Bald Hills Fire Department to pursue levy lid lift in November general election

This November, the Bald Hills Fire Department will seek a levy lid lift in Thurston County’s general election and ask voters within the district to reset the levy rate to $1.50 per $1,000 of assessed property value.

Harry Miller, fire commissioner with the Bald Hills Fire Department, told the Nisqually Valley News on Monday, Aug. 25, that the local agency is as safe as they can be with money — but in order to stay robust and “where (they) want to be” as a department, the lift is needed.

“What happens is the economy grows and we can only do a 1% increase. So over the course of the five-year levy, it’s been stepping down. Right now, we’re collecting about $1.14 per $1,000. But to be robust and where we want to be, we should really be at that $1.50 mark. We do this every five years, and so we’re just coming back and asking for that,” Miller said. “A lot of people don’t understand how all of this works, but it’s that 1% we’re limited to. This would allow us to come back to the $1.50, which is what we’re entitled to. We’ve got to let people know that we are in fact important enough to vote for.”

Miller added the department tries to be as responsible as they can be with their levy ask, and noted recent purchases allowed the department to fight a recent fire as efficiently as possible.

“We try to be as responsible as we can. We have several of our volunteers in Clearwood, which is our biggest population, and they have an apparatus they drive home,” Miller said. “We went out to the voters and said ‘we need this much more money above and beyond what we regularly collect in taxes,’ and they signed off on the bond. We have a new fire engine called New Glory. Now, the cadets are using it. Two years ago, we bought a new fire engine and paid cash for it, which is kind of unheard of these days. We save our money. We try to be careful.”

Additionally, Miller noted the department has been able to equip brush rigs for EMS services, and has recently even begun transporting patients to local hospitals St. Peter, Capital, Madigan and Good Samaratan, if needed.

“We’ve got junk bags, we’ve got oxygen, we’ve got everything. We try to have a local response. This isn’t just the fire district. This is our family, and everybody we touch — which hopefully isn’t a whole lot — we try to give the best care possible,” Miller said. “We’ve never not passed a levy. I don’t see any real resistance right now, but people don’t always know what we do. We’re here to protect life, property, and we’re here to educate and do as much prevention as we can.”

Miller is hopeful to see local voters turn out this November for the general election. He noted that Bald Hills Fire Department brings a lot of value to its fire district.

“We’ve got three great commissioners and a wonderful chief, and awesome volunteers. We’re careful with all this stuff. We’ve got two little tiny stations because the vision when we started this 50 years ago was we just needed a place to park the equipment, never really understanding what could happen with Clearwood just exploding. It’s like a city in there,” Miller said. “We really try to stress the value that our fire district gets from Fire District 17. We think we’re totally worth it. We want to get the word out. We’ll be putting signs out pretty soon and letting people know. There’s a lot of people moving into our communities who are renting and might not be voting.”