Mountain View Fire and Rescue recently said it intends to no longer serve the city of Black Diamond if additional funding is not secured.

An official letter from the MVFR Board of Commissioners was sent to the city on Dec. 31, 2024 and announced the contract will expire on Jan. 1, 2028. The letter also alleged the current funding model goes against state code.

“… we are unable to sustain the current level of services under the terms of the existing agreement,” the letter reads. “We remain committed to working with the City to annex the City into the District but do not believe further contract extensions are financially viable.”

If this all sounds familiar, that’s because MVFR gave notice that it was going to terminate its contract with the city in 2019 after years of negotiations. A new contract was agreed upon in 2021, with Black Diamond increasing funding from $571,000 to just over $1 million in 2022, and at least a 5% increase every year until 2028.

The city budgeted to pay MVFR $1.28 million this year.

According to Fire Chief Dawn Judkins, this is not enough to cover her department’s service to the city.

“Currently MVFR is funded by the City on a contract for services that was negotiated in good faith. After reviewing our district budget much more thoroughly over the last two years, we have discovered that the contractual amount is not sufficient for staffing the one fire station in the City of Black Diamond with a minimum of two firefighter/EMTs,” she wrote in an email interview.

One of the main issues, she continued, is the lack of volunteer firefighters.

According to Judkins, MVFR had roughly 50 volunteer firefighters four years ago. Per the contract with the city, two career firefighters manned the city’s fire station (Station 98) during the 12-hour day shift, and volunteers covered the night shift — when volunteers were available.

When volunteers were unavailable, MVFR had to pay overtime to career firefighters to staff Station 98.

When the COVID pandemic hit, MVFR saw a “significant decrease” in available volunteer shifts and volunteer applicants, so in 2022, MVFR decided to staff the station 24/7 with career firefighters, but “[t]he burnout rate was high for the career staff at Station 98 due to working so many overtime shifts in place of volunteers,” Judkins said. The department had to hire eight more career firefighters to staff Station 98 around the clock.

The department calculates the actual cost of running Station 98 last year to be $2.86 million — and that was just for two full-time firefighters, Judkins added. Were the station to adopt the King County regional standard staffing level and have three firefighters at the station, the cost would have increased to about $3.5 million.

“The District desires to staff Station 98 with three firefighter/EMTs, which would provide a more appropriate level of service for a growing City like Black Diamond,” she said.

Judkins added that Black Diamond residents are taxed roughly a third of what the rest of the district is taxed; unincorporated residents pay $1.50 per $1,000 in assessed property value (APV), but according to MVFR, Black Diamond residents put in about 53 cents per $1,000 in APV out of its total tax rate of $1.33.

However, city officials in the past have said that comparing how much money Black Diamond contractually pays Mountain View against the department’s property tax collections elsewhere is like comparing apples to oranges.

The city of Black Diamond did not immediately respond to email questions concerning fair pay and possible annexation.

ANNEXATION

Besides pay, the contract between Black Diamond and MVFR stipulates the city must hold multiple public meetings about the potential annexation into the fire district.

Annexing into the district means that MVFR would tax Black Diamond residents directly. At this time, the city collects property taxes and distributes some of that revenue to the fire department.

The current property tax rate in Black Diamond is $1.33 per $1,000 in APV, and brings in about $3.1 million in revenue to the city.

If more than 50% of Black Diamond voters approve an annexation measure during an election, they would add MVFR’s property tax on top of continuing to be taxed by Black Diamond.

MVFR voters approved a levy lid lift on 2022 to increase the property tax rate to $1.50.

That means the combined property tax rate for both MVFR and Black Diamond would come out to $2.83. For a resident with property valued at $500,000, the tax bill would increase to $1,415 — more than double what residents are taxed by only Black Diamond.

However, with MVFR receiving revenue directly from Black Diamond residents instead of Black Diamond, that means the city can reallocate the one million—plus payments to the fire department elsewhere in its general fund.

LEVY LID LIFT

While the current contract requires Black Diamond to explore the possibility of annexation, that’s not a guarantee officials will decide that’s the best course of action, or that voters would approve it.

Another way the city could increase payments to MVFR is to ask voters for a levy lid lift of its own, increasing the current $1.33 tax rate up to its $3.10 maximum (or anywhere between).

If voters approved the maximum lid lift, the city could increase its tax revenue to more than $7 million; the individual tax bill, for someone with $500,000 in assessed property value, would rise to $1,550.

OTHER OPTIONS

If the city council or voters decide not to annex into MVFR’s district or increase the property tax rate, other options include contracting with another fire district — namely, Puget Sound Regional Fire Authority, which already covers Covington, Kent, and Maple Valley, or starting its own fire department.

Both options were lightly considered the last time MVFR moved to cancel its contract with Black Diamond between 2019 and 2021, but the council decided to not put any energy into exploring those paths at the time.