BENTON COUNTY, Wash. – Residents of Benton County will soon decide on a new levy lid lift proposed by Benton County Fire District One.
The measure would increase taxes by 22 cents, bringing the total to $1.50 per $1,000 of assessed property value. Fire Chief Scott LoParco, explained what exactly all that money would be going to.
“So the levy is going to provide Benton County Fire District one with several different things. One of those, the first one being… being able to keep up with the inflation and everything in the cost of goods so that we can keep doing business. The other thing it’s going to do is allow us to keep maintaining our facilities that we have, and we haven’t done a lot of that in the last 20 years,” he said.
According to BCFD 1’s website, the levy funds would also fund three new full-time firefighters/EMT’s, a new washing machine to help clean gear, new medical equipment and maintenance on Station 120.
The fire district, which receives around 2,000 calls annually, is seeing a growing demand for medical services, which account for 68% of their calls. Since 2018, these calls have increased by 58%, and the price of fire engines has nearly doubled.
Chief LoParco says that Benton County Fire District One is not funded by the county. Instead, all funds are contributed to the district through taxpayers.
“It’s a diverse amount of things that go on within the fire district. It can be anything from a broken leg… somebody’s trapped so we have rescue duties that we do,” said LoParco. “This is just a continued effort to make sure we can respond to all the calls that our citizens ask us to respond to.”
