The Kitsap County Board of Commissioners unanimously approved the annexation of 93 parcels of property for Central Kitsap Fire & Rescue fire protection and emergency medical services.

Back in September, CKF&R sent out letters to the owners on record of the parcels proposed to be annexed. The fire department’s board has already completed a public hearing regarding this proposal to which only one comment was received by fire chief John Oliver.

“We’ve notified all the parties involved in this process and the only comment as a fire chief I received was a positive comment,” Oliver said. “They were glad that we were cleaning up this small problem in our structure and organization.”

Oliver, when speaking to the county commissioners, stated that this has been an ongoing issue for several years. He said that during the process of CKF&R’s formation for the fire district, 93 parcels were not within the fire district’s boundaries.

“Those did not have a big impact because they were deemed urban forest reserve for decades,” Oliver said. “Since then, the county [comprehensive] plan has taken and rezoned those properties, some of them into commercial occupancies. They have since been subdivided and developed and have no fire protection.”

Senate Bill 510 went into effect last July, which establishes a process for local fire districts to “annex any parcels having all boundaries of the property wholly within the external boundary of the fire district, that are not currently paying for the forest fire protection assessment or local fire district levies.”

“Per the auditor, the only fix was a legislative fix,” Oliver said. “In conjunction with many organizations, we passed Senate Bill 5010. Senate Bill 5010 allows us to annex those parcels within the fire district’s boundaries and to levy taxes for fire protection on those parcels.”