Redmond Fire & Rescue hopes taxpayers will pass a 5-year operating levy in November to bring the agency up to regional standards in staffing and response times.

Fire and rescue officials said the agency is understaffed and struggling to keep its response times low as one of the county’s fastest growing cities continues explosive population growth. They hope voters will approve a tax hike to fund between nine and 12 more paid firefighter-paramedics which fire officials said would drastically improve the agency’s response time and bring the agency more on par with other districts in the area.

If passed, the local operating levy will increase taxes for homeowners in the fire district. The average residential home with an assessed value of $200,000 would pay an additional $94 per year, or $7.83 per month. The average assessed value for homes in Deschutes County is around $200,000 — much less than current property prices in the area.

Fire and rescue officials said there has been a 26% increase in population in the district over the past 10 years. At the same time there has been a 68% increase in call volume, officials said. This translates into roughly 20 calls every 24 hours which stretches crews thin. In 2022 the district received 7,126 calls.

Captain Josh Clark, 40, has worked as a firefighter-paramedic in the district for nearly 20 years. He recently moved from the station in Terrebonne to the station in Redmond at 341 Northwest Dogwood Avenue. In the past month, Clark has already put in six additional 24 hour overtime shifts to help meet the district’s growing needs. He said the extra shifts are biting into the time he has to spend with his family.

“I have two young kids, and my son is five, and he definitely notices. ‘Oh, you are going to work again, dad?’ Somebody has to,” Clark said. “The seats have to be full. And if you don’t fill the seats then you have to shut down the firehouse.”

On Oct. 3 Clark and his colleague Jake Thompson stood in the cavernous vehicle bay at the firehouse in Redmond when an alarm suddenly rattled the station into action. The two firefighter-paramedics hopped into a fire engine to go check on a fire alarm. They were back within about 10 or 15 minutes, but their absence tied up valuable resources.

Clark said increasing the staff would drastically improve the agencies ability to cover the entire district which covers Redmond, Cline Falls, Eagle Crest, Terrebonne and unincorporated areas of Deschutes, Jefferson and Crook counties — roughly 47,000 residents.

“I just moved from the Terrebonne station where we had three people on the engine out there. And currently we are running, minimum staffing…there are two people on the engine here,” Clark said. “And I can tell you, the amount of work you can get done from two people to three people on an engine is exponentially more.”

Clark said the majority of the calls are coming from Redmond but when there is a call in the outlying areas, resources often get tied up, increasing response times in town.

With the extra money from the levy, the district could end the practice of cross staffing, which involves sending out staff from one area to another leaving large swathes of the district essentially uncovered.

“It’s a horrible feeling. When we don’t have someone or we know there is a delay because we are out of resources,” Clark said. “Hopefully nobody calls 911 in the next 10 minutes because we are out of rigs.”

Clark recalls a rural fire a few years ago that was understaffed, with three or for personnel working on the fire. The fire resulted in disaster.

“It unfortunately ended up being a fatal fire. And I think had we had even today’s staffing, not to even mention what we could hopefully have in the next couple of years, I think it would have had a different outcome had we had more people on scene,” Clark said.

Pat Dale, the fire chief at Redmond Fire & Rescue, said the issue in the district is simply the disproportionate increase in demand for service as the population in Central Oregon continues to grow.

“We are already understaffed. We are trying to catch up. The growth has been explosive and we are trying to catch up with that growth and demand for service,” Dale said.

Dale said the national standard for staffing is four personnel per engine. The standard in the region is three, and Redmond currently has two personnel per engine. He said having only two puts firefighters-paramedics in the untenable position of having to make life and death decisions without proper support.

“If this doesn’t pass, the population will continue to grow, so will the demand for service disproportionately. Our response times will continue to get longer and we won’t be able to keep up with that demand,” Dale said. “So, eventually we will have to search for a difference source of revenue, which means back out on the ballot frankly. If that doesn’t pass eventually, we will have to discuss another way for us to deliver our service.”

Gary Ollerenshaw, board director on the Redmond Fire & Rescue Board of Directors, has been in Redmond since the 1970s and said many years ago, the fire department was staffed by volunteers. He recalls calls going out for all able bodied residents to fight a fire. But as the times have changed and the town has grown, so has the need, he said.

“There are standards for response times and we want to maintain that,” Ollerenshaw said. “Safety is the issue. Honestly, we’ve been lucky.”

Ollerenshaw said getting up to speed simply boils down to money.

“We just need to catch up with the growth and it comes back to the only way we can do it is tax money. So, we have no choice but to ask for it. I mean, that’s what it comes down to. It’s up to the voters,” Ollerenshaw said.

Leading up to the Nov. 7 election, ballots will be sent out to registered voters who are eligible to vote on Oct. 18, the Deschutes County Clerk’s office said. Ballots will be sent to out of state voters on Oct. 9, and the deadline for voter registration for the November election is Oct. 17.

For more information, contact the Deschutes County Elections Office at 541-388-6547.