VIDEO: After months of community outreach, two Treasure Valley fire districts hope their levies get enough votes on May 20. “Unfortunately, or fortunately, however, you choose to look at it, our communities are growing, and with growth comes services that need to be provided,” said Greg Timinsky, Star/Middleton Fire chief. This is the districts’ third attempt to pass levies recently. They tried in November and last May.
“It’s nerve-wracking to not understand why we can’t get the information out,” Timinsky previously told KTVB. “If it’s no, it’s no, but the comments that I read on our social media posts are so far from reality for the fire district that it’s frustrating.” Voters will decide on a $2.25 million levy for the Star Fire Protection District. Taxpayers would pay roughly $46 per $100,000 of taxable assessed value.
“The community is great,” Timinsky said. “They’re very supportive of the emergency services for the most part. It’s just tough when you’re raising property taxes.” Middleton Rural Fire District is also running a $2.25 million levy, except taxpayers would pay roughly $61 per $100,000 of assessed value. Timinsky said they need the money to help remodel and staff stations, which would help them keep up with growth.
“We need to be able to respond to our emergencies in a reasonable amount of time,” he said. “Five minutes is what we shoot for. It is getting to be another minute a year in our response times due to the growth and the traffic and everything else. We need that reliability of another fire station, we need it staffed.”
