Lane Fire Authority budget signals ambulance cuts after levy fails again

Lane Fire Authority’s new budget signals a blunt change in emergency care: the district says it will have to narrow its ambulance service area because it will not have enough staff to cover the full district at current levels.

The budget committee laid out that reality at a May 21 hearing for the fiscal year running from July 1, 2026, to June 30, 2027, just after voters rejected Measure 20-378, the five-year local option levy for general operations. Under the proposal, the levy would have raised the district’s tax rate from 35 cents to 55 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value and brought in an estimated $1.74 million to $1.96 million a year, or about $9.26 million over five years.

Chief Dale Borland said the problem is staffing, not just dollars. Lane Fire Authority’s levy materials say emergency medical service makes up about 80% of calls, and personnel respond to roughly 7,400 calls a year across a district of about 31,000 people and 282 square miles. The district has said call volume has climbed nearly 20% since voters approved the levy in 2021, while ambulance licensing fees, overtime, maintenance, mandated employer costs, insurance, health care and dispatch charges have all risen sharply.

That strain is now showing up in the service map. Lane Fire Authority said the levy failure means it cannot keep enough people on duty to run ambulances the way residents expect, and the budget committee drew up two versions of the spending plan, one assuming the levy passed and one for the failure scenario that is now in effect. District materials said a no vote would force a 17% budget reduction and cut fire and ambulance staffing.

The impact is likely to hit the far edges of the district first, including areas from Walton in the west to Alderwood near Low Pass in the north and Fox Hollow in the south, along with Irving, Alvadore and Franklin. Lane Fire Authority operates 15 stations in that stretch of rural Lane County, where a smaller ambulance footprint can mean longer response times when every minute matters in a medical emergency.

The pressure has been building for months. The district had already shut down one ambulance and used reserve funds before the May vote, and Assistant Fire Chief Rose Douglass said those reserves were nearly gone. NBC 16 reported the district had warned of reductions of up to eight firefighter positions if the levy failed.

Contract talks are still underway, and employees would face wage freezes with no cost-of-living increase. Lane Fire Authority was formed in 2012 from consolidated volunteer departments, and Santa Clara RFPD joined an intergovernmental agreement in 2018, but the latest budget shows how little cushion remains when a rural fire district loses a funding fight twice in a row.