Whitefish Fire Service Area Treasurer speaks on fee plan

My name is Thomas Moran and I have served as the Whitefish Fire Service Area’s Treasurer for the past three years. During that time, because of housing growth and a modest increase in subscription rates, the WFSA’s revenue stream has grown from $480,000 to $600,000 per year. And while that is good news for our organization, it still leaves WFSA woefully short of funds to do much in the way of a significant push toward expansion of services in the seventy plus square miles of the service area. 

In the fall of 2022, WFSA partnered with Carnegie Mellon University grad students for a second time, following up on the 2020 study, which had determined potential locations of additional fire stations in the service area. This time the students were charged with charting the number of stakeholders within the previously identified 5-mile nodes, as well as exactly how far each individual property was located from all the existing and virtual station locations.  

The study confirmed general observations concerning the density of residential properties within the entire 75 square mile area that essentially surrounds the Whitefish city limits. The previously identified nodes, per 2021 Flathead County GIS data, varied in density from significantly less than 100 residences to in excess of 1,000 homes and businesses. County GIS audits in the years since 2022 have identified about 200 additional residences, the majority of which lie in within the nodes of greatest density.  

With those facts in hand and following the increase in rates approved by the Flathead County Commissioners, WFSA began preliminary work to convert the service area into a fire district. By law, the conversion follows a petition process, with success achieved in this case, by acquiring over 1,600 property owners’ signatures, representing at least $26 million in taxable property value. The process encountered multiple setbacks and roadblocks, not least of which has been a tepid response from WFSA stakeholders. As a result, the petition to establish a district has essentially been at a standstill, awaiting final approval of the Homestead development’s wish to establish a fire district, headquartered near the intersection of Farm to Market and Star Meadows Roads. In response to the delay we’ve experienced, the WFSA Board of Trustees developed an alternate funding model. The board sought and were granted meetings with the individual Commissioners to promote the new plan.  

The board determined well over a year ago that it would take a revenue stream at least twice the service area’s $600,000 per year current income to affect a measurable expansion of coverage and fire/EMS response within the boundaries of the service area. Therefore, we have presented a flat fee revenue plan to the Commissioners that would loosely track the trajectory of converting the service area to mill rate funding and in a single lift, would raise the WFSA income to just over $1.2 million a year.  

This endeavor neither dampens the board’s wish to convert WFSA to a fire district nor diminishes the intrinsic value of doing so. The funding plan is devised to serve as a springboard beyond the districting process, allowing the newly formed district, whenever that may be, to have crafted a head start into the process of converting its income stream from a fixed fee to a mill rate model. Loud and apparently well-funded voices in the service area have chosen to not only disenfranchise themselves by withdrawing support for conversion to a fire district, but in the same breath complain about the WFSA following the funding process set forth in the Montana Code:   MCA, 7-33-2404. Financing of fire service area -- fee on structures -- fee on undeveloped land. (1) In the resolution creating the fire service area and by resolution as necessary after creation of the fire service area, the board of county commissioners shall establish a schedule of rates to be charged to owners of structures and owners of undeveloped land that are benefited by the services offered by the fire service area. 

The board’s plan for the additional revenue raised would be as follows: $500,000 per year to add four firefighter/paramedics to the Whitefish Fire Department roster, expanding personnel to seven Firefight/Paramedics per shift. $120,000 per year in payments, over a ten-year period, for a one-million-dollar loan to remodel Station 22 for 24/7 use. The remaining funds would be used to procure property west of Whitefish for an additional fire station, most likely in the Highway 93 corridor, either through direct ownership or lease.  

Conclusion: the WFSA is underfunded with respect to all other similarly sized districts in the valley. Each year, WFSA stakeholders currently pay to the city of Whitefish the equivalent of the salaries of three of WFD’s seventeen firefighters. In the past year, 40% of 911 calls for service while Whitefish Fire Department was otherwise engaged were deferred to mutual aid. Whitefish Fire has enough fire and ambulance equipment to provide response to significantly cut into that 40% lag in service. The department simply lacks sufficient personnel for dual responses.  

The quickest way to help mitigate that issue would be twofold. WFSA property owners need to provide support for the WFSA board’s request to the Flathead Commissioners for additional funding that would be made available in the upcoming tax year and for WFSA property owners to be ready and willing to sign the WFSA’s petition to convert the service area into a fire district. Failure to act on these measures will certainly relegate WFSA to at least another year without chance of expansion of services. 

Thomas Moran, Whitefish