Merger of Poulsbo and North Kitsap Fire Districts Recommended
By Admin
As property assessments (which trail home prices by about 2 years) have fallen, the tax revenue rate supporting the budgets of local fire departments has reached the maximum rate allowed by law (NK to reach in 2012). With this cap on rates, local fire departments are forecasting a big shortfall in future budgets. This Kitsap Sun article reports on a consultant’s recommendation that the North Kitsap and Poulsbo Fire Districts be merged.
The consultants’ rather bleak prognosis involves at least seven job cuts and elimination of one of the two chiefs positions currently held by Dan Smith in North Kitsap and Dan Olson in Poulsbo.
That would generate about $725,000 in cuts, the consultants said; a full merger would also save about $500,000 a year by 2016, they added.
The two agencies cut the north end of Kitsap County in half, with Poulsbo serving Keyport to Port Gamble and North Kitsap serving Suquamish to Hansville.
Like all the state’s fire districts, Poulsbo and North Kitsap each have two main sources of income: a fire levy, with which they can collect up to $1.50 per thousand dollars of assessed property value; and an EMS levy, with which they can collect 50 cents per thousand of assessed value.
But property tax collections in Poulsbo’s district have already hit a statutory cap on both levies as assessed values have fallen; in North Kitsap, they’ll hit a cap on both in 2012, Bivins said.
Read more: http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2011/aug/29/consultant-urges-merger-of-north-kitsap-poulsbo/#ixzz1X0l3cwfe
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