By Kathy Pittis, Chair
Yes 4 Safety Campaign
If you’re like me, when you call 911, you expect a fast, effective, and professional response from our public safety agencies. If you’re like me, you value Anacortes as a safe and low-crime community. That’s why I’m leading the campaign in support of City Proposition 1, to add critical staffing to our police and fire departments.
* * *
In Anacortes, fire and medical response is provided by the Anacortes Fire Department, which is 100% staffed with cross-trained firefighter/medics, most of whom are paramedics—the highest level of emergency medical care you can obtain outside of a hospital. The City has struggled with insufficient staffing of its Fire Department for more than a decade. In that time, the number of 911 calls for the Fire Department has increased by 60%. While the City has added staff to achieve 24-hour staffing of stations 2 and 3, that doesn’t close the gap in our response capacity.
The Fire Department’s response is dispatched from the three fire stations we have in the City—Station 1 across the street from Safeway, Station 2 between Skyline and the state ferry terminal, and Station 3 on Molly Lane near Reservation Road. The City staffs a crew of two firefighter/medics at each location 24 hours a day, so that two responders can rapidly arrive to the scene of an emergency.
Most serious medical emergencies require a minimum of four firefighter/medics to respond. So for a serious medical emergency, AFD will send an ambulance from the closest available station, and then a fire truck (also fully equipped with medical gear) to assist, and sometimes a second ambulance from the third station. For a cardiac problem or a stroke or other major medical event, time is life. Responding from faraway stations may result in a substantial delay in receiving essential care.
For a structure fire, a minimum of four firefighter/medics must be on scene before state law allows any of them to enter the burning building to search for survivors. As with major medical emergencies, time is life.
The problem is that calls frequently come in simultaneously, draining the department’s ability to respond. In 2022, on 275 occasions, all firefighter/medic units were simultaneously deployed and none were available to respond to a call. Moreover, there were 899 times last year when only two firefighter/medics were available—and two is not sufficient to manage a serious medical emergency.
The following is the story of my dear friend Steve Berentson, in his own words. It took all hands on deck—six firefighter/medics and three police officers who assisted—to restore his life. If it were not for the fortunate availability of those firefighter/medics, his outcome or quality of life would be dramatically different for him today. My friend needed all nine responders to restore life and he got the finest quality of services and hit a window when personnel were available, which is a miracle. Here is Steve’s story:
It is by the grace of God and the professionalism of Anacortes firefighter paramedics that I am able to write this letter.
Last March, I suffered a cardiac arrest. After being clinically dead for about 10 minutes a team of first responders arrived, administering CPR, electric shock and medications to restore me to life before delivering me to the hospital.
During rehabilitation from surgeries, I learned the timing was critical on our 911 call. Just minutes earlier, the team that responded would have been tied up on another emergency.
It was sobering to learn there are often cases where first responders are tied up on one emergency call when another comes in.
On 275 occasions last year, local units were tied up and unavailable to respond to another call. In a city where the elderly population continues to grow, and medical calls are high, the staffing situation in the Fire Department is unacceptable.
I am grateful for the life-saving response to my cardiac arrest. With others in mind, I respectfully encourage voters to approve the levy request that would fund eight additional firefighter/medics and five police officers.
The most practical solution to this problem of simultaneous calls is to add another response unit of two firefighter/medics to Station 1, in the heart of Anacortes, where 60% of our calls come in. That unit would be able to rapidly deploy to backup calls throughout the city, and would provide much better response time and much more capacity. The City believes adding this unit could drive almost to zero the number of times per year that we do not have staffing to respond to a 911 call. Adding a two-person unit for staffing 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, requires eight additional firefighters. That’s what Proposition 1 would fund.
* * *
The story for the Police Department is different, but no less serious. Although there isn’t a ten-year trend of increasing 911 calls at the same level of severity as for the Fire Department, property crimes are up substantially in the past few years. Last year, we had three incidents involving discharge of a firearm—when we typically have none. Moreover, policing has changed—many individual 911 calls now require at least four police officers to safely respond, including for detailed reporting of domestic violence situations, de-escalation, or apprehension of suspects. As a result, we’ve seen a substantial decrease in the amount of time officers have to work other crimes. When officers spend all their time going from 911 call to 911 call, their ability to patrol decreases, their ability to prevent crime decreases, and their ability to solve crimes decreases. By some measures, that capacity has been reduced by 30%.
The City’s current police staffing levels mean that at some times of day only two police officers are on patrol for the entire city. Two officers is not sufficient to put officers in close proximity to incoming 911 calls, and two officers is not sufficient to respond to domestic violence calls or other calls requiring de-escalation or pursuit of suspects. Residents plead for more speeding and traffic enforcement in their neighborhoods, or greater police presence to deter drug crimes and eliminate drug houses, but we simply don’t have enough officers on shift to provide those important services.
In the past ten years, the City has made critical investments in APD by adding a detective to the interlocal drug taskforce, a drug dog and officer, and school resource officers (with assistance from the school district), but has notbeen able to increase the number of patrol officers. Incremental additions would not be enough to improve response, but an additional five officers would allow the City to change the shift schedule to ensure better coverage on all shifts, 24 hours a day. That’s what Proposition 1 would fund.
* * *
So how to finance these fixes to our public safety problem? The cost of the additional staffing is approximately $2 million. To put that in perspective, the City receives about $5 million in revenue from each of its three general revenue sources (property tax, sales tax, and utility tax), for a total of about $15 million. (There are other general fund revenue sources, but they have various restrictions on use, including sales tax money that is simply passed through to the County and grants that may vary from year to year). The City does a lot with that $15 million, paying for general fund departments like police, fire, library, museum, parks, planning, and roads, plus internal services like legal, HR, IT, and finance. Internal services are also supplemented by utility revenue, and the Fire Department is supplemented by money from ambulance transports and Skagit County.
We all agree that we should put public safety first, but there is no way to squeeze $2 million from that existing revenue picture without making severe cuts to other departments. For example, the Parks Department, or the library and museum together, receives about $2 million in general revenue. Anacortes residents value those services immensely, and there’s no support for writing them out of the budget.
Nobody likes paying property taxes, but it’s the only real source of additional revenue available to the City. (State law authorizes a sales tax for public safety, but it is already at the legal limit and obligated by contract to fund construction and operation of the County jail.) So in December, the City Council voted unanimously to approve Resolution 3103, setting Proposition 1 on the April 25, 2023, ballot. In its resolution, the City Council pledged to spend the revenue to add 8 firefighter/medics and 5 police officers, and the request amount was carefully calculated to fund only those positions.
Proposition 1 would raise the City’s property tax revenue by an amount calculated to yield about $2 million annually—the amount necessary to hire hat additional staffing. That’s about a one-third increase in the city’s property tax revenue, but only a 4% increase in your property tax because the city’s share of your property tax is only about 13% of your total bill. Because of how the state property tax system works, the amount the City collects in property tax is a fixed sum, not a fixed rate, and therefore does not increase with your property values. Instead, that amount is steadily eroded by inflation, reducing the city’s ability to pay the salaries of its staff, including the first responders who staff our public safety agencies. We’ve posted more answers to revenue questions and others at yes4safety.com/faq.
The proposed levy amount will cost a $650,000 home in Anacortes about $19.50 per month. After approval of the levy lid lift, Anacortes’s city tax rate will be $1.52 per thousand, which will still be lower than all the cities in Skagit County except Burlington (which has unusually high sales tax revenue for a city its size).
The City recognizes that even this small amount is a burden on stressed households, especially seniors on fixed incomes. That’s why the City Council recently adopted a new utility bill discount program that would lower utility bills by 30% for the poorest households in Anacortes—those that make less than half the area median income. Households that are enrolled in the senior/disabled low-income property tax exemption program through Skagit County will automatically be enrolled; others can apply through the City Finance Department. This program will save qualifying households more than the average cost of City Proposition 1.
Please join me by voting YES for Proposition 1 and turn in your ballot today!