Lebanon Fire District’s budget woes aren’t really news, but they deserve increased attention from the community because they could affect all of us very directly.
The district is one of the oldest in Oregon – it marked its 140th year in 2024. Such longevity indicates that the district has served the community reliably and that it has had support from the people it serves.
And that’s what’s going to be key now, during a difficult season. As reported on page 7 of this month’s print edition, LFD is reporting a nearly $1 million shortfall between its revenue and its costs, which is a significant problem not only for the organization and its employees, but for the rest of us.
That’s because it’s Lebanon’s fire district.
The reasons why LFD, which not long ago was in good financial shape, finds itself in this predicament are complicated and there’s not space here to flesh them out.
Fire Chief Joseph Rodondi told Lebanon Local that in the last decade LFD call volume has increased 45%, with a 200% increase in “call overlap” (more than one call happening at the same time), causing average response times to increase by three minutes, 23 seconds.
According to the district’s statement issued last week, detailing some of these issues, two-thirds of its calls involve call overlap, which means medics or firefighters aren’t getting to emergencies as quickly because the district is short-staffed.
Complicating this situation is the fact that LFD recently opened a brand new 25,000-square- foot main fire station, which took five years to complete after passage of a 26-year $16 million bond. Unfortunately, COVID and skyrocketing construction costs complicated that project; the end result was delayed and “value engineered” to adjust to those complications.
The timing was not ideal, no matter how you look at it, and when the district came to voters in 2024, asking for a levy to fund six additional firefighters (an approximately 14% staff increase), which would have returned staffing to pre-COVID levels, two-thirds of residents who voted turned down the request.
Safety costs money, but voters apparently didn’t like the idea of paying 75 cents per $1,000 assessed value (approximately $150-300 per year, based on a home valued between $200,000 and $400,000) to fund additional staff for the fire department.
At the local level, fire departments are secondary only to police in providing the most basic responsibility of government: protection. Water, sewer and other local services are helpful, but if you believe Thomas Hobbes, protection is the No. 1 reason why we have government.
And that includes fire and medical help when we need it. One only has to look at the recent disaster in Southern California to recognize the importance of having these services adequately staffed and funded.
That said, there are limits to what we can afford to pay, and the district has pledged to find ways to control its spending, economize on staff, find new revenue sources and spread the cost-cutting across the board in view of economizing.
Economy is a virtue in public agencies, so the district should be applauded as it finds way to streamline its operations and cut its costs, which is imperative.
However, budget woes for the people whose job it is to aid us in time of need can obviously have a dire effect on all of us. This isn’t just a pothole in the road or a trashy neighbor who hasn’t been called on the carpet. This could be the difference between the medics arriving in five or eight-plus minutes, which is a long wait when we’ve found Grandma on the floor, struggling to breathe.
That’s why this isn’t just a problem facing the LFD administration and its board members and its staff. This is all of our problem, because the Lebanon Fire District is all of us. Voters’ reluctance to further invest in the district might be understandable, given recent history, but we’d better start thinking about what it’s going to take to solve this problem before it bites all of us.