Votes in favor of Proposition No. 1, the proposed Eastside Regional Fire Authority, were ahead by about 17 percent on Nov. 9 at 3:48 p.m., but were a little over a percentage point shy of the needed 60 percent majority, according to the third wave of results posted by the King County Elections website.
The proposition is a move to unite King County Fire Protection Districts 10 and 38 under one Regional Fire Authority.
Approximately 58.91 percent of votes were in approval of the measure, while 41.09 percent of votes were rejecting it, according to the results. This was a slight decrease in “yes” votes from the second wave of results at 1:30 a.m., which, at 59.06 percent, had shown the merger to be within a percentage point of passing.
54.55 percent percent of ballots had been counted when the third wave of results were released.
District 10 Commissioner and Fire Authority Planning Committee Chair Mike Mitchell said the morning after Election Night that he was hopeful that the second half of the ballots would bump the measure up the needed percent.
“We appreciate the support from the community that we’ve seen so far,” Mitchell stated. “It’s an important public safety issue.”
Mitchell said that even if the measure doesn’t hit the critical 60, the large lead for the approvals is “conclusive” evidence that a fire district merger is something voters want.
District 10 currently pays a fire benefit charge, and if united the fire benefit charge will replace some of District 38’s current levy costs. Like District 10, District 38’s levy cost will go down to $1 per $1,000 of assessed value, and the rest of the collected funds will be filled in by the fire benefit charge, calculated to be approximately 49 cents per $1,000 of value.
Unlike a fire levy, which is based on fluctuating property values, a fire benefit charge is based on the size and fire risk of a building; the more it would cost to save a building if it were on fire, the higher a fire benefit charge the building owner will pay.
Sharing the costs among more taxpayers would mean a tax decrease of roughly 23 cents per $1,000 of assessed value for the 19,000 District 10 residents and a tax increase of around 20 cents per $1,000 of value for the 9,745 District 38 residents.
Regional fire authorities are not new to Washington; other fire authorities have been approved all over the state in the past, such as the Renton Fire Authority, the Kent Fire Department Fire Authority and the South Whatcom Fire Authority. The idea behind a regional fire authority is to provide better, more efficient service to taxpayers by sharing costs.
The merger previously failed by just 3.2 percent in the April 2016 special election, when it received an approval from 56.8 percent of voters.
