Gig Harbor Fire approves $80 million plan. Here’s what they may ask voters to fund
Leaders of Gig Harbor Fire and Medic One have approved a capital projects plan that could lead to an $80 million bond issue to replace or remodel three aging stations and build a training facility.
The commissioners of Fire District 5 will decide in March whether the issue will go on the Aug. 2, 2022 ballot.
Chief Dennis Doan said the bond would pay for a complete replacement of Station 51 in Gig Harbor and an extensive remodel of Station 58 on Swede Hill and Station 59 in Artondale.
The Capital Facilities Plan was approved unanimously at a commissioners’ meeting Dec. 14. The board will take comments from the public before making a ballot decision, Doan said.
The bond is projected to cost 24 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value, or about $119 per year for the owner of a $500,000 home.
“We’re running out of room” at the three nearly 40-year-old stations, Doan told The Gateway. “These stations were built back in the 1980s, when we were a volunteer department, and now we’re a paid one — and we’re more diverse. We don’t have separate sleeping quarters for our female firefighters.”
The district’s 116 career firefighters work 24-hour shifts, sleeping and eating in the station houses, which are getting too cramped for that purpose, Doan said. The stations can accommodate five to seven firefighters at a time. Six of the nine firefighters hired recently are female, he noted.
The stations also lack decontamination areas, which is a health concern, Doan said, since the leading cause of death among firefighters is cancer.
“We come back from fires covered in ashes and soot, and from medic calls with all sorts of biological contamination,” he said. “And we’re bringing this stuff right into what amounts to our home.”
Training tower is another need
The district also needs a training facility, he said, so it can train firefighters more often and keep them on site, rather than pay to send them to the state fire academy at North Bend.
“It’s a huge hassle, and a pretty big expense,” to train firefighters outside the district, Doan said. “It’s a two-hour drive just to get there, and then they only get a few hours training and we end up paying overtime.”
The district recently hired nine new firefighters and had to scramble to find a place to train them because all the academies were full, Doan said. “I ended up having to pull a favor with West Pierce to get them into their academy,” he said.
The $20 million training center would include a five-story tower and an outbuilding for storing equipment. It would be built on 17 acres the district already owns behind Station 58.
The training tower was originally to be built in 2008, but the economic downturn put it on hold, the chief said. The design and permits are already done.
Fire calls increased 50 percent
Gig Harbor Fire and Medic One provides fire and life safety services to 53,000 people over 54 square miles.
The Gig Harbor service area has grown by more than 16 percent since 2010, and the volume of calls to the fire district — 6,134 last year — have increased 50 percent, Doan said. Since January, Gig Harbor firefighters have responded to 128 fires, 4,687 medical or rescue calls and 1,189 other incidents, according to district statistics.
Gig Harbor Fire and Medic One is also facing a vote in November 2022, to renew its levy for emergency medical service.
Voters will be asked to renew the levy at the same previously-approved rate of $0.50 per $1,000. The EMS levy provides a 24-hour paramedic response, and ambulance transport service for Gig Harbor residents.
The district is also pursuing other sources of revenue, Doan said. He recently submitted a $1.7 million grant request under a federal program to replace the agency’s 150 aged-out air packs — the oxygen bottles firefighters wear when inside buildings.
The capital facilities project is described in detail on the GHF&MO website: www.gigharborfire.org/about/bond/.
This story was originally published December 19, 2021 at 5:00 AM.