The Kirkland firefighters’ union has released a new letter articulating its recently declared opposition to proposed new fire station locations along with the results of an internal poll that ostensibly shows growing dissatisfaction among firefighters with the city.

In a Jan. 6 letter, Bryan Vadney, president of IAFF Local 2545, wrote that an internal poll conducted by the union of firefighters revealed overwhelming opposition to the new station siting proposal. Additionally, the poll showed that roughly 88 percent of firefighters believed the city “is unlikely to change” its mind on the fire station siting and that firefighters’ input had “little value” to them, according to the union.

The union’s chief complaint of the city’s plans is that it will not add any additional firefighters for the new station. Instead, it will move existing staff to the the new station, which the union believes will be at the expense of Totem Lake and Kingsgate neighborhood residents.

In 2004, King County Fire District 41 first started planning a consolidation project to combine Stations 24 and 25, which are located on Finn Hill. The fire district initially looked into placing the fire station in Big Finn Hill Park, but the possible move sparked a backlash from residents and was opposed by the then Denny Creek Neighborhood Association.

After the 2011 annexation, the city looked into 20 possible sites to place the consolidated station, but later suspended the process in order to wait for the findings in the 2013 Fire Strategic Plan. The plan, according to a July 2014 city memo, noted several response time gaps, particularly in North Finn Hill.

The current options being considered, however, would have the new station either replace Station 24 or replace both Stations 24 and 25, depending on which option the council chooses.

As of Dec. 15, 2014, Station 24 no longer takes calls and there is no staff at the station, according to the KFD. Previously, the station had been run by volunteer emergency medical technicians.

One of the main proposals for the new fire station siting would be in Juanita at two possible spots on Northeast 132nd Street, just slightly over the neighborhood boundary with Finn Hill.

Vadney argued that taking staff away from other stations to fully staff a new Station 24 would be counterproductive.

“We are asking the city to not waist [sic] $11 million to build a fire station in Juanita if you’re going to take fire units and staffing away from others, it doesn’t help it only moves a problem,” Vadney wrote.

The conflict between the firefighters union and the city over the proposed fire station siting abruptly came to light after Vadney sent out a letter to city officials on Dec. 9 concerning a proposed joint domestic violence resolution between the union and the city, which the union rejected. The letter concluded by expressing opposition to the station siting. In response, Mayor Amy Walen and Deputy Mayor Penny Sweet wrote a joint response criticizing the union for not bringing up their concerns earlier in the process.

As for the city’s current expenditures on fire services, stating that in 2005 the city spent $8.2 million annually on 74 firefighters compared to $15.1 million on 96 currently.

They also defended the possible sitings for the station being considered, they said response time data and the Fire Strategic Plan demonstrate they will provide better response times to more residents and will close a gap in coverage that is a result of geography, not a lack of staff. The $5.2 million left from Fire District 41, they added, can only be spent on building a new station.

“More staff doesn’t solve a problem of time and space,” they wrote. “To be clear, when more staffing is appropriate the city has stepped up. Over the past 10 years the City Council has added 22 firefighters, including 11 since 2010.”

In response, Vadney wrote the gap in coverage was not due to geography but the result of closing two fire stations and cutting two aid units. While the city has added more firefighters and spent more money on fire services, he says, neighborhoods that were annexed in 2011 have suffered a loss in fire services since the closure of Fire District 41. Additionally, he wrote, the new station would be located outside of the fire district’s old coverage area and not directly benefit the neighborhoods that paid the fire levy for the new station.

Vadney also claims that the city is failing to take into account other factors besides response time that are included in the Standard of Coverage and Deployment Plan, which was published in June 2014. Among those is an “effective response force,” which is the “number of personnel and apparatus required to be present on the scene of an emergency incident to perform the critical tasks in such a manner to effectively mitigate the incident without unnecessary loss of life and/or property.”

The study considered a full effective response force to a high risk structure fire to include two battalion chiefs, two ladder trucks, an aid unit, and four fire engines, with total staffing of 20 firefighters. For a moderate risk structure fire, the ERF would have one battalion chief, one ladder truck, one aid unit, and three fire engines, a total staffing of 15 firefighters.

Another factor in the study was concurrency of calls, which is when multiple incidents are reported within the same time frame. The study found that in 2012, 40.4 percent of incidents in the city occurred concurrently with another incident.

Station 27, Vadney believes, already has enough trouble adequately responding to calls as it is. This will only get worse if personnel are moved to the new Juanita station.

“If the proposed station is built and existing staffing is moved, Totem Lake and Kingsgate will experience a greater than 60 percent reduction in staffing as compared to the pre-annexation levels,” Vadney wrote. “Hardly the promise of improved city services.”

From the city’s perspective, the letter comes as another unexpected turn in their relationship with the firefighters union. City Manager Kurt Triplett said the city has been attempting to have a conversation with firefighters since the Dec. 9 letter was published and believed progress had been made, but the letter reflects a continual rift.

“It’s difficult to know how to talk to them,” he said. “We think we’re engaging them in a conversation based on the merits and every time before we meet we have these letters come out. But we’ll keep trying. My goal is a proposal supported by the community and the firefighters, but in the end my job is to make the community safe, not to make the firefighters happy. But obviously my goal is to accomplish both.”

He added that, among other things, Vadney’s letter presumes the city is taking action on the matter right away, rather than several years down the line.

“The city will not take this action if it reduces response times for anyone,” he said. “Our duty is improving service in the north end. If building the new fire station and splitting the crews is going to reduce service to Kingsgate, we won’t do it. That’s nobody’s proposal. We’re pretty emphatic about that.”

Triplett added that not only has the city allocated $3 million in the recent budget for the new station and $1 million to keep supplementary staff at the Finn Hill station but it is going even further than the original intent of Fire District 41, which was to close both stations. The city’s plan is to keep one of them open.

“Bryan is ducking the central issue here,” he said. “What the city is proposing is to keep (Station) 25 open instead. The reason you get better service is our proposal has two fire stations not one. I’m just puzzled by him saying we’re not trying to fulfill the commitment. We’re trying to fulfill it better.”

He also said they are troubled by the presumption in the letter that the decisions the city is making are political and benefit one neighborhood at the expense of another.

“We’re simply not going to propose an action that makes things worse,” he said. “And they know that.”

Triplett stated that their proposal for the new fire station was based on data that showed Station 27 responded to calls 58 percent of the time west of I-405, while 42 percent were on the east side of I-405.

“If you built a new station and split the crews you would have a station dedicated to Kingsgate and another dedicated to Juanita and Finn Hill,” he said.

Scott Morris, chair of the Finn Hill Neighborhood Alliance said that their main interest is for a new station is that it will provide better service coverage to Finn Hill, but declined to comment on the current proposals.

“We’ll stay engaged with them and hopefully we’ll come up collectively at the city level with an answer that make sense,” he said.