Fire Hall occupation punted to Town Council

La Conner town representatives met Tuesday morning with representatives of Fire District 13, which has plans to staff the La Conner Fire Station with its own crew.

The upshot of the conversation is that Fire 13 will spend about 30 minutes making a presentation to the La Conner Town Council at its Jan. 10 meeting, said Mayor Ramon Hayes.

Fire 13 wants to staff the fire station near the roundabout with two firefighters 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Meanwhile, the La Conner Volunteer Fire Department, which Fire Chief Josh Morrison said has grown to 23 members, has its own plan to put two full-time firefighters in the station round the clock.

The station was built with two “sleeper units,” room to house just two crew members.

Back in 2003, the station was built to be co-owned by La Conner and Fire 13. According to Town Administrator John Doyle, the original arrangement was for La Conner to respond to Fire 13’s calls on the east side of the Swinomish Channel, which consists mostly of farmland and the communities of Pleasant Ridge and Skagit Beach, which is the Channel Drive neighborhood.

That changed in 2010 and after months of heated talks, the town and fire district crafted a new agreement whereby the Fire 13 would respond to its own calls.

The fire district has been dispatched to fewer than 50 calls in its territory east of the channel this year, including about a dozen calls in the Highway 20 area. The vast majority of its emergency calls are on the west side of the channel.

In recent months, residents in the Channel Drive area filed a petition, to detach from Fire 13. It was signed by nearly every property owner. The residents want their area annexed to Fire District 2, which has a station just up McLean road from their homes. The petition is in limbo because the Fire 13 board has refused to consider it until the residents post a bond big enough to cover all costs, including an election of the entire district.

Presently, Fire 13 responds to the Channel Drive neighborhood from its headquarters on Snee-Oosh Road on the west side of the channel. Channel Drive residents, whose neighborhood accounts for about 14 percent of Fire 13’s property tax base, believe response times would be quicker from Fire District 2’s McLean Road station.

Also, the residents note that to get to the east side of the channel, Fire 13 must cross a bridge – either Rainbow Bridge on the south, or Twin Bridges on Highway 20 north of La Conner.On Dec. 16 Fire 13 Com-missioner Larry Kibbee said the potential withdrawal is not the reason the district wants to man the La Conner station now. He said the reason is to provide better service in its territory.

In La Conner, there is concern that putting Fire 13’s paid staff in the station will demoralize the town’s volunteer firefighters, who spend the night there without pay.

Fire 13 Chief Horn has said his department’s “shifters” are paid $240 per 24-hour shift. The plan, he said is to staff the station with one paid shifter and one volunteer.

Mayor Hayes said that during Tuesday’s meeting at the La Conner fire station, he let the Fire 13 representatives know “the initial reaction is to resist,” combining departments in the station.

But, he said, “it’s a council decision, not my decision.”