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The RFA would have you believe that the service enhancement of adding 18 new firefighters results from having an RFA. That is not correct and to continue to claim it is misleading the voters. SaveOurFD believes voters should have access to the facts and evidence before deciding. See below and see the evidence that backs up why the RFA is wrong to make this claim.
The facts are these improvements are not dependent upon the creation of the RFA. They are already on their way to happening without an RFA (click to download the Olympia study and plan).
On February 22, 2023, Olympia Councilmember Parshley stated that Olympia will be reducing their number of BLS firefighters to 9. (Note that Olympia has already started recruiting for a registry for 18.)
CM Parshley said that the funding source their consultants said was available is running out of money.
Here's the deal. The RFA 7-year budget shows the BLS costs are "self-funded". If CM Parshley is correct, that means that the 18 BLS included in the RFA plan have no funding to pay for them!
The RFA can not claim to provide those firefighters as an RFA benefit without also providing a way to fund them.
The proponents may comfort themselves in knowing that they could increase the fire benefit charge much higher than the current $10.5 million to pay for them. But that would require telling the public how much higher their property tax bill will be to pay for the benefit they say they say they are going to provide.
You can't have it both ways.
Below is additional evidence that demonstrates that the BLS and CARES programs are independent of an RFA. Evidence that is available from the RFA Committee's website, City of Olympia and through public records requests.
Source: From the Olympia consultant report from September 7, 2022
Source: 6-13-22 RFA PowerPoint
Early in the RFA Committee's work they accurately portrayed the RFAs relationship with the BLS initiative. Along the way, that context was lost and the result was a misleading portrayal that the BLS is a result of the RFA.
Transcript from June 13, 2022 RFA Meeting
Transport and CARES - Olympia continues to work on implementation of that based on their FCS study. Tumwater has launched a parallel study by FCS to look at what would it take either for Tumwater to provide that service on our own or if you expanded this to the RFA, what would that look like?
We're probably a couple of months away from that. Pragmatically, I'd say just one of the challenges that has made the financial work complicated is doing trying to implement transport and cares while also putting together an RFA. And when we think about that bringing Tumwater into that and what that means, frankly it almost becomes insurmountable. And so this approach is one that I think allows us to proceed, allows Olympia to work through the implementation of transport and CARES and then if that's something that expands or could expand, that's a thing that RFA could do into the future.
RFA Minutes
"Councilmember Cooper remarked that the cities are in crisis in terms of emergency services as response times are decreasing and the ability to transport people is becoming more difficult each day to the point where the City of Olympia is investing money and time to build transport programs."
Ordinance No. 7348
AN ORDINANCE OF THE CITY OF OLYMPIA, WASHINGTON, ADOPTING THE CITY OF OLYMPIA’S 2023 OPERATING, SPECIAL, AND CAPITAL BUDGETS AND 2023-2028 CAPITAL FACILITIES PLAN; SETTING FORTH THE ESTIMATED REVENUES AND APPROPRIATIONS
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