Increased Fire Tax in Kirkwood? Why Now Indeed!

A leaflet arguing for a tax increase surprised some Kirkwood residents this month when they found it tucked into their city-issued electricity bills. The tax advertised in the leaflet would up the sales tax rate by 0.25 percent in order to add new cross-trained firefighter/paramedics to Kirkwood’s Fire Department. With the need for municipal fire services in decline and only an increase in EMS cited as justification for the tax increase, I can’t help but wonder if this tax hike would unnecessarily nickel and dime people choosing to spend their money in Kirkwood.

Let’s break this down. Since the 1970s and 1980s, when fire alarms, new technologies, and improved building standards decreased the number and severity of fires in the country, there has been a steady increase in the number of people employed as firefighters. You might think the number of people employed to fight fires would decrease as the need for fire response decreased. You’d be wrong.

To compensate for this decrease in the demand for their services, fire departments began taking on the broader role of providing emergency medical services—that is, driving ambulances and providing on-the-scene support to people involved in accidents. Fire departments might have saved money if they then decreased the number of people employed as firefighters and invested more heavily in paramedics and EMS equipment, which typically cost less, but that didn’t happen.

Here we have a textbook case of mission creep, the tendency of government organizations to gradually shift their goals and expand their purpose. Society no longer needs as many people fighting fires, yet because government lacks an efficient mechanism for linking supply and demand, we continue to spend an increasing amount of tax revenue on fire protection. Government has a tendency to grow, even as needs shrink.

If the city of Kirkwood wants more paramedics, then they should hire more paramedics, not firefighters. Shifting resources to pay for more EMS and less fire services, or even privatizing certain functions, could help pay for this. It’s simply a waste of money to raise taxes to hire workers for an unneeded and more expensive job.