Yachats Fire District’s 2025-26 budget includes money for 7th firefighter, funds for new equipment

By GARRET JAROS/Lincoln Chronicle

YACHATS — The Yachats Rural Fire Protection District’s budget committee approved a 2025-26 budget Tuesday that includes more money for staffing and equipment.

The general fund budget of just over $3 million, which includes a cash carryover of $573,515, exceeds last year’s $2.3 million budget.

“We increased a couple of items,” said district administrator Frankie Petrick. “We put some money in this budget to try and increase staffing by one person. That’s our goal. And then projecting our future needs we put more money into our apparatus reserve fund with the idea it will continue to build and get us closer to being able to purchase an engine as needed in the future.”

Along with the desire to add a firefighter/paramedic to the crew, which costs about $130,000 with insurance and basic benefits, the district is in need of some new office equipment. And then there is the predictable annual cost increase of everything from wages to reoccurring costs like fuel, electricity and ongoing maintenance.

The biggest expenditure is of course personnel. The district is budgeting a total of $1.85 million to cover everything from wages to insurance to Oregon Public Employee Retirement System contributions, which the budget committee adjusted down to an estimated $300,000. Last year the district budgeted $1.2 million for personnel costs.

The district’s five-member board still needs to formally approve the budget at its June 9 meeting. The budget committee consists of the five board members and five appointed citizens, two of whom were absent from Tuesday’s meeting. Board president Katherine Guenther attended via Zoom.

The district collected $1.67 million in taxes last year and anticipates collecting $1.73 million in 2025-25. In November 2022 voters approved a local tax option of $1.59 per $1,000 assessed property value. It expires in 2027. A second local tax option of 61 cents was renewed in November 2023 and expires in 2028.

The district also receives a permanent tax base rate of about 29 cents per $1,000 assessed value. Combined, the taxes costs the owner of property assessed at $250,000 about $622 a year.

While the district is on solid financial footing for now, board members say the district will likely need to go back to the voters to ask for an increase when the current tax levies end.

“Right now we are carrying forward a little surplus each year, but that number is trending down,” board member Ed Hallahan said. “And when it gets to zero, we will be in deficit mode, which will be a couple of years – about the time (the levies) are do for renewal. That is why we’re probably going to have to increase that rate at least to curb inflation if for nothing else.”

The fire district currently has six firefighter/paramedics and 2.5 administrators. And while the cost of adding another is significant, Petrick believes it is necessary in order to have enough hands on deck.

The district runs two firefighter/paramedics on three shifts of 48 hours on and 96 hours off. It has mutual aid agreements with Central Oregon Coast Fire & Rescue as well Seal Rock Fire. The vast majority of calls are medical related. Two people per vehicle are currently sent on calls.

“And what we would like to have is a person at the station to respond if the crew is out on a call,” Petrick said. “If there is a fire call it consumes a lot of folks to make a response happen quickly.”

In the long run it will be up to district voters to decide what level of service they want and are willing to support, Petrick added. But one of the things she believes needs to happen is that the Oregon Legislature needs to look at how it’s funding fire service in Oregon.

“We are not the only district that struggles with having enough personnel to run a district,” she said. “And they are the people that put that out there for us. It was a legislative act. And we need to get them to look at it again, on how do you fix fire district funding to keep up with the times without the tax burden being too heavy on the property owner.”

There are no gaps in response coverage but it can get strained during the summer when there is a large influx of visitors. The district does not have many volunteers and workforce housing is an issue, which means most paid staff commutes to Yachats from other places, including the Willamette Valley. Which is another reason wages must be competitive, Petrick said, to keep them from moving on to higher paid positions elsewhere.

The budget will be available for public review on the district’s website Friday, and is taped to the glass of the Yachats fire station’s foyer which has 24-hour access. The board will discuss the budget during a public hearing at its June 9 regularly scheduled meeting before granting final approval.

Other 2025-26 budget highlights include:

• Equipment and operations cost of $176,200. And an administrative cost of $72,700
• A contribution of $35,000 from South Lincoln Ambulance, should the district choose to renew the current ambulance staffing agreement currently under review.
• On recommendation of the budget committee the equipment reserve fund was increased from $30,000 to $205,000 and the personnel reserve fund from $100,000 to $150,000. Those alterations were made by reducing the allocated PERS amount from $505,000 to $300,000 – last year it was $175,000 — and from reducing “other” non-medical volunteer benefits from $30,000 to $10,000.

• Garret Jaros covers the communities of Yachats, Waldport, south Lincoln County and natural resources issues for the Lincoln Chronicle, formerly YachatsNews, and can be reached at GJaros@YachatsNews.com