** Response from Yreka City Manager, Jason Ledbetter at bottom of letter. **
To the Editor,
The Yreka Fire Department is a tinderbox, and the City Council is waving a lighter. Don’t get me wrong, I support a tax increase to bolster fire services – if we knew where the money was going. But right now, the City Council and Manager are asking residents to take a blind leap of faith.
Here’s the grim reality: YFD is staffed by only a handful of dedicated volunteers, a fraction of the number listed on the roster per statements made by the city manager. The department responds to nearly 2,000 calls each year. We’re expected them to be heroes with a skeleton crew and a fire station older than my grandmother! This isn’t heroism; it’s insanity. Expecting volunteers to be firefighters, mechanics, and janitors for a crumbling building is an insult. Paid firefighters and EMS are a necessity, not a debate point.
But what problem are we actually solving? City data shows a staggering 85-90% of calls are EMS related, not fires. Our dedicated volunteers are burning out, stretched thin responding to a constant barrage of medical emergencies. This proposed tax increase – where will it go? Will it hire more firefighters or will we see dedicated EMS personnel to handle the overwhelming medical call volume? Or are we just throwing money at a problem without a clear strategy?
2 Comments
Why can’t we trust the Yreka City Council with our tax dollars?
In the not too distant past, a now former Councilmember was dead set on the City building an extravagant aquatic park that would have bankrupted the City. As there was little appetite for the public to pay for this, how to get the money? She came up with the idea of a sales tax increase for the Fire Department. Who could turn down the Fire Department? Except it was for the Fire Department in name only. Sales tax goes into the General Fund, which the City Council can use for anything they want, without the public voting on it. The plan was for a token amount to go to the Fire Department but the vast bulk going to the aquatic park. But the plot was found out, publicized, and squashed. You’re welcome.
That Councilmember is no longer on the Council but three Councilmembers who were passively going along with the plot are still on the Council.
Now the City Council says we need a sales tax increase for the Fire Department, all of which will go into the General Fund, which the City Council can use for anything they want. Trust us, they say, we will only use it for the Fire Department, would we lie to you?
Yes, they would. As we have seen with the utility rate increase, this City Council will not hesitate to lie to us.
The Council now is planning on building a new City swimming pool. How to pay for it?
I’m not saying they plan on diverting the sales tax money to a pool, but they could. So could any future City Council. They have already told us all the other things besides the Fire Department that they plan on spending the money from a general tax on. General sales tax money always goes into the General Fund where it can be used at the discretion of the City Council. Maybe we can trust this City Council, (I don’t, I’ve been lied to too many times) but can we trust the next one? Or the one after that? Or the one twenty years from now? This general sales tax increase is forever, forever inflationary, forever redressive, forever harming Yreka retailers, forever at the discretion of the City Council to use for anything they what to use it for. ANYTHING. FOREVER.
Y.F.D went to the new housing project called Siskiyou Crossroads and damaged private property. They had no authority to encroach onto that property/. Now who is gonna pay for reparations ? Maybe it should come out of Y.F.D. budget.