I really appreciate and respect the Platte Canyon Fire Department. They are a top notch professional organization.

But I have to object to this tax increase. They are a rich fire department compared to surrounding services. They admit that they know the community is on tough times, but they still want to ask for more. They probably have more money in the bank than all of the people living here.

We were already cheated out of a tax increase in the last election, so how do we know the fire dept really needs the money? The school district asked for more money even though it knew it was going to get millions from somewhere else but it hid that from the voters until after the election. And no one can explain how the school tax passed last year after being defeated two to one in the previous election. Something fishy going on with tax increases around here lately. Also a lot fishy about where people are spending tax money. Look at the Hartsel fire group where they were using the fire dept credit card to go gamble and other things". (Not that I think PC is doing that, but they might not be managing some money well.) We can't trust people with our tax dollars or even our elections around this county.

Platte Canyon is one of the best around, I'm sure of it. But where is their financial statement? How much money do they have socked away in the bank? Where are they spending their money? Could they cut expenses somewhere first before forcing the rest of us to go without in order to finance them? Could they get some professional business advice on how to be more successful in collections before trying to socialize the service?

I just don't know. It's a bad year for this after the underhanded way the school tax was passed. (If it really was - you'd have to be there in the middle of the night or after the election to see how the clerk counted the votes.)

Remember that once these taxes pass, they NEVER are reduced. If the fire department quits doing the ambulance service, do they still get to keep the money? They bought a bunch of very expensive equipment, built buildings, and they still have money pouring in from taxpayers and it will forever. They will get even more now since assessments of properties have gone up even though the economy is down. They are very good and they deserve to be well-funded, but not over-funded indefinitely.

This has to be a NO vote this time. It just doesn't make sense for the taxpayers here. We're beat up enough already and being ripped off by the county and its officials every day. It's time to say Enough! Let the county fire some relatives, sell some high-dollar cars, and give the money up for the ambulance service.

3.5 mils? Sorry, but that's pretty darned high.
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Vote NO on any tax increases anywhere. We're lied to at every turn by people in office who want more money. The Fire department seems to have so much money in the bank they don't want to tell us how much. They are making big bucks from their current tax and could shift some of it to the ambulance service if they wanted to. This is just an excuse to take more. It's a volunteer fire service so they have very little in payroll unless they're really giving away golden packages and free cars like other tax collectors. They've bought the most expensive fire equipment that can be had. They travel to California every year to fight the fires there.

I believe we were lied to in 2007 and the county tried to trick us into de-brucing the whole county. Then they spun ridiculous stories about the attempted trick and changed the ballot after the deadline. From the dates on everything, it sure looks like the County clerk and lawyer just decided to change it without even a vote from commissioners. The commissioners didn't vote on it until days later. Then the school tax passed here last year while they hid from voters that they were getting millions somewhere else. The tax increase passed by 6 votes in the middle of the night and after the election with no independent election judges there. The year before, the tax lost by 2/3 and now they say it passed the next year. It looks like another lie, in my opinion. So what lies are out there to try to get even more money from us this year for the richest fire department in the region?

NO on tax increases for the fire department!

NO on tax increases for any schools without full disclosure and an apology from the county and school district RE-1 for what they did to us last year!

NO on tax increases that appear to pass through our current clerk and elections official who "found" the votes to pass the tax increase last year and hid documents from the public during the 2008 election cycle.

This is not a joke. The county is a joke - but these objections are not.

Vote NO! on any more tax money going to public use until we get a free and open list of all money spent and also where the money would go if the fire department gives up the ambulance service.

FULL DISCLOSURE FROM COUNTY, FIRE DEPARTMENTS AND SCHOOLS! ANYBODY WHO TAKES TAX MONEY SHOULD LIST ALL PAYMENTS ONLINE FOR ALL TO SEE!


I know we have great firefighters but do they really want to beat up on their neighbors to take more money from them in these hard times? I just can't believe they want to do this.

Does everybody realize that this fire department, good as they are, will be collecting over A MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR from this small taxing district?

Please. Think about this. They can use some of their other high tax collections to help them with this ambulance service.

Let's see a financial statement.

And why isn't the clerk doing her job on these election issues?

I moved to Park county for the low taxes and I vote against each tax raises. I spoke with members of the ambulance service and FD and asked some tough questions about 5A. They had good and logical answers to my questions.

Personally, I don't want to pay more taxes. I struggle with how I will feel if a neighbor or family member has a need for an ambulance and we end up with a skeleton or no crew due to this tax not passing and that person ends up with serious damage or dies.

My decision - Part of living a living a long distance from a hospital is that I will need to pay an additional tax to ensure family, friends & neighbors are safe.

Please let me introduce myself, I am the chairman of the VoteYesOn5A committee. I am a volunteer firefighter, an elected Captain of the PCFD volunteer firefighters and an EMT-B. My call number is 508


Platte Canyon Fire Department invites any interested person to come to the monthly business meetings that are scheduled on the second Tuesday of each month at 7pm. The meetings are held in the meeting room at Station 2 located at the top of Crow Hill. Meeting agendas are available. Included in every meeting is a current budget discussion regarding expenses, revenues and financial position. Current account balance statements are available. Additionally, the department is an open records orgainization. Anyone can ask for financial records at any time.


Answers to the above questions are... The financial statement is available monthly, the current account balances of all accounts are displayed. Expenses are watched closely, the oversight of the board and the guidance of Chief Davis are the major discussion points at each monthly meeting to keep expenses down. District residents have a venue to voice their concerns and be part of the process here. Regarding collections, they are done by Pridemark in Denver. They are professionals at collections. They are a for profit company providing EMS serivces in the metro area who do this function everyday. Pridemark and PCFD have a working agreement. Pridemark's compensation is a percentage of collections, not of total billings. The harder they work on collections and actually collect, the higher revenue that they can receive.



We (I) pride our department on our professionalism. Thank-you for the compliment. The department's position is that we are not overfunded. Chief Davis has run the ambulance service for a year. It was hoped that the ambulance service would support itself. What we have learned that it will not. Funds from the firefighting budget have been transferred to the ambulance budget, building and equipment notes have been reworked to free up operating funds, and a revolving line of credit established to have liquid funds to pay ongoing expenses while waiting for other revenue sources (i.e. grants etc) to come in.

The 3.5 mil levy increase will bring in $368,632 additional funding to the department. The benchmark of monthly costs for the ambulance service is $30,000. Chief Davis and the board want to cover the existing costs of the ambulance service. This includes salaries, employee benefits, fuel and consumable medical supplies. The money we are asking for is to cover the EMS services only.

I have lived in Park County the past 16 years because of the people, the area and it's space. I do not like to pay higher taxes for no reason. I will pay this because I feel it is needed and I want my family to be protected by a trained professional team of EMS providers when I need them. I am not a disinterested party, I do have a dog in this fight, I see both sides of the discussion, but my reasoning is it is money well spent to protect my community.

More information can be obtained at the website http://www.VoteYesOn5A.com

Thanks for coming in and answering a couple of questions PCFD508. Hopefully you'll understand if we're skeptical since you're with the fire department and naturally would support collecting more money. But there's a big problem here. You're doing the same thing that the county does to us. You say one thing as your "promise" of how the money will be used, but you didn't write any of that promise into the ballot question. We have all learned the hard way that the promises coming from the people trying to sell us the tax increase really mean nothing if the ballot question says something completely different.

You say this on your promotional website to sell the tax increase:
"The tax money increase will be used ONLY for this purpose – salaries for the professionally trained EMT’s and Paramedics to be on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week."

But the legal language of the ballot question says this:
"SHALL PLATTE CANYON FIRE PROTECTION DISTRICT TAXES BE INCREASED $379,462 ANNUALLY, ORBY SUCH AMOUNT AS MAY BE RAISED BY THE IMPOSITION OF AN ADDITIONAL AD VALOREM PROPERTY TAX RATE OF UP TO 3.5 MILLS TO PROVIDE AMBULANCE SERVICES,"

Some of us can read. Those aren't the same statements. In the legal language, the board only has to decide that they see travel or anything else they want as necessary for the ambulance service and spend thousands of dollars on anything they want to. It is NOT restricted to anyone's salaries. It's as wide open and vague as you could write it. Looking at new, fancy ambulances with the most expensive equipment? All new radio systems for "the district" which, presumably, includes the fire department. It's "The District" collecting the taxes, regardless of how much is needed for the ambulance service.

And if you get the new tax money for those salaries, where do you spend the money you're now using for salaries? Any way you want to, right?

The train has left the station on the idea that any taxing entity promises to use the new money only for certain things. It just frees up the money used now to spend on everything else. There's no such thing as restricted tax money.

The previous ambulance service didn't collect tax money and they had money in the bank up until the mess at the end. The ambulance and fire service that covers part of Park County and part of Jefferson County (much higher usage) doesn't collect as much in tax money as you will if this is passed.

Please let me know how much your cost is per run - total ambulance costs divided by the total number of calls since you have been running the service. Some of us work and have other volunteer responsibilities and are unable to monitor the meetings of the fire board to find out how you're spending our money. We have trusted you in the past. We may have to be more watchful these days.

Thank you for the excellent work that you do. But please don't join the county in treating the taxpayers like idiots or sheep to be fleeced. It has really lowered my respect for the department.

Sorry I forgot to put up a link for the ballot question.

PLATTE CANYON FIRE PROTECTION DISTRICT BALLOT ISSUE 5A:

SHALL PLATTE CANYON FIRE PROTECTION DISTRICT TAXES BE INCREASED $379,462 ANNUALLY, ORBY SUCH AMOUNT AS MAY BE RAISED BY THE IMPOSITION OF AN ADDITIONAL AD VALOREM PROPERTY TAX RATE OF UP TO 3.5 MILLS TO PROVIDE AMBULANCE SERVICES, RESULTING IN A TOTAL DISTRICT MILL LEVY RATE, EXCLUSIVE OF REFUNDS, ABATEMENTS, OR DEBT SERVICE, NOT TO EXCEED 11.36 MILLS, COMMENCING JANUARY 1, 2010, AND CONTINUING THEREAFTER; AND SHALL THE DISTRICT BE AUTHORIZED TO COLLECT, RETAIN AND SPEND ALL TAX REVENUE COLLECTED FROM SUCH TOTAL PROPERTY TAX RATE COMMENCING JANUARY 1, 2010, AND CONTINUING THEREAFTER, AS A VOTER-APPROVED REVENUE CHANGE, OFFSET AND EXCEPTION TO THE LIMITS WHICH WOULD OTHERWISE APPLY UNDER TABOR (ARTICLE X, SECTION 20 OF THE COLORADO CONSTITUTION) OR ANY OTHER LAW AND AS A PERMANENT WAIVER OF THE 5.5% LIMITATION UNDER SECTION 29-1301, C.R.S.?

I have a question for PCFD508:

I was talking with someone a week ago, and was told that Platte Canyon is not currently running ambulances to hospitals in the city. I was told that patients are transferred to Elk Creek, which is providing the emergency ambulance transport outside Park County. Is this the case?

MsMojo



That information is incorrect. We transport to the hospitals in the city. The destination is determined by where the patient wants to go or by the urgency of the care needed. Swedish in where most of the patients are transported. Especially life threatening trauma, heart attack or stroke. If they are not helicoptered out, Swedish is the closest facility.

We have transported to Swedish, St Anthony's Cental, Lutheran and Litteton that I know of for sure. The patient's care and comfort level is a major priority.

To date, PCFD has not dropped a call or failed to respond to any emergency page. We have responded to the Elk Creek district (Pine Jct) for a mutal aid request. Elk Creek and South Park Ambulance would respond to our district if a mutal request was made to them.

ihavealtitude,

I appreciate your email and concern with this issue. I will respond, but I need time to gather my thoughts and information. Being I am on the fire department I do have personal views and it is my goal to keep that at a minimum and try and answer your concerns as honestly as I can. That being said, I may not be able to answer your questions satisfactorily, or at least to your satisfaction, but that is why we are going through this process. I believe your questions will help determine the outcome.

Thank-you.

Thanks for the response, 508, but I did not email.

I'm disappointed that you chose not to explain why your unfounded promise in your promotional material is not supported by the language of the ballot question. Do you have to ask someone else how you should answer that?

With all due respect, if you don't know what it's costing you per call, how can you manage your finances and control costs? That's info that you should have had before you asked for money.

Please read my response, I said I would respond. I work in town and do not get back to the mountains until 1830 hrs, then dinner and family. My is promise to provide information that I can obtain or have knowledge of. I also have a personal view of why this issue should pass.

The language of the of the ballot question and the statements you point out is a valid point. I am a advocate of the fire department and make the decision to take and support their intensions either implied, spoken or legally written. Being the language is an issue to you, it is a valid point to vote no. I do not have the same issue. My focus is this, without the mil levy there will be no paid crew to respond to emergencies. An ambulance will be available. It will be staffed with some paid fire department employees, who are EMT's and volunteers who are EMT's. There most likely will not be advanced life support (ALS) paramedics. The response times will be much greater then they are now and the care available will be for the most part basic life support (BLS). Trauma, stroke and heart attack patients will be helicoptered out or will have to wait for mutal aid, if available.

We have two ambulances, one a two wheel drive 1997 Ford F350 with over 150,000 miles, donated by South Metro Fire. We also have a 2002 four wheel drive Ford F-450, purchased ($40,000) from Elk Creek Fire with grant money. We have borrowed equipment from hospitals and medical equipment sales people to get the service up and running. We have increased the number on EMT certified members of the FF volunteers and there have been schedule changes to help staff the ambulance. Fire fighting funds have been diverted to support the ambulance. Building and equipment loans have reworked to free up funds as well as establishing a revolving credit line to have liquid funds to pay for ambulance costs while waiting for incoming revenues. It loses money. It will never make money or break even. The past year of 28% return on billing is the reason. Pridemark nor AMR will not come here, they are for profit companies. They are not interested in losing money here.

The question was asked by someone, where will the money go if PCFD stops providing ambulance service. The answer is we will not stop providing ambulance service because there is no one else to do it. We accepted the challenge last October 2008 because there was no one else. We did not seek it, it came to us. Can I say without a shadow of a doubt that this will be the case. No, I can't. Nothing is ever certain. My point is will we lose what we have because of that possibility, however small the chance?

The published ambulance costs are $30,000 per month. The average transport per day is 1.8 trips. There has been days where no emergency pages occur and there have been days where there have been as many as eight calls with 6 transports. There has been approx 500 PCFD emergency pages to date. Using the 1.8 trips per day that is a tranport cost of $548 cost per trip. This does not include patient refusals where we are paged and the patient refuses care or transport. The ambulance also responds to all fire calls, the crew are also firefighter certified. There has not been any capital expense dollars set aside for equipment replacement that will occur every 4 to 7 years for ambulance replacement times two units.

I am not a paid member of the department, I am not being paid by the department to chair this committee. I am voluntarily giving my time because I believe we need this service in it's current forum and level of service. The department is not as rich one many people believe. We are trying to provide for the community a level of service they expect, need and deserve. Come and be part of solution and see what is done. It is open to all. Even if you vote no we will still come and put out your fire, extricate you from your wrecked vehicle as always. We will then provide to you first class EMS services is this issue passes. For that I am willing to pay the average $5 per month.

We all work too. And we're not the ones misleading you or hiding financial information from you. You didn't say to altitude that you'd answer when you got home from work. You said you'd have to gather your thoughts and some information. You should have already had that if you were leading the charge to push another tax increase on us.

You're misleading the public by saying how the money will be spent when it's not in the ballot. The board could change at any time and you won't control how the money is spent. Your statement is completely without any base and just meant to influence voters in your favor. We were lied to and cheated last year, and the county tried to pull a really big fast one back in 2007. This is awful.

I haven't heard anywhere near the 1.8 calls a day on the radio. I don't accept your numbers. Please put your financial statements up on one of your websites so we can see where you're spending your money and how much you already have. Why didn't we have information in time to write something for the ballot book? Tired of taxers and the clerk hiding everything until it's too late to participate. The sneakiness and misleading information doesn't look good, either.

Just $5 a month? Oh, and last year they collected only an extra $10 a month? And the year before that, someone only wanted $15 a month. Next year, the county will come back and beat us up for only $20 a month. And we have extra fees to pay, just like taxes. You break us all in nickels and dimes. People are losing their homes and you are hitting us for more.

Put a sunset on it and say you'll only collect it for 5 years and then come back for another vote. Work on fairness for a change. And stop misleading people by making promises you have no way of keeping or guaranteeing. It's a lot like lying. If the department was so sure of how they'd spend the money, why didn't they write in the ballot what you wrote in the sales pitch? You're just trying to trick people into voting you more money when we're out here struggling to hang on as it is.

How can all of the other departments around us operate on much less money than you say you have to have? Why didn't you take the help offered by the previous ambulance service?

Again please put up your income statements and balances so we can look at this with all of the information and see if you need the money more than we do.

What does that mean - "published ambulance costs"? That would only be $360,000 a year and you will collect some from patients and other sources. What are the non-published costs?

You said there have been 500 PCFD emergency pages. That means calls for fire, too? Are you still sending double equipment on everything?

There has to be a better way than to pay EMTs and full crews top wages (even if they're worth it) 24/7 for such long periods of doing nothing. Do you pay your firefighters to be at the station 24/7?

I just can't buy it with no information to look at.

I need to clarify. The total calls for the year would be 657 calls fire and medical. That is 54.75 calls per month times 12 months is 657 calls per year. 657 divided by 365 equals 1.8 calls per day. The ambulance responds to all of the calls. The ambulance cost ($30,000 x 12 months) divided by number calls 657 equals $548 per trip each time it rolls out.

Published is the word I used (wrongly) to indicate the ambulance costs available in the monthly board meetings minutes or by request at the fire department office.

There are SOG's that determine the equipment that rolls for each page. For a structure fire, most of the assets are rolling or preparing do roll until we are stood down by first arriving people on scene with a size up.

Medical personel are paid. To achieve low response times and keep the time it takes to transport to the hospital as short as possible this is necessary. Patient outcome is largely based on the time it takes getting definitive care at the hospital.

There is information at the department to look at. It is available to anybody who requests it. It is an open records department.

Yes, I am trying to influence the voters. I do not think I am misleading and I am not lying. I was upfront with who I am and what I did on the department. I told you this was personal views and I am trying to get information that you want by asking, or giving you my personal take or experience.

The written language is not what you want, I understand that. Point is made and understood. You don't agree with the call number, it can be verified at the department.
The budgets are available by going to the meetings or call the office.

I know and feel your pain about other tax issues. I was here for them as well. What I am discussing is the 5A question today only and what my tax contribution is buying.

The statement is made that other districts are providing services for less money. Can documentation and budgets be provided to support that claim? What I am discussing is Platte Canyon and our situation.

As far as a the former ambulance service's help, I am not a board member or administrative decision maker within the department to participate is those discussions. How the department came to the conclusions they did must be asked of the people who make them.

I understand your frustration with the tax enviornment within the county. To me, this is different, I consider it an essential service. I am selfish and want it for my family. If the former ambulance service were still here and asked for this increase I would vote for them to. Unfortunately for them, when they attempted a mil increase it was defeated and they did not survive. I don't want history to repeat.

These my personal views.

I think the historical conflict between the fire district and the former rescue service contradicts this statement. While it is true that fire accepted the responsibility of ambulance last year when things fell apart for rescue, the fire district DEFINITELY wanted to take over ambulance service for a number of years. In fact, I attended a board meeting where it was proposed that the entities merge, which would have given complete control of ambulance to fire and not rescue.

The problem here as I see it is that facts of record are being conveniently forgotten, and this creates a lot of political mistrust. I think you can appreciate that this doesn't fly well with people, especially since fire already gets the biggest chunk of our overall tax dollars annually. I also think the district has come forward with a proposal that is too hefty for the political times.

You have not earned my vote.

You're including all calls whether or not the ambulance is needed because they have to go anyway under your department guidelines?

How many calls where there is actually a patient and not just rolling because of guidelines or to have the ambulance seen? This is part of the problem as I see it -- we have a mixture of fire and ambulance situations here and no idea what is really needed for just the ambulance.

In this day of internet, there is no reason to make it difficult to get financial information to the people who are paying the bills. You have two websites going and it's a simple matter to publish financial information. Why hide it? Only one reason I can think of. You are spending our money but don't want us to know how much you have or where it's going. There's no reason we should have to take time off to come beg for it.


The fact is, we don't know what our tax dollars are buying. You'll continue to withhold information of how you're spending this new tax money too.


The Flume reported on surrounding districts in their September 4 article on your tax increase.
http://theflume.com/main.asp?SectionID= ... M=66465.54


Which probably means you also can't make statements about how the money will be spent as mentioned previously.

This will climb to a half million dollars pretty quickly (MY estimate) as property values climb back up, and we are getting no straight answers, just a sales pitch with questionable info.

I never would have expected this from our great fire department. It's very disappointing. My personal opinion? You have enough money saved and coming in to cover these expenses and plenty more. You're spending more than you need to. This is just an excuse to collect millions more over the years and retain your ranking as the richest department in the region. The proof is that you don't want people to see how much you have and what you spend. And the answers you're giving are vague at best, misleading at worst. Very political of you.
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I was wondering why there were so many letters to the paper supporting this tax and almost nothing opposing it. I think I figured it out. They can get their firefighters, EMT's who want more money, and their families and friends to write letters to support it. But people against it are afraid to write letters because they don't want to be left to have their homes burn down. Not that the fire department would do that. But after watching the county childishly take budgeted money away from repairing roads when their taxes didn't pass, we're all worried about that kind of retribution from all tax groups. So if it fails the fire department can thank Walker, Tighe, the school district, and the other commissioners, attorneys and people involved in screwing the public.

It's a bad climate in this county and I'm afraid they've all brought it on themselves by trying to cheat taxpayers for years. Time for a clean sweep and more transparency.

IMHO, ihavealtitude and MountainMom have hit the nail square on the head. Transparency is greatly lacking here, and there can only be one reason. My challenge to the fire district is to prove this to be wrong. Post your financial statements, and stop relying on the old saw, "if you want to know what's happening come to a board meeting." Transparency can be your best friend; right now, the lack of it is your greatest obstacle. And there does need to be a clear statement about what the district is doing that concerns ambulance service only. Apples and oranges are great in fruit salad, but not here...

It would be nice if the fire dept published their budget, bank balances and expenditures on a web site.

While publishing this information would raise additional questions, it could help calm the concerns.

Someone asked if the fire dept has someone on duty 24x7 - my understanding is that we pay for at least one person to be on duty and at the Crow Hill fire house 24x7x365. If this is true, I'm sure there is a logical reason. However, if we didn't have this person on duty 24x7x365 would this help pay for the ambulance service without a need for a mil levy?

There was a letter to the editor of The Flume asking questions about 5A. I don't recall if these questions were answered.