, La Conner Mayor Hayes noted, “Folks on Channel Drive have a drive to shift away from Fire District 13 and that is a central issue.” The district was dispatched to calls on Channel Drive just two days so far this year and not for fires or medical aids.

Fire 13 Commissioner Larry Kibbee said, “We have been taking a look these past couple of years to improve service in the district.” He said the Channel Drive residents’ effort was not the reason, but “the events on Channel Drive brought this to a discussion point.”

Skagit County Assessor Dave Thomas ran the numbers earlier this year and determined the area that hopes to detach Fire 13 contains 319 parcels with a taxable value of about $64.4 million — about 14 percent of the district’s tax base.

This year those parcels contributed $63,240 in property tax to the district. The district will collect a total of $459,795 in property tax from non-tribal lands this year.

The Swinomish Indian Tribal Community agreed to provide $150,000 to the district this year to help fund services on reservation land. Also, the tribe contributed a portion of the cost of Fire 13’s new ambulance, which now has the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community’s logo on the side.

Fire 13 launched its basic life support transport service earlier this year on the west side of the channel, offering ambulance service, staffed with emergency medical technicians, for people without life threatening conditions and who don’t require the skilled care of paramedics.

On the east side of the channel, ambulance service is still provided by Central Valley Ambulance Authority’s Medic One, which staffs its vehicles with paramedics.

Town officials told the commissioners Fire 13’s move into the La Conner Fire Station is a possible detriment to morale in the town’s volunteer department. Since October La Conner Chief Morrison has beefed up the department, adding six new firefighters, with more waiting for their applications to be approved.

Town firefighters who spend the night at the fire station are unpaid volunteers, who get a stipend of $10 for each call they go on. In contrast, Chief Horn said his department would staff the La Conner fire station with a firefighter paid $240 per 24-hour shift and one volunteer.

Horn said Fire 13 would respond to calls to the Swinomish Casino and Highway 20 from the La Conner station. According to 911 logs, as of Dec. 20, Fire 13 was dispatched to the casino 57 times this year.