Buckley residents can expect to vote in August on increasing their emergency services levy to its full amount.
As a part of budget discussions last year, when the Buckley City Council was looking at different ways to mitigate an expected deficit, there seemed to be one thing the whole council wholeheartedly agreed on: a levy lift measure should be put on an upcoming ballot to support their first responders.
The current levy rate is nearly 30 cents per $1,000 in assessed property value, which is expected to generate about $335,000 for the city-run Buckley Fire Department this year.
The maximum limit for an EMS levy rate is 50 cents. The levy has depreciated over the last several years because municipalities and other public entities (fire departments, schools) are only allowed to collect 1% more in levy revenue than the previous year — thus, as the city’s population grows or as property values increase, the levy rate has to decrease to compensate.
That 1% ceiling isn’t enough for the fire department to operate, according to the city, and official documents claim that the city might not be able to increase the number of paramedics with this levy limit at a time when call volumes are increasing “rapidly”.
To get back to that maximum rate, 50% of voters have to approve the measure. Approving the levy would allow the city to continue supporting current EMS staff without subsidizing the EMS budget with the city’s general funds, which frees up cash for other city expenses, City Administrator Courtney Brunell said in an interview. She added that the city hopes to use some reserve funds on top of this to hire an additional full-time full responder.
At this time, there are only four full-time firefighters at the department; the rest of the crew consists of volunteers, though there is a high turnover rate as those volunteers find full-time positions at other departments.
The council appears inclined to get such a ballot measure on the Aug. 6 primary election, but what the measure could look like will be determined during an April 9 meeting, after print deadline.
What’s likely going to be approved that meeting is what’s known as a “multi-year” lid lift, where if voters approve the measure, the levy rate would reset back to 50 cents in 2025 and, instead of limiting the city to collecting just 1% more revenue each consecutive year, raise that cap to 6% until 2030.
How much tax revenue a voter-approved multi-year lid lift would generate is unknown, as the city can only guess at how much property rates or population growth could occur, in the next several years.
But with an assumed 10% increase in assessed property valuation each year, the city of Buckley would be expected to collect about $616,400 in 2025, and that could increase to nearly $825,000 by 2030.
Over the six years, the levy rate could decrease to just about 41 cents, potentially putting the city back into a position to run another lid lift.
There also appears to be a consensus that seniors and veterans with physical disabilities would be exempt from this lid lift, but how that exemption works is unclear at this time.
