Support for firefighters

On Tuesday, the Fall City Community Association (FCCA) held its monthly meeting to discuss the future of the Fall City fire department. Ironically, this meeting was held at the fire station. More ironic is that many with leadership roles in the FCCA fought very hard against providing our firefighters with what they were asking for.

A meager 28 percent of our population decided against voting for our firefighters’ and community’s benefit. Of that 28 percent, there is an increasing amount of “No” voters who thought that was what our firefighters wanted, and they are upset to learn they’d been deceived into thinking that by people they thought they could trust.

Now, unfortunately, any future plans for King County Fire District 27 apart from considering a District 10 merger in the future will require an additional cost to our community. It is going to be an uphill battle to convince the community that we should increase taxes to keep things the same, when we could have saved our community money and provided the firefighters with better staffing, equipment, and training that our community cannot provide for them as a standalone.

Over the last four months, our town’s firefighters were accused of being thugs, money grabbers out to pad their pockets, and wasting taxpayer dollars to get their votes the way they wanted. Now, the very same adversaries of our first responders are scrambling to come up with a long-term plan to provide the firefighters with what they need. I don’t trust that our first responders’ or our community’s best interests have ever been a priority of the “No” campaign, and we need to consider what the ramifications are for failing to do what is fiscally and practically responsible for the community as a whole now.

The fire service is not a pawn to be played with for political agendas, personal gain or nostalgic feelings of lore. In doing so, we have toyed with the safety of our first responders we claim to love and respect, while simultaneously insulting and mudslinging them. Refusing our first responders the training, equipment and long-term sustainable funding they asked for denied our entire community the benefits of those resources. I implore our community to consider these consequences when we are asked to raise our taxes just to keep things the same next year.

Kimbra Baker

Fall City