South Kitsap Fire and Rescue Chief Jeff Faucett is well aware that the costs of efficiency and innovation are only getting higher.
With voter-approved levies making up 85% of SKFR’s budget in an inflated economy and the rest coming in through EMS transport fees, contracts and grants, a watchful eye is kept by the SK taxpayer on the way the department’s dollars are spent.
Faucett intends to extend the value of every budgetary cost including the longtime practice of ambulance refurbishments and newer ideas like smaller fire trucks with increased rural mobility. “That’s not always easy,” he said. “Culture is hard to break, and so we are trying to break that with some of the things that we’re doing to try and stretch it farther and do it better with more efficiency.”
Acquiring the necessary fire and rescue vehicle fleet has never been cheap, but in the modern world new ambulances can cost around $300,000, and that is just the shell before the roughly $100,000 of equipment put on them.
The practice of ambulance refurbishment keeps cutting that price tag in half and then some. In the interest of not having tools such as ambulances break down, the mileage range from 150,000 to 180,000 miles is reached before Faucett said around $130,000 is spent to remove the ambulance box from the old chassis and attach it to a new one.
“We think if we do that math, it’s about a $3.5 million savings over about a ten to fifteen-year period,” he said.
There are limits to how much each ambulance can be refurbished—three having been communicated to SKFR as the apparent maximum by its supplier. “We’re in the process right now where we have to buy some new ones, and then we’re back into the refurbishment plan,” Faucett said.
That process has been within SKFR for years, but fire engines bring about new complications and unworldly price tags that make a $435,000 fire truck price tag from 2017 feel like a bargain. The value for a similar model today has more than doubled, 2024 numbers sitting at around $967,000, and refurbishment is not as simple as interchanging chassis due to the custom builds.
Still, Faucett said the department is exploring the feasibility of stretching out the engine investments through retrofitting to get at least an extra half-decade out of current vehicles.
Another option would integrate a different type of engine for more rural residents. “It’s a much smaller engine, has water, has a pump, has ladders. We know that if you live out in the rural part of our community, we have to look and wonder if we really need a big giant fire engine. The answer is, we don’t really think so,” the chief said.
In comes this four-by-four type of design that Faucett said the department can use for those fire incidents for easier access, but these engines can also provide easier handling during winter, making them ideal in snow and ice. The price could make it well worth the try at around $575,000.
Efficiency investing goes beyond the vehicles. Faucett described acquiring EKG monitors through a price lock agreement. These medical machines have also increased dramatically in price, going from $35,000 in 2020 to $60,000 presently. The jump motivated the department to enter into a 10-year agreement with its supplier, locking in the $60,0000 price and saving an estimated $300,000 based on inflation predictions.
Still, none of the equipment can be used if feet are not on the ground. That is where Faucett said the efficiency of personnel comes into play, in-county training and the elimination of certain prerequisites shortening the training of new recruits from 18-22 months three years ago down to a year.
“The biggest component of this was all six fire agencies in Kitsap County saying, ‘We all have the same issue, and we’ve got to fix it.’ Instead of sending our firefighters all the way up to North Bend or down to Tacoma to be trained, we set up our own academy in Kitsap,” Faucett said.
Faucett said recruits had learned firefighting but not Kitsap firefighting. “We need our firefighters to be on the same page. We needed them to learn this way.”
