Credible Information on the Consolidation of EC/IC/NF Fire Protection Districts

LJ, the people who work and volunteer in the fire districts don't ask for something from the taxpayers unless they need them. This is not a "nice to have" situation, they are seeing the trends of our aging population in Jeffco, declining volunteers (which is nationwide and has been declining for years), traffic increasing which increases the number of accidents, and fires that have gotten worse thanks to poor forest management and climate change.

They cannot continue providing the same level of service unless they can hire additional full-time staff to cover the areas where the worst of our wildland fires start (and they burn straight toward Conifer when they do). They cannot house those on-call firefighter paramedics in Morrison or Bufflo Creek unless they remodel 2 stations that currently don't even have bedrooms. North Fork doesn't even have enough volunteers to hold their annual chili fundraiser during Christmas tree hunting season like they had for decades. When I attended their open house, they told me that on a backcountry rescue this past summer, the average of the 5 NFFPD personnel who hiked in to wheel out a 20-something injured biker was 61. There isn't new construction down there, and barely any younger families moving in, they have very little population to pull from for volunteers.

If you think that won't impact you, you are mistaken.

Elk Creek Fire receives more mutual aid from neighboring districts than it provides because we have more overlapping calls. That's not fair, and not sustainable as call volume continues to increase for us and them. And when both of our ambulances are out taking patients down the hill (a 2-3 hour round trip for a call), do you want to wait for an ambulance to be toned out from ICFPD or Evergreen Fire? If we combine districts, there is no waiting for that request from Elk Creek Fire to tone out a different district, dispatch has already made the call to Conifer Fire which now has 7 ambulances to call upon and the next ambulance is rolling.

In Inter-Canyon, the Chief and the Deputy Chief alternate being on call over weekends. That's a recipe for burnout. Especially as our firefighters, and Chiefs, are underpaid compared to the other fire districts in Colorado. Chief Ware has the lowest, or is in the top 3 of lowest-paid Chiefs overall. They aren't enriching themselves and begging for extra, they see the future because they are living it and they know what they will need in the near future. They have also been fiscally responsible, saved money for new fire engines so they don't have to finance them (and pay those exorbitant interest rates, saving hundreds of thousands in taxpayer dollars), passed every 3rd-party audit every year, and kept the promises they made with the last two mill levies (which is why we even have enough personnel for 2 simultaneous calls now, a fact that the opposition ignores).

I don't know about you, but I prefer my first responders be proactive and prepare rather than play catch up at my expense. If you have questions, go ask the Chief. If you're only listening to the opposition, it's a load of lies that play like a bad record from the past two mill levy requests - I know, I was there and refuted them all back then too.

Edit to add: this is Director Chuck Newby, registered agent for the opposition group Save Elk Creek Fire (which is illegally using the ECFPD logo in their campaign) yelling at the volunteers and career firefighters at the last Elk Creek Fire Board meeting, saying and I quote "You're despicable - all of you - all of you - you claim to be heroes? You're liars. Despicable. Despicable."

Can you trust a person who says this about our first responders?

Here's the full meeting video, in which you can hear multiple volunteers and career staff refute Save Elk Creek Fire's claims that their is "dysfunction" between volunteers and career staff, and hostility toward volunteers. The same lies came up in the 2013 and 2019 election, and it was stated by disgruntled former ECFPD firefighters who show up every time there's something on the ballot that has to do with ECFPD (they disappear otherwise, and I know that because I've attended nearly every ECFPD Board meeting for 11 years and I see who else is there). There's no push to get rid of volunteers, never has been, never will be. Elk Creek Fire holds combined fire fighter academies every year with ICFPD and NFFPD (and sometimes other 285 Corridor districts).


Don't fall for the lies. Go talk to the firefighters yourself if you don't believe the show of support here.

ramage, there are two reasons why an increase in a mill levy is proposed on the ballot:
1. all districts must be at the same mill levy when they consolidate. That means ECFPD and NFFPD has to increase, or ICFPD and NFFPD would have to take cuts in order to match the lowest mill levy rate (ECFPD's). I don't believe anyone wants to cut our fire districts' revenue. Since we have to increase, the question became what makes the most sense? A mill levy increase of ~2 to match ICFPD, or to look strategically ahead and what is needed to meet the growing needs of our mountain area due to population increases, traffic increases, and worsening fire danger in what is already one of the highest fire-risk areas in the country.

2. if you look at what's proposed by the 3 fire districts in order to not just maintain the status quo, but to proactively plan for and achieve, better service with this consolidation in regards to current and future trends, a proposed increase to a mill levy of 16 would allow the districts to hire 18 new firefighter/paramedics, raise our current firefighter/paramedics pay to be competitive with other districts so we lose fewer of our talent to better-paying jobs, renovate or rebuild 2 stations in order to house them, and to replace aging apparatus that have drastically increased in price over the past few years.

Elk Creek Fire has a proven track record of being fiscally responsible and meeting the promises made with the past 2 mill levies approved by voters. We have spent within our budget, as required by state law, and passed every 3rd-party, independent audit every year. In addition, we've saved the extra revenue and revenue that's come in above and beyond thanks to our firefighters going out-of-district on fire assignments (the firefighters not only get paid by the entity hosting them, but their salary is covered while they are gone and their home district (ECFPD) gets paid for their absence (and any apparatus they take with them that we are without). This has resulted in a savings surplus of $5M that is planned for purchasing new fire engines outright (in 2019 they cost about $700K, they are now over $1M) rather than financing them at the high interest rates we currently see and costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars more. As well, should we have a mid- to large fire in our district that requires us to call in outside resources to assist (air support, Type I or Type II Incident Management Teams), we have to pay for that and we'll need those cash reserves. Given our fire danger, it's a matter of when, not if, and it's the fiscally responsible thing to do.

On top of that, our district has applied for, and received millions of dollars in grants these past few years for equipment, infrastructure, and landscape-scale mitigation to make the community as a whole safer, and to provide district homeowners direct benefits for doing their own mitigation (with matching grants). Applying for and managing those grants takes a ton of time and effort, and it's fallen to our Wildland Captains to do that, keeping them from doing more. This has all directly benefited district residents, and we could do a lot more if we had more resources (for example, hire a full time grant writer and program manager). Thanks to the 2019 mill levy, we were able to turn the wildly successful Chipping Program into a permanent program we offer residents; prior to that, it was funded by temporary grants that we had no guarantee of winning year-over-year. The WIldland Module has grown from 1 person to a 12-person accredited crew that is sought after nationwide for wildland incidents. It would be amazing to see them achieve Hotshot Status.

Cutting our revenue is not the way to go if we are to meet the needs of this district as it grows. Yes, we will become more efficient administratively by combining, but our firefighters are underpaid, and there's a lot of work to be done to make our community safer from wildfire. I would urge you to vote yes on 7D, 7E, and 7F to help us get there.