Fire District Out of Touch With Taxpayers Reality

Union Firefighter and Fire District 28 management have been accusing Citizens for Smart Taxes of lying to the public about district mismanagement. Citizens information is backed up with documents from the fire department, City of Enumclaw, Washington State Auditor’s office, The Seattle Times and The Enumclaw Patch.  

Fire District 28 has been spending thousands of taxpayer’s dollars on 2 page ads. Much of the content is self-promotion. From a taxpayer’s point of view, should a government agency using taxpayer money to tell you how wonderful they are and brag about all the charity stuff they did?    Is this charity or self-promotion with and end game?

The Chief stated in his letter to the paper, the commissioners are “volunteer elected officials”   and “receive a very small stipend for attending meetings”.  Fire Commissioners receive $114 per meeting.  Most commissioner meetings last under 30 minutes.  Minutes times are found  on the fire district web site.

$114 for a 10 minute meet is  “very small”?

From 2010 to 2012 the fire Chief received $49,000 in raises bringing his total compensation to $189,000 per year.  Source: Fire District 28 office.  

Fire District 28 spent $309,794.00 on a mobile home.   5 real estate agents stated that $85,000 paid for the mobile home was many times what they sell for.  It was sold to the district by commissioner Dave Hannity.  Source: Enumclaw Patch, The Seattle Times front page Sunday edition October 28, 2012 and Washington State Auditor’s office.  Then there’s the half a million dollars paid for property to build an new station with too many problems to list here.

 There is much more to this story that a simple letter can’t address.

Ask yourself:  Are politicians and government agencies in America out of control?  King County Fire District 28  doesn’t understand that us citizens working for private companies are struggling with less pay (or no pay) and don’t want another tax raise again.  Private citizen’s and the companies they work for are the source of almost 100% of all government revenue.  

October 16, 2013 Courier Herald you’ll find the Fire Department’s ad to convince  voters for raising their taxes. Add  Wages and Overtime and Personnel Benefits numbers.  $2,671,761.   Confirmed by the Fire Department, there are 19 employees. Do the math…        Average total compensation per Fire District employee is $140,617.11.

And now they want more money!  Really?

Ted DeVol

Enumclaw