The Snoqualmie City Council will host an open house to showcase public safety services.

The open house will take place form 9 a.m. to noon on Feb. 29 at the Snoqualmie fire station (37600 Snoqualmie Parkway, Snoqualmie). It is not the first event the city council will hold promoting public safety services.

“The city council’s excited about our public safety programs, and that’s what they want to highlight,” Snoqualmie’s communications manager Joan Pliego said.

The event will highlight the police and fire departments’ response times to calls and the taxpayer cost for the continuing of services. The open house also is a way for the community to meet and build a relationship with first responders. Children will have the opportunity to explore service vehicles and take pictures with staff.

“Service responses are very good right now, so the goal is just always to get better,” Pliego said. The Snoqualmie Police Department staff report showed response time to high priority (but no immediate threat) calls from November 2019 to December 2019 had risen from 6 minutes to 7:02 minutes. The response time for calls requiring an immediate response for the same time frame dropped from 3:50 to 3:14 .

Pliego mentioned how the specifics of taxpayer dollars would be brought up at the event, but said in previous years there were “public safety levies where we were approved by the voters to increase property taxes to pay specifically for public safety increases and staffing.”