YOU DID IT!
You Saved our Fire Departments!
Tumwater and Olympia are proposing to eliminate our excellent fire departments that have served us so well for over 100 years. We need to:
SAVE OUR FIRE DEPARTMENTS
Vote No on Prop 1
Six Things to Know
1. We will pay $10.5 million more a year for no improvement in services. The largest voted increase in the property tax bill for city services in the history of either city.
2. The charge can increase -- up to $50 million a year without another vote.
3. The increased costs fall hardest on those with the least. That's not fair.
4. No new firefighters, fire stations or fire engines in Plan.
5. Not regional. Lacey Fire District 3 refused to join in the RFA.
6. Too Risky - Ending the FDs that work for an RFA that will have a bumpy 3-5 years of growing pains.
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Don't just take our word for it, here is the RFA consultant's own assessment
"We can’t figure out how to explain that to the public that they need to pay more to get nothing different."
Source: RFA Consultant, 5/12/22 PowerPoint that reads,
"Internal Working Draft not for public disclosure"
[Obtained via Public Records Request]
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Or take the Lacey Fire District 3 letter declining to participate in the Regional Fire Authority,
"...our careful review and deliberation of the findings in the ESCI Study do not offer any apparent enhancements to service delivery or positive impacts to associated costs for our citizens and taxpayers. To the contrary, the initially published fiscal analysis and subsequent more detailed review with the consultant outline anticipated increased costs to our citizens without any clear statement regarding added value."
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Not only will this bad idea cost us more, it falls hardest on those least able to afford it -- the complete opposite of the Council's goals of social equity.
"Chair Dahlhoff asked how equity is incorporated into each option. Ms. Reed [the RFA consultant] advised that the formula is not well suited to addressing social equity..." - September 12, 2022 Minutes of the RFA Planning Committee
The RFA Committee did not want this plan's Fire Benefit Charge formula. But, in this video you can see them being pushed by the consultants to accept it.
"Everyone on this committee is asking for a progressive formula." -- Councilmember Cooper
Instead of evidence and facts, the "For" side repeats a mantra -- field tested by consultants -- that the RFA is "the fairest, most stable, reliable and cost effective method" to provide fire and emergency services. And they know that if you get enough people to repeat it enough times, the public comes to believe it even when the facts don't support it.
Incredibly, when you say you don't like the way they are raising the revenue or what they are using for in their approved Plan, they say the Plan means nothing and they can change it later...to what, they don't say. But is that so? Click here for more.
In contrast, we have the receipts -- the facts and documents using the RFAs own numbers and words that provides the evidence that this is a bad deal for our communities.
To get the sources for the statements made on this website, please write to us at SaveOurFD@gmail.com.
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An RFA is wrong for Tumwater and Olympia. Vote No. on Prop 1
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Citizens for Integrity in Government believes that bigger is not better. We'd rather campaign with hundreds of $25 donations.
If you are willing to walk literature in a precinct in Olympia or Tumwater, contact us at SaveOurFD@gmail.com
Paid for by Citizens For Integrity in Government, P.O. Box 1423 Olympia, WA 98507. No donors over $1,000