Letters to the Editor

Letter to the Editor | Emergency medical response and property taxes

As I’m looking at my current Property Tax bill I noticed another substantial increase.

I also see that the Fire Emergency Services portion went up again from last year and I’m trying to understand the reasons. I spent most of my career as a first responder in a huge U.S. city and worked many emergency scenes.

Is it because Gig Harbor has spent $25 million to purchase new fire trucks to replace the worn out ones?

Am I the only one that notices the constant Fire Emergency vehicles rushing through the City? Why is it that when 911 dispatches a medical emergency call with clearly no fires, we see multiple Fire Trucks, a Battalion Chief and at times the Technical Rescue Apparatus when the call is clearly medical?

By doing this, what should be in reality a single vehicle call for service, turns into 3 or 4 units at huge additional expense. In my view this practice is to pad the books to generate bigger numbers for a bigger budget. Annually, a great majority of the calls are for medical services not fire. The vast majority of cities in America roll out an ambulance only, unless the 911 dispatcher deems the call requires more support.

My suggestion is to stop driving around putting unnecessary mileage on the fire equipment when there is clearly no fire.

Also, why can’t the new fire training center train other departments, charge tuition and recoup some of our taxpayer expense?

This savings should be directed to the Police department budget where daily crime impacts each of us!

Rolf Knuth

Gig Harbor