To properly and fully represent taxpayers, Vancouver City Council members should avoid accepting a pig in a poke from the federal government. You know what they say about pigs and lipstick. The city councilors apparently are leaning toward accepting a two-year, $2.58 million grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and using the money to hire 13 firefighters and restaff Fire Station 6, which was closed three months ago because of the city’s budget deficit.
Sounds like a great deal, right? But as is the case with many deals that look too good to be true, the Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grant comes with conditions that would back the city into a briar patch full of budget constraints.
The grant requires the city to maintain its firefighter staff at 165 for two years. Additionally, any vacancies that might occur through attrition must be filled. This is essentially a form of bureaucratic blackmail by the federal government. Equally as bad, it allows the City of Vancouver to kick the can down the road in hopes some money miracle happens.
The city council will discuss the grant again next Monday and will make a decision when it adopts its spring supplementary budget in May. Already, though, multiple red flags beg to be answered:
What if — perish the thought — the economy actually gets worse and Vancouver’s projected deficit climbs higher than the current $2 million to $4 million? Accepting this grant takes one solution off the board, because the feds will render fire department staffing immune to cuts, even through attrition. Taxpayers don’t like the idea of the federal government telling the city of Vancouver how to write its budget. That’s why we have budget analysts.
Under that worst-case scenario, what happens to other city departments that haven’t entered this — so to speak — federal government protection program? Obviously, those departments would be forced to make even more sacrifices and accept unfair burdens. That’s not the way effective budgets are written.
If the grant is accepted, how long will the real problem be ignored? The real issue is where most of the city’s money is spent: salaries, benefits and pensions. For a short time, this grant will take the pressure off. Then, guess what? Even more pressure. Two years later, the city has to find more money for salaries, benefits and pensions, rather than adjusting those things so we actually can have firefighters at a real cost.
Who would the real winners be? When the SAFER grant details are examined, it’s clear: This would be a win for the public employees unions and a loss for the taxpayers. Those taxpayers are the greater stakeholder in this matter. And regardless how great the politicians say this challenge is for them, regardless how much the unionized municipal workers complain about sacrifices they’ve made, no faction has a tougher row to hoe than the taxpayers.
We don’t begrudge those who speak up in defense of the fire department. Increased response times as a result of closing Fire Station 6 (3216 N.E. 112th Ave.) are troubling. But someone has to speak up for the taxpayers, and that someone should be the councilors the taxpayers elected to represent them.
Bowing to big bucks from inside the Beltway is a risky municipal management system. And when those big bucks carry unreasonable demands on how a city must run its own business, then the city’s leaders should muster the courage to say “No.”
