Voters in Hailey will decide November 3 whether to fully merge local firefighting operations into a regional district with Ketchum and the Blaine County South Fire District, now called Blaine County Fire and Rescue.
"Everything we do, every time we go out the door, it's a team effort," said Blaine County Fire and Rescue Chief Kevan Crawley. He was hired last year, specifically with this merger in mind. Crawley came from Indianapolis, where he oversaw multiple fire department consolidation efforts.
Ketchum and The BC South Fire District officially combined and rebranded as Blaine County Fire and Rescue on Oct. 1.
"So it only makes sense that instead of having the redundancies - in a small community such as Blaine County or even in a larger community like Indianapolis - that you have one structure, one command structure." Crawley said. "Everybody's trained to the same level and are on the same page. We're looking at the community risk across the entire spectrum of the community instead of just in one small place."
Voting yes to the merger is also a vote to increase the property taxes that pay for fire response in Hailey, from roughly $13.95 per $100,000 of taxable property value, to an estimate of $51.44 per $100,000 of taxable property value, according to the City of Hailey.
But those numbers alone don’t tell the whole story. Property tax revenue funds only about one-third of the full cost of the local fire department. Hailey funds the other two-thirds of the fire budget from city coffers, including using revenue from the local option tax. But the so-called tourism tax is not allowed to fund expenses beyond city limits - like a regional fire district.
Beyond how it's funded, Hailey’s fire department has been relatively inexpensive for one major reason.
"They were operating on a purely volunteer model," Crawley said. "They have a handful of full time people that do the inspections and a fire chief and things like that. During the weekdays, they had four or five people that were on duty full-time, doing their various administrative functions. Anytime after hours, you have a volunteer agency that is responding to the calls."
As Blaine County's population has grown, calls for help since 2020 have risen 67% in Hailey and 40% county-wide, Crawley said.
He said the volunteer model is no longer the right fit for the growing city. Hailey Fire Chief Mike Baledge agreed.
"It's harder to get people to volunteer. It's harder for our volunteers to leave their jobs for fire calls. It's harder for them to leave their families and things like that," Baledge said. "Our volunteers are are truly dedicated and they're really, really great people - highly trained. And we will still be using our volunteers quite a bit to supplement full time shifts. It'll just be a different model."
Hailey Fire and BCFR have been working together under that new model since earlier this summer. Both Baledge and Crawley said a new, temporary joint powers agreement already helped save significant property damage on a structure fire last month.
"We were able to be on the scene in less than ten minutes," Crawley explained.
Firefighters at stations in Hailey and Bellevue responded Sept. 27 to a residential fire in Hailey's Woodside neighborhood.
"By us getting that first crew in there with water that quickly, we were able to stop the fire spread to the next door neighbor, and we were able to contain the fire inside the house," Crawley said. "We saved 90% of the contents of that home and completely saved the other home."
Volunteers arrived to help fight that fire, too, but the first was not on scene until 17 minutes after the call came in, Crawley said. He admitted the neighbor's house might have suffered some cosmetic damage, like warped siding, due to the heat, but without the full-time firefighting response, property loss at the house where the fire started and others would have been far more significant.
"I felt like that was a huge success story that really illustrates what we're doing," Crawley said. Baledge agreed with that assessment, but both said the joint powers agreement isn’t a long-term solution. If voters say no to the merger, Baledge said Hailey would need to quickly begin exploring how to fund the fully-staffed fire department the city needs.
There is no formal opposition to the proposed merger, but Crawley notes the discomfort for some taxpayers. Fire levy rates in different areas of Blaine County range from around $10 per $100,000 of taxable property value to over $100. But as the population grows and more fire districts consolidate, Crawley said efficiencies could increase and shared costs could actually come down.
But he said the merger means both costs and emergency response will be more even and predictable across the service area.
"Whether you're large or small, it all translates the same. We have the same level of service, same tax levy. Everybody's paying the same for the same level of service," he said.
The two fire chiefs and the union representing Blaine County firefighters hope the voters will agree on Nov. 3. The issue requires a simple majority to pass, and if approved, would take effect Oct. 1, 2027, with the first related new property tax payments due in January 2028.
