Voters are about to have several irons added to the fire before the upcoming special election in February.

To educate voters on operations at East Jefferson Fire Rescue and its funding measures in the upcoming election, the department will be hosting two town hall-style events.

The department will offer presentations covering a newly developed strategic plan, fiscal challenges, and the new CARES program to show how the department is working to achieve its budget goals. The meetings will be 5:15 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 18 and 6 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 19.

“It’s meant to be an information briefing on the state of East Jefferson,” said East Jefferson Fire Chief Bret Black. “There are times for questions and answers. It’s a pretty loose format, so it’s not a regular board meeting or public meeting. It’s more of a town hall format.”

While the meeting is broad in scope, the hot topic will be the property tax proposals.

The ballot proposals seek approval of an increase from 36 cents per $1,000 in assessed property value to 50 cents for emergency medical services, and from 85 cents to $1.30 for general fire service.

“Where this proposal landed, we’ll be able to fix some of the challenges that we have with our spending and start turning back on a couple things that are really important, like firefighter safety equipment and training,” Black said.

“I’ve never seen a training budget as small as ours in my career. It’s 1 or 2 percent and it should be at least 10 percent of our budget,” he added.

Some who oppose the measures, however, believe the financial problems facing the department can be traced back to its turn away from volunteer firefighters that began before Black’s time.

“The previous city manager gave the union the opportunity to disband the volunteers, so as that moved forward the volunteers were systematically eliminated because the union didn’t want them,” said Peter Langley, who was a volunteer firefighter for 20 years and reached the rank of lieutenant within the department.

“If, say, I responded and became incident commander, the career staff wouldn’t follow orders and that is a major breakdown because they believe they should be in charge,” Langley said.

“The fire doesn’t know any different; it’s only the people in the department that do,” he added.

Langley claims that between the previous departments that have since merged to become East Jefferson Fire Rescue, there was once 106 volunteers with only 18 career staff.

The department is still considered a combination career and volunteer department with 40 career staff and approximately 40 volunteers, Black said.

Three or four of those volunteers are firefighters, he added.

“We’re one of the few agencies, that really, in my opinion, have a well-integrated volunteer presence in our community,” Black said. “It certainly doesn’t exist for a large portion of where I come from in California, and it’s pretty unique that we’ve been able to hold on and build our ranks, but I would love more.”

According to a report by the National Fire Protection Association from September 2022, of the total number of firefighters nationwide 364,300 (35 percent) were career firefighters and 676,900 (65 percent) were volunteer firefighters.

“It’s a West Coast phenomena,” Langley said. “They’re all basically unionized, and I don’t mind having a union. It’s just after a certain period of time they get kind of greedy.”

Langley has spoken with Black previously on the matter and also mentioned that he has been asked by community members to attend the town halls and voice his criticisms.

Alongside a more robust volunteer program, Langley believes that taxes other than those on assessed property value could be sought, such as a transient tax on events like the Wooden Boat Festival and THING that bring in tourists, or excise taxes on vacation homes and Airbnb properties.

Even Black admits that more volunteer efforts are possible.

“I would be happy to have a large cohort of volunteers, much larger than 40. I think we can do better than that,” Black said.

At the same time, he believes filling those roles is a challenge.

“To ask a volunteer to have to support themselves financially and be a good member of the community, to also give up the same number of hours that a career firefighter needs to do to maintain their [certifications] and qualifications, that’s a big ask,” Black said.

“We do have them. We want more of them,” he added.

More information on the ballot measures and the upcoming town hall meetings can be found at ejfr.org/uncategorized/february-2023-ballot-measure.