One of the major questions for some citizens, and points of contention during the recent elections for mayor and city council in Medical Lake, have been those that surround public safety — police, fire and EMS.
It is sometimes heard in instances like this that everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own set of facts.
And the best place to start to assemble facts that can help open some eyes is to speak with City Administrator Doug Ross who oversees how the $5.9 million city budget is managed.
“You can have every idea in the book, (but) if you don’t have the money to fund those ideas they’re not going to happen,” Ross said.
If people think that employees in City Hall say to themselves, “We’re not going to think about trying to fund a fulltime fire chief, or all the other things and platforms that people ran on,” they need to reconsider, Ross said.
“Ultimately, what you end up doing with the fire department police department, public works — whatever department it might be — is (to ask if) this dollar amount assigned, is this additional amount needed, worth the services the taxpayers receive?” Ross said.
Residents are likely to be asked sometime in 2018 to decide with their vote if more taxes are worth it to expand EMS services, which are the bulk of calls placed to 911 operators. Currently, EMS answers between 60 and 70 calls a month, Ross said.
Budget numbers are not the only figures Ross is studying in order to gain a better understanding of whether there is or is not a need for a more robust EMS.
He will pour over the dispatch records from 2017 on fire and EMS. “I’m compiling them looking at response times, looking at how many calls AMR (American Medical Response) responded to prior to us,” Ross said.
He wants to know what the difference is in response times, which Ross hopes will at least put to rest some of the concerns.
Ross will parse those numbers further and determine what the difference might be had there been someone on duty at the fire station in City Hall. He will next look for patterns in times and days to when the city is not the first responder.
“I will tell you, in my eyes, my view, as a city administrator, if we have an EMS call and AMR gets there in eight minutes, or our own people get there in eight minutes, I don’t know what that difference is,” Ross said.
The other debate is over how the contract that Medical Lake has with the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office providing policing. The city pays just under $1 million a year for coverage.
The idea of reestablishing a police force in the city revolves around one key question, and that is getting officers to work and stay in Medical Lake when the city of Spokane, County and Washington State Patrol are all looking to replenish their collective ranks — and offer better pay and benefits.
“The county has a shortfall, the State Patrol is down 50 and we pay less than all those agencies,” Ross said.
Departments in communities smaller than Medical Lake, which were originally a launch point for officers on the move up the ladder, do not exist anymore and are also contracted with Spokane County, Ross said.
When a call is placed for help, the expectation is simple, Ross said. “You want someone to show up,” he said. “I don’t know if the name on the uniform matters.”
“You could have your own police department here if you could ever find bodies,” Ross said. “But it could be the exact same person responding to the call, just wearing a different uniform, or different paint on the side of the car.”
There is no residential requirement for civil service employees in the state of Washington, Ross explained. “It’s not like you can make officers move and live inside the city limits.”
Paul Delaney can be reached at pdelaney@cheneyfreepress.com.
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