UPDATE: AUG. 9:

Press release:

South King Fire & Rescue (SKF&R) is passing their recent Maintenance and Operations levy with a current overwhelming yes vote of 61% and a no vote of 39%. Because the measure requires a supermajority of 60% to pass, they will await official certification from King County Elections (...) Fire Chief Al Church said “Thank you to our citizens for their awesome support of the Maintenance and Operations levy. We will do our part to continue providing the high level of emergency response and that our community has expected and seen for the past 63 years”.

Meanwhile, South King Fire sat on pins and needles until the 13th round of Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) Grant awards on August 10th to hear they were approved for 2 years of funding on 9 firefighter/EMT positions. They waited as more than 240 other fire departments received awards ahead of them. Being one of the final recipients of the award meant that South King Fire would not have to make a final decision of whether or not to accept the award until they knew the outcome of their Maintenance and Operations levy. Without the levy passing, South King Fire would have had to turn down the award or modify it because of the staffing retention requirement. This requirement would have forced South King Fire to fill currently vacated positions with their own funds prior to hiring the grant funded positions. This would have obligated them to dip farther into cash reserves and the department was not inclined to do so because of the amount of cash reserves needed to sustain emergency operations since the grant period opened in January.

...The Maintenance and Operations levy was presented as a means to re-staff one of the closed aid units. The SAFER Grant would fill 9 of the 16 vacant positions but would not be able to open the aid unit full time due to additional vacated positions since the SAFER Grant final submittal was made in February. The department was also concerned that they would not be able to continue to fund the SAFER Grant positions after the 2 year period due to a continued decline in revenues. The 4 year Maintenance and Operations levy will ensure those positions stay filled for the duration.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) implements and administers the (SAFER) Grants. SAFER Grants provide financial assistance to directly fund fire departments in order to help them increase or maintain the number of trained, "front line" firefighter/EMTs available in their communities through new hiring or filling of positions that were vacated through attrition. SAFER intends to restore local fire departments’ staffing and deployment capabilities so they may more effectively respond to emergencies. With restored staffing levels, grantees could see a reduction in their response times and an increase in the number of trained personnel assembled at the incident scene...

UPDATE: AUG 8:

"YES" votes are 11,087= 60.99%

"NO" votes are 7,091= 39.01%

There is a 60 percent "yes vote requirement" for Fire District Excess Levies, so this is looking promising for the Fire District. They anticipate just a few hundred more votes to trickle in between now and Friday, Aug. 24, the deadline. Some of those will arrive from voters serving in the military overseas.

UPDATE: AUG. 7:

With just over 20 percent of potential voter ballots counted, of the 69,249 registered voters, the South King County Fire & Rescue Tax Levy for Maintenance and Operations so far has 8341 "Yes" votes, or 60.55 percent, to
5435 "No votes, or 39.45 percent. There is a 60 percent "yes vote requirement" for Fire District Excess Levies, so this is too close to call.

Also, in the 11th District, popular Democrat Bob Hasegawa, running for the State Senate after eight years in the House, has so far received 8,048 votes, or nearly 68 percent. Republican challenger Kristin Thompson received 3,799, or 32 percent. They’re seeking the seat vacated by retiring Sen. Margarita Prentice.
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South King Fire & Rescue is re-running a Maintenance and Operations levy on the August 7 primary election to fund re-staffing of a previously closed aid car and fill a $2 million funding gap for operations. Last election, this levy receiving a "yes" vote of 59.32 percent and a 40.68 percent "no" vote, but the measure failed because of the 60 percent "yes vote requirement" for Fire District Excess Levies.

Because of falling home prices, revenues have dropped over 22 percent since 2009, and operating expenses have been lowered, including the reduction of 26 personnel including 16 firefighter/EMTs and a closure of one full-time aid car and a half-time aid car, wage freezes and union concessions in the past two years, and public education programs cut.

The levy's proposed collection rate would be an additional 29 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value or about $58 per year for the average homeowner (less than $5 per month). The levy would run unchanged for four years, collecting $3.5 million annually.

South King Fire & Rescue covers the city limits of Des Moines, Federal Way, a portion of South Normandy Park and the west hill of Auburn. The department also has "automatic mutual aid" with neighboring departments and is prepared to respond to fire calls in the south end of Burien and Sea Tac. The levy would only cost South King Fire residents.

"A fire doubles in size every minute," said Gordon (Gordie) Olson, Assistant Chief, South King Fire & Rescue. "We want to give those trapped inside a home more opportunities to survive that. And our goal in fighting a fire is not only to keep it from spreading to the rest of the house, but also the neighbor's house.
Insurance can replace a house, but if the fire doesn't damage everything, that means more than what money can buy in the house.

"It is critical for us to get on scene in less than six minutes for a medical call for a heart condition," he said. "That's when an oxygen-depleted brain can start dying. We're already very lean on personnel. Having to close that one aid car has increased response times throughout the entire district from Des Moines to Federal Way by how we back each other up. We not only would like to put that one unit back in service. We don't want to lose any more units.

"Obviously there are a number of people who are anti-tax no matter what," said Olson. "Others vote 'no' because they have to make a sacrifice somewhere in tough economic times. Most of them are supportive of the fire service, public safety and police. In the grand scheme of things we're a small cost. It's just a bad time for everybody. We understand that. We've cut over $4 million out of our budget, but our revenues have fallen $6 million. Before we were going to sacrifice our response times to the entire district, we felt we owed it to the public to ask them if that is what they needed us to do, or to pay a few extra dollars and try to maintain the services that we have now."

To learn more about the fire department, visit them at www.southkingfire.org

Read King County Local Voters' Pamphlet information on the South King Fire & Rescue tax levy here.