MISSOULA — It's no secret that Missoula's population is climbing and with growth comes growing pains, especially for the city's emergency responders.
As Missoula expands, the fire department's response times have dropped below the national standard, but the Missoula Fire Department is looking to change that through a levy.
Back in 2008, George Bush was the president and the iPhone was a year old; it was also the last time that the Missoula Fire Department grew its staff size.
Missoula has grown over the past 16 years, but the fire department hasn't. MFD is now asking for a $7 million permanent levy to help expand the department to match the growth of the city.
Missoula City Council member Mike Nugent says that this levy is needed to support the expectation of first responders' ability to get to emergencies.
"I think this levy will ensure that the people of Missoula and all our guests that come throughout the year continue to have a safe response that will meet their needs in that moment because there’s nothing more important than when you have an emergency and you call 9-1-1 that the people are going to respond accordingly,” Nugent said.
There are concerns that if the levy is not approved and passed, the consequences could be staggering. The motto of the fire department is to save lives, protect property and ease pain and suffering, but that could be more difficult without additional funding.
But there’s another consequence that could wallets harder, the raising of an ISO rating, which reflects how prepared a community and area is for fires. If Missoula’s goes any higher homeowner insurance could increase by 10%.
“If we are able to pass this levy and we are able to fall below the recommended response time we are in a potential of having our ISO rating go from a three to a two, which would mean a saving for homeowners for their homeowner insurance,” Missoula City Council Public Safety, Health and Operations Committee Chair Stacie Anderson said.
The need for an expansion for the department has been laid out in a master plan, but with the lack of funding the department has fallen behind the plan of expansion.
“The master fire plan that we have been operating on for many years has called for an expansion of a sixth company and an additional engine company, so this fire levy just gets us caught up,” Anderson said.
If the levy were to fail on the June 4, 2024, election, the mental impacts on the current firefighters could be significant and the burnout could impact the ability of firefighters to do their job.
"Sleep deprivation, compassion fatigue, PTSD, all of those things affect our firefighters and that's what we're trying is having enough personnel available so we can minimize those risks,” Missoula Fire Department Assistant Chief Philip Keating said.
Missoula is struggling with this potential crisis with the fire department, but this is not just a problem Missoula is facing as communities across the state are also seeing similar issues with their fire departments.
“You have communities like Kalispell, Bozeman, Great Falls, Helena who are all asking or levies similar to ours. Or in Great Falls’ case, significantly more than ours to fund basic services because the way our tax system is — and the way our general fund of municipalities are funded — is not keeping up with the growth and demand for need,” Anderson said.
In the meantime, the City of Missoula Fire Department will be applying for federal funding and the levy will make its way to the Missoula City Council on Monday for a vote to be on the ballot this summer.
When it comes to taxes both Nugent and Anderson know the weight of the tax increase because they are both property owners, however, both feel that this is a critical step in keeping Missoula safe.
“I understand where people are at because I'm a property taxpayer too and I have seen what those changes are doing. The reality is that with the system, the way it's set up right now, you're seeing fire departments across the state have to go to the voters and ask for help and you're seeing schools across the state have to go to voters and ask for help. This is a here-and-now problem. So, I think that we have to kind of separate — we do have things we can work on in the big picture, but we also have this need that is important right now. And so many of us who kind of see that property tax burden would not be coming forward and asking the voters to do this if we didn't think that it was crucial and that there were no other options." - Missoula City Council member Mike Nugent
While the levy might seem to fall at a financially hard time, Anderson says that when the cost is broken down per day, it’s better than having shortcomings during an emergency.
“I would say that this to me is a critical component of what it means to live in the city. I think it's a value that Missoulians want a well-run responsive fire department to come to them in their time of need. And if you break it down on average, this would be about less than a dollar a day per household. I realize there are some in our community who are living on fixed incomes that that's not an insignificant amount of money...but we are at a point where we have no other options. There is not room within the city's budget as it stands to cover that sort of increase." - Missoula City Council Public Safety, Health and Operations Committee Chair Stacie Anderson
“Even if we cut all the what is perceived as potential fluff, that is a fraction of what it is going to cost to actually, you know, expand capacity across the fire department to really actually be there in time to provide life-saving services,” Anderson noted.
When asked just how dire of a state the fire department is, Keating said that the perfection that the department strives for is failing.
“The national standard is in the 90th percentile. We're talking about station reliability, four of our five stations are below. They're closer to the 80th percentile which affects everybody in the city and all the responders,” Keating said.
While some have been critical about the way that the budget has been drawn out in the City of Missoula, Nugent says that this isn’t a problem just Missoula is facing, and the tax structure of Montana has not helped to support emergency responders from the fire department.
"I think that there are absolutely things that we can look at every year and say, oh, we could do this differently or looking back hindsight over the last two decades, maybe how we manage growth in the fire department. We could have done differently, but we're where we're at right now. And as I mentioned, there are fire departments across the state that are going to their voters which tells you that the system and the way that taxes are dealt with in Montana isn't working to fund our basic services. You're seeing that in fire departments, you're seeing that in schools and people will ask, well, what about growth?” - Missoula City Council member Mike Nugent
Montana is growing, there is no question that the population has grown significantly, but the rate at which taxes can be collected has not matched that growth. Nugent said that this is an area that the legislature would have to step in and help.
