Opinion Piece By Linda Sutter – June 3, 2021

The Republican Women held a meeting with guest speaker, Fire District Chief Gillespie. The contents of his presentation certainly did not address the meat and bones of the subject matter.

What was learned was the fact that the apartment buildings behind Walmart and Ace Hardware are tax exempt but not when it comes to the Fire District Tax. They (Walt Miller and Jim Barnts just to mention two) received ballots to vote for the Fire District Tax. This is another reason why we voters need to say NO to this Fire Tax. We are responsible to pay $74.00/year with 2% annual increases after 10 years and no sunset. But big apartment owners get it at a greatly reduced rate.

When is enough, enough?

63% of the calls that the fire district receives are for emergency illness calls not fires. Those calls should be billed to the person’s personal insurance, and I, as a property payer, should not have to pay for their response of the fire district. When asked about why these people who call for emergency services were not billed by their private insurance, the simple answer was, “too much paperwork with little return.” So in essence, you want to make a few property owners pay for medical services they did not call 911 on?

At this point the best thing the public can do is to recall every board member that sits on the Fire District. Elect people who are more frugal with public money, and stop the craziness of this constant impending doom hanging over our heads. These Board members are:

James Nelson – Chairman. Term Ending: Dec. 2024.

Dave Short – Vice Chairman. Term Ending: Dec. 2022.

James Erler – Director. Term Ending: Dec. 2022.

Rick Kelley – Director. Term Ending: Dec. 2024.

Joe Gregorio – Director. Term Ending: Dec. 2024.

The aforementioned board members are spending hundreds of thousands of tax payer funds for continued elections until the fire district tax is passed.

NO means NO. Those aforementioned board members have no clue what they are doing and how it affects a few property owners instead of the entire county.