At the West Pierce Fire & Rescue (WPFR) Board of Commissioners meeting Tuesday, March 4, the Board unanimously voted to approve adjustments to the recently implemented 2025 Fire Benefit Charge (FBC). The changes will create a reduction in original FBC for over 3,500 taxpayers in the district.
In November, voters decided to move to a new methodology for funding the fire department. This year, the district eliminated the current Maintenance & Operations Levy and reduced the statutory rate of the Regular Fire levy by 33%.
Each year, taxpayers can file a Petition for Adjustment to their FBC. WPFR opened its petition period on Feb. 10 and extended the window through Feb. 28 after it was made aware that some parcel owners had not yet received their tax statements.
Last month, WPFR received and reviewed 129 petitions. A petition review panel was established to identify trends, find commonalities, discuss potential overall formula adjustments for 2026, and make determinations for each petition received. Ultimately, proposed adjustments were made to affect all parcels, petition or not, that fell in category areas of proposed adjustments.
Based on the recommendations the review panel provided to the Board of Fire Commissioners, adjustments were approved for approximately 2,100 commercial properties, over 150 boathouses, 67 mobile home properties, and over 1,200 residential properties with a detached garage.
The post-petition changes have dropped the original final sum of the FBC from approximately $34 million to $30.2 million. WPFR will work to amend their adopted 2025 budget to ensure a balanced budget as a result of these reductions.
Updates to specific parcel FBCs were provided to the Pierce County Assessor-Treasurer’s Office Wednesday morning. All petitioners will also receive an email notification of the outcome of their petition and they, as well as all those affected by the adjustments will receive an updated tax statement from the Pierce County Assessor-Treasurer’s Office.
The panel also recommended pushing and/or extending future petition review periods, enhancing transparency through online publication of parcel specific formula calculations, and ensuring ongoing review of impact across the District.
With this being the initial year of FBC implementation, WPFR continues to fine tune, update, and review data. Voters approved the FBC out of the desire to shift the impact of the cost of fire protection services from residential to commercial and industrial properties. We thank the community for their involvement and input and will continue to listen as we navigate this new future of funding.
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