After nearly two years, the city of Black Diamond has finally closed the book on fire and emergency service discussions by signing a new contract with Mountain View Fire and Rescue.
The happy moment came during the regularly-scheduled Sept. 16 council meeting with a unanimous vote from the city council.
City residents may recall when Mountain View moved to cancel its contract with the city in November 2019; fire commissioners claimed the city was routinely underpaying the department for its services and that attempts to get the city council to take up the issue were going nowhere.
According to the city’s 2020 budget, Black Diamond expected to pay Mountain View around $571,000 that year. However, Chief Greg Smith said it actually costs the department about $1 million to serve the city at current population and service call levels. Were the department to continue serving Black Diamond without addressing that discrepancy, fire commissioners expected Mountain View to fall into the financial red.
Cancelling the contract did not put local residents at immediate risk — Black Diamond and the department had until Jan. 1, 2023 to negotiate a new contract, meaning the city council stayed well ahead of the deadline.
After the contract was cancelled, the city council hired the consulting firm FCS Group to help determine what their options were in retaining fire services and how much those options would cost. FCS returned to the city late 2020 and early 2021 to discuss those options.
In short, the city could have continued a contract with Mountain View, become annexed into Mountain View’s fire district, become annexed into Puget Sound Regional Fire Authority’s district (which covers Covington, Kent, and Maple Valley), or started a city fire department.
All options had their pros and cons, but the city council quickly focused on the cheaper of the four options: continuing to contract with Mountain View, with the goal of eventually becoming annexed into the department’s district when more funds become available.
However, “cheaper” certainly doesn’t mean “cheap” in this instance. According to the new contract, which was also approved by the Mountain View fire commissioners Sept. 14, Black Diamond will almost immediately begin paying the fire department the additional $500,000 it was asking for, starting in 2022. From there, the city expects a 5 percent increase in cost every following year.
For those who want specific numbers, this means the city will pay Mountain View about $1.05 million next year, $1.1 million in 2023, $1.15 million in 2024, $1.21 million in 2025, $1.27 million in 2026, $1.34 million in 2027, and $1.41 million in 2028.
HOW WILL THIS AFFECT YOUR WALLET?
Back when the Black Diamond City Council was talking to the FCS Group, it was assumed that any of the four options the council could pick from would include the need to increase the local property tax levy rate by asking the voters to approve what’s known as a “levy lid lift”.
According to FCS, property taxes would have had to increase from $1,130 to $1,625 for property owners with a $500,000 home in order for Mountain View to continue providing the city with an appropriate level of service.
But city Finance Director May Miller has some good news on that front.
“This year, it looks like our revenues from building permits and sales tax and some of the operating revenue, and our fund balance, certainly will carry us through next year without any changes,” she said in a Sept. 24 interview. “Beyond that, what will happen next year on building and sale of homes and the economy — all of the above — will tell us what we need to do.”
ADDITIONAL FIRE SERVICES
Black Diamond’s Mater Development Review Team lead Andy Williamson, who introduced the new Mountain View contract to the council during the Sept. 16 meeting, highlighted a part of the document that he was particularly excited for.
“One of the best things I think that the city was able to negotiate with the fire district, and the fire district agreed with us, was that… Station 98 will be staffed 24 hours per day, seven days per week, with a minimum of two on-duty career firefighters,” he said.
This is an increase from the city’s previous contract with the department, which stipulated that two career firefighters would cover only some of the shifts at Station 98, while volunteer firefighters would man the station the rest of the time.
