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Don Gronning
Most of $2.98 million budget doesn’t come from property taxes
NEWPORT – Pend Oreille Fire District 2 has grown considerably since Chris Haynes started as its fire chief in 2017.
“When I first got up there, our budget was about $300,000,” Haynes says. He was hired Oct. 13, 2017. He was the only paramedic. “For the first 16-18 months I didn’t have a second employee.”
Haynes and the elected commissioners transformed the district from a volunteer district to a fully paid one, with 20 fulltime employees and 18 part-timers.
“I don’t have any volunteers,” Haynes says.
Fire District 2 grew from three ambulances when Haynes started to the 20 ambulances it has now. It has a payroll of $1.9 million, with nine full time and 12-part time paramedics. It operates on a $2.98 million annual budget.
Paramedics aren’t cheap. “Currently our average pay for a full-time paramedic with benefits included is $96,040 per year,” Haynes says. A full time EMT makes $64,030. Haynes makes $125,000 annually.
That level of staffing requires several sources of revenue. The district gets about a sixth of its revenue from property taxes.
Fire District 2 does interfacility transports from one hospital to another for hospitals in Pend Oreille, Stevens, Ferry and Spokane counties. That brings in about $800,030 a year.
The District has a five-year contract with Newport Hospital and Health Service to provide ambulance transports to other hospitals, with a Fire District 2 ambulance stationed in Newport.
Its Advanced Life Support ambulance license provides ALS service to Newport. South Pend Oreille Fire and Rescue’s ALS license covers south of Newport, although both cover Newport depending on who is available. The two fire districts have the only two ALS licenses in the county.
Haynes first came to Pend Oreille County as an employee of AMR, one of the private ambulance services that served Pend Oreille County until it left in 2016.
“Being an employee in south county, I started listening to the radio in north county,” he says. He realized that in the north county, many routine calls, things like broken legs, were being handled by helicopters.
“That’s a gross waste of resources because that helicopter could be transporting a critical patient somewhere as opposed to a patient that should be transported by ground ambulance,” he says.
So he began the chaotic process of becoming fire chief of Fire District 2. He left AMR, moved to the north county and started work with the fire district.
Fire District 2 serves the most rural parts of Pend Oreille County with Advanced Life Support ambulance service, in addition to fighting fires.
It took several fire district commissioner changes before the current fire district commissioners – Jim Mundy, Chris Curkendall and Conrad Ervin – provided leadership stability for the district. The same three commissioners have been in office since 2018.
Curkendall, Fire District 2’s current chair of its three-member elected board of commissioners, says Haynes worked round the clock at first.
“He worked 24/7 the first couple of years,” Curkendall says.
The commissioners decided to make Haynes effectively the CEO for the district. Haynes hires and fires all staff. Haynes and his wife, executive administrative assistant Nickey L. Blye, work for the commissioners, but firefighters, paramedics and EMTs report to Haynes.
While one sixth of the budget is tax supported, about half comes from ambulance service.
It also rents staffed ambulances to the federal and state governments to support fire-fighting efforts in Oregon and Washington. The mobilizations brought in about $400,000 last year and Haynes says it will bring in more this year. In addition to bringing in money for the fire districts, personnel that go, can also earn additional money for themselves, above their base salaries.
Fire District 2 gets about $3,200 a day for each ambulance and crew for about four months of the year, from June to September, although there is some variation.
“We supply the crew, so (the district has) to deduct the cost of the crew,” Haynes says, along with expenses of fuel and maintenance. That amounts to about $1,200-$1,450 a day.
Last year the district had three ambulances every day and five for 60 days out on these mobilizations. This year he plans for that to increase to nine ambulances and crews. The ambulance and crews are out for as long as three weeks at a time.
Fire District 2 signed a contract with Fire District 4 in a special meeting Monday, April 21, to provide an ambulance and crew at Fire District 4’s fire station in Dalkena. It will also provide Fire District 4 with $104,000 annually to support its ambulance services.
The contract starts May 1 and will continue indefinitely, with both districts able to end it with proper notice. District 4 will have staff at Dalkena 24 hours a day.
Fire District 4 Fire Chief Bob Webber says the entire county will benefit from the arrangement.
“This will end up backing up ambulances up here, it’s going to back up the ambulances down south,” Webber says.
