01/06/2026
CALL TO ACTION
What: Public comment to Council
When: January 6th, 2026, 5:00 pm
Where: Yakima City Hall
We will be making a series of posts over the coming weeks leading up to the Counil meeting on January 6th, 2026, to help explain the dire situation your Yakima Fire Department is in.
Yakima residents, we are asking for your help to save Station 92, and prevent further staffing reductions!
Staffing Matters - Every Second Counts -
Over the past few weeks, we’ve talked about the consequences of closing Station 92. If you haven’t already, please checkout our series of posts to educate yourself on what’s at stake. Now, let’s talk what can be done.
Ultimately, the Fire Department is an essential service provided by the city, and is not able to generate revenue. Fire Departments do have “billable services” that help to offset operating costs.
One such example that has been employed successfully around the country is “Transport Services.” For decades, this has been a hot topic in the valley. Due to multiple (now single), “for profit” private ambulance companies, this “billable service” has not been available to YFD. We have continually pushed for more options and more service to the valley by providing a true “fire based EMS” model where YFD has transport capable apparatus. This would provide a billable service that would help to offset a fairly substantial part of our operating costs.
Some new “outside of the box” approaches that have popped up recently around the country are Fire departments “billing” the at fault driver’s insurance for motor vehicle accidents. Or another is Fire Departments “billing” insurance companies for “lift assists.” This can also be applied to care facilities and even AMR for providing “manpower” to for profit companies. YFD can essentially be thought of “gifting of public funds” to these facilities for providing “manpower” to generally non emergency calls.
Over the past 5 years, and even long before then, Our local has been suggesting numerous ideas to help with offsetting our costs. Such ideas are:
-Billing business for multiple false Fire alarms due to malfunctioning systems
-Billing Tier 1 reporting businesses for HAZMAT
-Billing care facilities in our city for lift assists
-Starting ambulance transport services
While all of these would help to offset our operating costs, they wouldn’t completely solve the budget crisis we are in. If these options had been instated years ago, then it would have helped to not reach this point. Unfortunately, what has happened historically with the city is and money “generated” by a service, the same amount has been “taken” out of our annual budget. The reality, as can be seen with this budget crisis, is that our annual budget is not enough to provide all of the services the community expects. Any money that is generated through billable services, needs to be added to the budget to help increase the budget.
YFD has been underfunded for decades. Only within the last few years have we started a “capital improvement” fund to pay for replacing apparatus, and stations, and major capital improvements. However, what was supposed to be a $1 million per year allocation to this fund, quickly turned into around $200k, and now essentially nothing.
Much like everything else right now, our operating costs have increased more than our budget has increased, thus causing the situation we are in now.
The city is proposing several solutions that have also been talked about for years. Increasing the EMS levy, a Levy Lid Lift, and a permanent utility tax increase. While all of these would significantly help our current situation, they do in fact raise taxes on the community. All of the “billable services” we have suggested will only be applied to businesses and individuals insurance companies. None of these solutions are “immediate.” The happy medium would be a combination of any of these solutions to help YFD progress into the future. One option, although a 3-5 year timeframe, would be to have YFD becoming a Fire District. This would ultimately take YFD out of the General Fund and we would rely solely on the community to fund our operations.
ALL of these options have been previously discussed and have either never been brought to council, or the city and council have said they don’t even want to discuss them. As was evident in the final meetings of 2025, where they took any discussion of funding for YFD off the table.
By simply having a “Status Quo” budget year after year for decades, we will always be talking about “cuts” to services to continue operating at such an underfunded level. Yakima Fire Department needs leaders with a vision of the future and not “status quo.” Yakima Fire Department has been plagued by Chiefs and Councils that do not want to progress and continually provide better services to the community. Under the 7 years of Chief Markham, Yakima Fire Department is barely treading water.
