I was elected eighteen months ago by ratepayers of the Fire District to further their interests. Nearly 2000 hours of unpaid work later, I felt I could no longer do so. Ratepayers know they are getting a raw deal. Ratepayers should know there is nothing the trustees can do about it.

The fire department is staffed by capable, motivated, and well trained men and women who do what is at times a difficult and dangerous job. Unfortunately, their skills and dedication aren’t enough. A detailed explanation of the District's morass can be found below. If you can't read it all through, I'll summarize in one sentence.

The District is no longer of net benefit to ratepayers; they should be given an opportunity to dissolve it.

Why did you quit, Norbert?

There was a straw that broke the camel’s back. It happened behind closed doors and I will not discuss it.

Why this story?

There are things that SSIFPD ratepayers should understand. Distilled down, the issues aren’t that hard to grasp. The distillation is the hard part, so I’m trying to save everybody some time.

I was a trustee until very recently. I can’t and won’t disclose any confidential information, but my “inside” knowledge and experience makes it easier for me to separate the wheat from the chaff and frame the issues crisply. Anything I write about here is already in the public domain.

Dissolve? Are you serious?

I know this is a bitter pill to swallow, even to consider swallowing. But you have to swallow something quite bitter every June when your property tax bill comes in the mail, so please hear me out.

I’m sure I won’t convince every ratepayer. Maybe I won’t convince anyone at all.

The Fire District blindfolded you about ten years ago so you couldn’t see what was coming. Let’s just remove your blindfold. Then you and your fellow ratepayers can pick which bitter pill you prefer.

What does “no longer of net benefit” mean?

The District charges its ratepayers far more than the benefits they receive. Its current cost structure makes it a value destroyer.

There’s going to be math, isn’t there? I hate math!!!

You are not alone. You are not even rare. That’s why you’re paying the fire taxes you are today.

I’ll put all the math below the fold, but you really should try to read and understand it.

Since 2005, SSIFPD’s operating budget has tripled even as call volume has been in a slow decline. The budget increase is due largely to the collective agreements covering full time firefighters that have required full time headcount to rise over time and for wages to rise to where they are now at 102% of Saanich levels. For the last two years, all other operating expenses have been pared to the bone and past surplus has been tapped to hold the overall tax levy steady. This is not sustainable. The total wage and benefit bill is now around 80% of the overall budget. With a 2½% annual wage escalator baked into Saanich’s contract until 2020, there will be an inevitable 1½-2% increase in SSIFPD’s operating budget every year.

Historical and projected operating budget increases are not the only financial issues. Large and unavoidable capital expenditures loom. Next year, one of the engines turns 20. Insurance underwriters will mandate replacement, which is conservatively estimated at $600,000; spread over the useful life of the new engine, it’s another 1½% bump for the ratepayers. Radios need to replaced soon because of a technology change; add another 2%. The elephant in the room, of course, is a replacement for the Ganges Fire Hall. The 2013 replacement plan was shot down by ratepayers at referendum because of its cost, but a new main fire hall is not optional. Even if one could be built for significantly less than the 2013 proposal and paid for over 25 years, fire tax levies will increase by at least another 12-15%.

In light of these numbers, a rough cost-benefit analysis is in order. SSIFPD provides fire and rescue services, with the rescue portion having minor cost. (In 2015, the Chief estimated the total labour cost of rescue calls at $50,000 per year; equipment, training, and supplies likely add up to under $100,000.) The big ticket item is fire protection, and about 95% of collected taxes pay for that service. In 2016, the SSIFPD mill rate was 0.9057, so fire protection costs about 85¢ per $1,000 of assessed value. However, assessed value covers both land and buildings. Within SSIFPD, total assessed value is ascribed about half to land, which gets scant benefit from fire protection, and about half to buildings, which benefit greatly. An adjusted mill rate, applied only to buildings, is therefore approximately $1.70 per $1,000. Projected wage increases and capital expenditures mean this will only increase. With business as usual, the “building” mill rate will be over $2.00 per $1,000 within three years.

Balancing the cost, there are financial benefits from fire protection. The revised section 12 of the 2015 Fire Underwriters Survey report calculates that the insurance premium differential between a fully protected house – close to a staffed fire hall and a usable hydrant – and a completely unprotected house – no fire service whatsoever on Salt Spring – may be as low as 64¢ per $1,000. The FUS cited case appears to be an outlier – my insurance agent quoted 81¢ per thousand for my house – but a dollar per thousand of insured building value seems to be a plausible upper limit on insurance savings.

Weighing costs versus benefits, SSIFPD is already charging its ratepayers more – much more – than an insurance company. For less than a dollar per thousand more, with no fire fighting capability on the island, the insurance company promises to pay if a house burns. The District’s ratepayers are being charged $1.70 per thousand – soon to be two dollars per thousand – for best efforts to fight a fire but can be promised nothing because of water supply and staff scheduling issues.

That’s nuts! You should have put a stop to it!

I tried. All the trustees tried. It can’t be stopped or even reduced in any conventional way.

You have to explain it without math!

Try this. Ratepayers would see equivalent financial results if …

SSIFPD levies taxes at the current rate

it provides no fire protection at all

instead, it covers the increased fire insurance premium for any building owned and insured by a ratepayer in case something does happen

about a million dollars would be left over at year end

the trustees make a bonfire out of ten thousand $100 bills on New Years Eve.

Why couldn’t you stop it?

The union contract cannot be amended without the union’s consent, and it is evergreen.

Full time non-management personnel at SSIFPD formed a local union under the umbrella International Association of Fire Fighters in 2005 and came to a collective agreement with SSIFPD in 2006. The first collective agreement was replaced with a second in 2010, which ends on 31 December this year. (“Ends” is misleading, because the combination of B.C’s Labour Code and Fire and Police Services Collective Bargaining Act makes immortal any collective agreement with fire fighters until it’s replaced by a new one.)

Key provisions of the collective agreement include minimum staffing levels, a link to wage rates for firefighters employed by the District of Saanich, and a duty shift payment unmatched anywhere else. Senior union personnel at SSIFPD earn roughly $150,000 per year in cash compensation. Benefits then add considerably to District expense.

Negotiate. Surely the union will see sense.

Put yourself in a union member’s shoes for a minute.

You’re a professional and well trained firefighter. You made a spectacular deal with your employer the last time, and your employer cannot wriggle out of it. You make $150-200,000 a year once benefits are included, and you’ll make 2 1/2% more next year. And every year after that.

Why would you negotiate?

But it’s a million dollars out of the community …

Not really. It’s a million dollars being redistributed to a select few in the community.

How did we get into this mess?

The legislature left a hole big enough to drive a truck through. That is exactly what happened at SSIFPD.

SSIFPD is an Improvement District formed under and governed by Part 17 of B.C.’s Local Government Act [LGA], with letters patent issued by the Lieutenant Governor in Council under the Act. Historically, improvement districts have been created by the Province to provide a shared service – the two most common being piped water and fire protection – to rural communities without an established municipal government, at a lower cost and at better quality than individuals can provide on their own. Improvement districts are overseen by boards with staggered elections.

An improvement district has broad power to carry out its objects and to levy property taxes and/or rates on landowners [ratepayers] in order to do so. Because improvement districts are run by volunteers on short terms and often without much if any administrative support, the LGA protects ratepayers by imposing extra oversight when a district exercises some of its powers, e.g. taxation, borrowing, and major capital projects. Section 698 of the LGA requires such powers to be exercised via bylaw, rather than simple resolution of the board. Section 699 requires that the Province sign off on important improvement district bylaws before they go into effect. The Province may – and historically has – required direct approval from a district’s ratepayers via referendum before it signs off on bylaws with long term major financial consequences. In particular, the Province requires that voters are consulted on and must approve capital projects and borrowing by referendum, because such items can obligate ratepayers for many years.

The clear intent of these LGA provisions is to allow both the ratepayers and the Province a close look, and a veto if necessary, on long term obligations. Long term obligations arise most often from contracts; however, the legislation requires a bylaw only to enter into contracts for specific items like land, works, and borrowing. Other contracts can be entered into with a simple majority of the board in favour of a resolution, no matter how enormous the consequences to ratepayers.

We were asked to approve the fire hall. Why weren’t we asked about this?

It took a perfect storm that combined a legislative loophole, sleeping ratepayers, and a board of trustees operating without legal advice versus professional union negotiators.

A rough estimate of the capitalized value of the current union contract would be $30-50 million dollars, an amount which dwarfs any public project ever undertaken on Salt Spring Island. It makes 2013’s failed $6 million fire hall proposal look like pocket change. Had the board costed out the 2010 contract and presented it to the public before signing the deal, I doubt ratepayers would have agreed.

What can we do?

Dissolve the District.

No, no, there must be other options.

Ratepayers have made numerous suggestions to trustees at public meetings and in letters. Most are infeasible.

There have been calls for a return to an all volunteer or paid-on-call force. SSIFPD cannot mandate how its personnel associate or how they bargain for wages. Full time employees chose to form a union and SSIFPD entered into a contract with them. Provincial law makes the contract eternal and unbreakable. SSIFPD, and any successor to it, is bound by the contract.

At a recent public meeting, a ratepayer proposed arbitrarily slashing the budget. It seems an easy fix, until the money runs out mid-year, the doors are locked, and the union sends a grievance to arbitration that SSIFPD could spend many dollars defending before surely losing. Meanwhile the Province steps in and appoints a receiver who levies whatever taxes are necessary. Ratepayers have already signed two big blank cheques. A receiver won’t even bother getting Salt Spring’s signature on a third.

Alteration or repeal of the fire services bylaw has also been suggested. SSIFPD has the power to amend or repeal the bylaw so that uneconomic fire protection is no longer offered or offered in a less expensive way. A different service model could mean no or at least far lower taxes. The first hurdle is ratepayers, whose consent to assume more fire risk must be obtained. The second is the Province, which must approve such a bylaw, and whose default stance is that local services in a rural area cannot be terminated. If citizens agree to shoulder a burden, they carry it forever; i.e. it’s a one way gate. That SSIFPD’s ratepayers never agreed to 2/3 of the current bill is irrelevant. The third hurdle is the union contract, which understandably contains stringent provisions regarding layoff and contracting out.

Incorporation might be coming …

It won’t solve this problem. A municipality will be a legal successor to SSIFPD and it will inherit the union contract and cost structure of today’s fire department. Ratepayers are spending a million dollars more every year than they save in building insurance premiums, and that wouldn’t change if we were incorporated.

I’d be scared to have no fire department.

I share your concern. I’ve never lived in a community without a fire department. Then again, I’ve never lived in a community where the financial cost of the fire department exceeded the financial benefits. Because, so far as I can discover, it has never happened anywhere else. No other community has ever been this gullible.

What about first response calls?

BC Ambulance handles about 2000 medical calls a year on Salt Spring. SSIFPD responds to about 250. If SSIFPD wasn’t available, presumably BC Ambulance would still get there, but response times would increase in some cases. I’d also like to think that, were SSIFPD dissolved, SSIFPD personnel who are trained as first responders today might find a way to continue to put those skills to use.

What about vehicle extractions?

These are a small fraction of SSIFPD calls today. If SSIFPD weren’t around, perhaps someone else (Search & Rescue, say?) might take on the task.

What about a forest fire?

Not all of Salt Spring Island is within the SSIFPD boundaries today. If a fire starts on Mount Tuam, the province handles it, not us. If SSIFPD didn’t exist, the province would take responsibility for forest fires.

If SSIFPD dissolved, what would happen to the assets? The fire halls? The vehicles?

Beats me. I assume a receiver would be appointed, terminate the employees, sell the assets, and return whatever is left to the ratepayers. I know of no previous instance in BC where this has been done, so we’re plowing virgin ground.

You haven’t convinced me.

As long as I made you think.

You have convinced me. What can I do?

Run for office as a fire trustee on the dissolution platform, or vote for people who will in the coming by-election. If they win, they can petition the province to dissolve the District.

Editors Note: Read more about the recent resignation of four fire protection district trustees and subsequent instructions from the BC Inspector of Municipalities resulting from those resignations.