Questions raised about real need for Windsor-Severance fire district mill levy

Oct. 11--In November, residents

of the Windsor Severance Fire Rescue district will have the chance to approve or

reject a mill levy increase that would fund the staffing of the fourth and eventual

fifth station for the district. This is the subject of ballot measure 7A.

A yes vote would

decrease response times closer to top-of-the-industry standards, but there are

some questions about whether that's necessary for a district like that of WSFR.

Some of those questions

come from an expert living in the district. Dan Graham is a fire protection

engineering and management consultant. He's worked for 40-plus years in

Wisconsin fire and more recently in metro Denver fire. He's retired to Windsor

and has concerns.

Fire chief Kris Kazian

has answers for the questions, but it's going to be up to voters to decide how

to best use their money.

The class system

Fire departments use

several different analysis metrics to determine their efficiency and efficacy.

One of the more universal analyses is called the Insurance Service Office, or

ISO, classification. ISO is measured on a scale of Class 10, the worst, to Class

1, the best, and it's used to determine homeowner's insurance rates.

Class 1 is an absolute

top-of-the-line fire district designation. It's a measure of response times,

water supply, communication systems and risk reduction.

In Colorado, out of 570

rated fire districts, only eight, the top 1.4%, are rated class 1. Greeley is

ISO Class 2.

As of Jan. 1, 2016, WSFR

was also rated Class 2, at least within the boundaries of Windsor and Severance

town limits. Addresses outside of town limits but within 1,000 feet of a fire

hydrant and 5 road miles of a station are rated Class 3. That's with three

stations.

"Why does a Class 2

district complain they need to improve?" Graham said. "It's

money."

However, Kazian said the

push for a fourth and eventually fifth fire station isn't about getting up to Class

1 -- he agrees that'd be nice but unnecessary for a low-industry area like

Windsor-Severance. It's much more about not falling back into Class 3.

"Our current rating

is 80.59," Kazian said. "That's less than half a point into being Class

2. To get to 1, we'd have to go all the way to 90. We could be Class 1 someday,

but we're not chasing Class 1. We have a very easy ability to slide back to Class

3 without hardly anything different."

Between selling the

district's ladder truck -- Kazian said that happened before he came on as chief

and he's working on getting one back -- and not having quick access to the

growing southern part of Windsor, where the proposed Station No. 4 would be

located, Kazian said it's a teetering situation between Class 2 and Class 3 for

the district's in-town ISO rating.

"We add a station,

we can get more personnel on scene quicker, meet those time standards, this

improves," he said.

But Graham doesn't quite

buy it.

"What I'm saying is

residents don't understand what that means," Graham said. "They're

buying something that isn't going to have an impact on them. The old firefighters

look at the two new stations and call the 'Taj Mahals.'"

Response times and quantities

Another metric used to

analyze fire districts and departments is an Annual Compliance Report, or ACR.

WSFR's ACR, provided to the Greeley Tribune by Kazian, illustrates excellent

response times already. But Kazian said there's important room for growth.

On urban fires, the

first truck on scene in 2018 arrived within 4:33. Comparing that to Poudre Fire

Authority, which services Fort Collins and the surrounding area, is

illuminating. PFA's first-engine response time in 2018 was 8:04. Breckenridge's

Red White and Blue Fire arrived in 8:10. Arvada's department arrived in 9:15.

Westminster's in 7:17, all according to similar analyses on those districts

fire response teams.

The time to a full

"effective response force" in urban fires was much more comparable,

though, and that's the statistic that Kazian said was far more significant. It

took WSFR 13:23 to get the full firefighting force present. That's a few ticks

less than Arvada (13:54) and PFA (14:06), a minute-plus more than Westminster

(11:59) and nearly 5 minutes more than Red White and Blue Fire (8:45).

Rural fires, in which

WSFR only competes with Red White and Blue in this particular small sample,

also saw faster response times from WSFR, which arrived in 9:13 compared to Red

White and Blue's 14:25 response time for first engine on the scene. WSFR was

also much faster in effective response force times, 13:17 versus 18:05.

This data begs the

question of how much room for improvement -- or need for improvement -- there is

for WSFR.

"The underlying

assumption is the Windsor Severance Fire District cannot provide the necessary

fire and emergency response services without an increase in the mill

levy," Graham wrote in an email. "The need for an increase has not

been substantiated by data. To the contrary, the data supports the existing

staff and resources are more than capable of providing for the people and

property of the district."

Perhaps even more stark

is the number of fire responses. Between both urban and rural fires, WSFR

totaled just seven fire calls in 2018. That's compared to 42 for Arvada, 32 for

Westminster, more than 170 for PFA and more than 600 for Red White and Blue.

Kazian clarified that

was the number of fire calls to which the department responded and found an

actual structure fire. They responded to 72 fire calls in 2018, he said, it's

just that the vast majority didn't end up being as big a deal as a structure

fire.

However, fire response

is a substantially smaller usage set for WSFR than medical calls, and medical

calls in the area mainly served by Station No. 4, southern Windsor, are

projected to improve their response time dramatically for those 2,500-plus

calls per year.

According to WSFR data,

without Station No. 4, the response time sits at just shy of 7 minutes. With

Station No. 4, if an Emergency Medical Services unit is housed at the station,

response times would dip to just more than 3 minutes. Station No. 1's area

would also receive an improvement -- from 4:23 on medical calls to 3:31 with the

addition of Station No. 4.

Kazian contends that

that's critical.

"Our response

times, they're not amazing," he said. "When you're not breathing and

it takes an average of -- try holding your breath for 4:23, or even just the 57

seconds difference from 4:23 to 3:31. I guarantee, the difference between the

new response times we're predicting and where you'd be without Station 4 --

imagine 4 minutes faster in those areas. That's a medical call."

But even the quantity is

an issue in Graham's eyes.

"Station 1

responded to an average of 1,860 calls a year," he wrote. "Or about

five calls per day. Station 2 (Severance) responded to 344 calls per year, or

less than one per day. Station 3, which is located near I-25, responded to 455

average calls per year, or about 1.3 calls per day. The new station would be

expected to answer 418 calls per year, or 1.2 calls per day

"As comparison,

Poudre Fire Station No. 1 had 3,960 incident calls in 2016, or about 10.8 per

day. Loveland Fire Rescue had 2,193 incident calls at Station 1 in 2016, or

about 6 calls per day."

Snowball effect

As important as any of

this, Kazian said, is the compounding impacts of adding a fourth station.

The availability of

ambulances increases with this fourth station, meaning when two calls come in

at once, the geographically vast region doesn't require an ambulance returning

from, for example, Windsor to Severance for a call. It means effective response

force times are drastically reduced because, simply, there are more secondary

responders closer to the emergency.

"One fire I looked

at from (2018), it needed Loveland to come get on the scene to get to the

number identified for effective response force," Kazian said. "If we

had Station 4, we'd have been there so much quicker. It's not just a closer

station, we'd have three stations on scene with nine to 12 firefighters in a

much shorter window than we can today. It's an exponential effect. It compounds

on itself."

But ambulance and

medical calls don't impress Graham. As he pointed out, the hospitals operate

the ambulances in the WSFR district, and firefighters who respond are there to

assist. But he's still billed by the hospital if he has a medical incident that

requires ambulance assistance. The mill levy isn't covering that.

The cost of it all

It all comes down to

whether the cost is worth the benefit, as with anything.

By 2026, after all three

incremental mill levy increases have taken effect, the owner of a home with

$300,000 in assessed value will be paying about $25 a year more in property

taxes than he or she would be without the mill levy. On a home assessed at

$400,000, that'd be a little over $33 a year more in property taxes.

"It's not a

whimsical 'It'd be cool to have another fire station' thing," Kazian said.

"The data shows us the impact and the need."

The ACR does indicate in

its strategic recommendations section that Station No. 4 be completed to best

serve the residents of the district.

Either way, it's

incumbent upon voters to determine the value of these various truths when

weighted against each other.

The election is Nov. 5.

Cuyler Meade is the public money reporter at the Greeley Tribune. Reach him at 970-392-4487 or [email protected], or follow him on Twitter @CuylerMeade.

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