Baker Rural Fire Protection District leads claim without this levy homeowners insurance may go up due to reduced services. Well, guess what, one of the first questions insurance companies ask homeowners is how many miles to the nearest fire station, and when they learn the fire department moved to town your rates may increase anyway. Now about this 93 cents per $1,000 value, five-year levy request. BRFPD states on their own website that they are an agency with no paid employees. With that said they should use their equipment and services a minimal number of days per year, if they use it for county uses as intended. Now instead being in town in their fancy building they respond to every city fire call, wearing out county equipment that county households have to pay for and replace. I was told by one BRFPD people that the city reciprocates and responds to all county fire calls, which I don’t believe is true. I have lived here for over 20 years and I have seen three fires in our area of BRFPD protection and have never seen a city fire truck. By the way, the city doesn’t have to worry about wearing out their equipment as it is probably partially paid for by the Leo Adler Foundation.

When BRFPD told the public that they had to leave and could no longer use the fire station on Pocahontas Road, the landowner didn’t necessarily want them to leave, he wanted a fence put up to keep people from parking on the property. After the district bought their new building had moved they were still using the Pocahontas station over a year after they claimed they had vacated. Who was paying for this?

How is it that Keating rural fire and North Powder rural fire have nice adequate fire stations and all required equipment without proposing tax levies every other year? Maybe BRFPD should contact them for lessons in financial planning and district operations.

Currently the district receives through a permanent levy 67 cents per $1,000 assessed value, which in the five years will net them over $663,000. This amount is greater than the payback rate of a $4 million school bond. Now they want 93 cents per $1,000 value on top of that, which will net them over an additional $755,000, and if this passes between the two of them this amount would be over three times greater than the payback rate of a $4 million school bond. But the district says this is only a five-year levy. I guess the district growth will cease in five years, or maybe they will have their fancy new building in town and all of its luxury furnishings paid off with this levy money. I think they need to live within their means, or better yet sharpen their pencil, do some proper financial planning and apply for some of the billions of dollars of grant monies available.

Bruce Morrison

Baker City