“I’m optimistic, but at the same time we’re just starting.””

East Jefferson Fire Chief Bret Black

With ballots now in hand, the voters of Port Ludlow must decide whether or not to merge Port Ludlow Fire & Rescue (District 3) with East Jefferson Fire Rescue (District 1).

If the merger is approved, Port Ludlow Fire & Rescue will be dissolved and East Jefferson Fire Rescue’s boundaries will expand to cover that area. The existing commissioners of both districts will govern the merged district until the number of commissioners is reduced according to law.

Only voters within the boundary of Jefferson County Fire Protection District No. 3 will vote on Proposition 1. Prop. 1 needs a majority vote to pass.

“There seems to be a lot of support. We haven’t really had much direct input for the opposition,” said East Jefferson Fire Chief Bret Black.

The departments have already been proven to work well together.

Port Ludlow fire commissioners decided last year to pay East Jefferson Fire Rescue $175,000 a year to manage their department, saving costs with shared training, emergency operations, special operations, staffing, and administrative personnel.

If the proposal fails, however, the departments have stated that the temporary management services agreement will end. Without access to East Jefferson’s administrators, Port Ludlow would need to recruit a fire chief and assistant fire chief at a cost of nearly $350,000 a year.

By fully merging the two districts, the departments anticipate nearly $1,863,000 in taxpayer savings over the first five years.

To help educate voters, the departments have been hosting weekly discussions.

“We’re continuing our efforts to do public engagement with our weekly scheduled workshops and if anybody has a small neighborhood group or community group that they want a special meeting put together just for them, we’re happy to do that,” Black said.

“We’ve tried to reach out to every group and sub group in the affected district that’s going to vote on this,” he added.

While there hasn’t been any opposition at those meetings, his staff has made mention of seeing some on social media.

“My consistent response is please give them my email and my cell phone number; I’ll be happy to respond directly to them so that they have the facts,” Black said.

“I think that’s really the challenge with our world in general right now. Social media makes it really easy to throw hypotheticals outs there without any context,” he added.

Complicating the matter is that the departments have already been running in the red.

“Budget expenditures for both districts have exceeded revenue for several years, which is unsustainable,” reads a scoping report written for the merger over the summer.

The current Port Ludlow levy rate is $1.02 per $1,000 of assessed value, while East Jefferson Fire Rescue’s rate is 85 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value.

Even if the merger is successful, revenue would continue to be a problem as the highest lawful tax levy would end up dropping to 83 cents for the new combined district.

Within the summer scoping report is a proposition to solve this by asking voters for a levy lift for 2024.

At a time of high inflation, this might seem a difficult ask.

Still, there is no organized opposition to the ballot measure.

The union representing local firefighters, IAFF L3811-Jefferson County Professional Firefighters, has voted unanimously to support the proposition.

Included in the report are three possible lid-lift options for the unified district if the merger goes through: Option 1 is $1.25; Option 2, $1.30; and Option 3, $1.50.

However, even if the merger fails, both departments would still have financial difficulties.

“If the merger proposal fails, both districts will need to reassess their 2023 budgets and make decisions, immediately reducing expenditures until their respective levy lid lifts can be approved by voters,” states a document released by the agencies named, “Merger: Questions and Answers.”

“We’re just telling everybody where we’re at financially, and both agencies are unsustainable,” Black said in an earlier interview with The Leader.

Even with the levy lift hanging on the horizon, Black seems cautiously hopeful about the merger going into the final weeks of the election.

“I’m optimistic, but at the same time we’re just starting,” Black said.

“We’ll see.”