In less than a month, voters in the North County Fire District will be asked to pass a replacement levy for emergency medical services.
The Emergency Medical Technicians provide excellent, valuable services to the people of the district, and deserve to be well equipped and compensated. Levies are authorized for a maximum of six years, after which they must be brought before the taxpayers for reauthorization. The voters are being asked to vote again for the EMS levy, again at a rate of 50 cents per $1,000 assessed valuation. On a home assessed at $250,000, for example, this would be $125 per year.
So what’s different about the levy request this year? The commissioners are asking that this time around the levy be made permanent, never again subject to the accountability required by an occasional request from the voters for reauthorization. One of the essential elements of a democratic system is accountability. It helps to keep costs in check (as in “checks and balances”) and gives the taxpayers/voters a way for periodically deciding, given the performance of the agency and current economic conditions, whether or not to pay for the additional services.
Removing the six-year requirement for reauthorization forever eliminates that essential accountability, unless a whole new board of commissioners should someday decide to remove the permanent lid. Good luck finding any instance where any governmental agency has reduced its income. Never has happened, never will.
Furthermore, if the North County Fire District commissioners could assure the voters that they would never come back to the trough for more, it might be somewhat more appealing to pass this levy. But that is not the case. This levy would set a new baseline for funding, and one can be sure that additional levies would be asked for, repeatedly, every chance the district got.
Especially in a time of economic straits — and they are likely about to get worse (hint: watch the stock market) — the taxpayers do not need to be handing more permanent income to any government agency, no matter how well-intentioned their present administrators are.
I strongly advise a vote against the EMS levy for North County Fire District. Let the district come back to the voters with a reauthorization levy that continues to have time limits. It’s the only way to insure some measure of accountability and control by the taxpaying public.
Sam Crager is a resident of Stanwood.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
