This taxing district reminds me of the McCall Memorial/ St. Luke's taxing district that we will never get off the Tax rolls. Perhaps the hospital should pitch in to the EMS, 'cause we all end up there if we are still alive. Now I'm not belittling our wonderful hospital however it is utilized by all of the surrounding counties who never paid anything into the taxing district that we paid for. That includes the out of towners. Correct me if I'm off base on this.
No, you are not wrong, Jean. But like everything in this world, there's a broader context to consider. You are not the first person to write me with the idea of using the hospital tax for EMS. But, legally, it's not practical. It is tough, but possible to dissolve the hospital taxing district. But there is no way to commandeer those funds for EMS. Funds can't be transferred from one taxing district to another, for good reason. There may be other ways to do it, but the most straightforward would be to first dissolve the hospital district and then the EMS district could ask the voters to approve a similar appropriation for them. That would require a vote and the voter would have a choice to agree or disagree. I will be doing a series on the MMH hospital district, so stay tuned. One of the reasons I'm in favor of two-year tax levy funding for EMS instead of the permanent override they are asking for, is this very thing. The landscape for medical services in this county continues to be in such flux that the straight jacket of a permanent tax on anything is going to get a fight from me. Cheers and thanks for reading! —Tomi
I would like to thank Tomi for taking on this educational project. This, and her past articles, should be read by everyone before voting on the EMT proposal. I also think there’s some guilt around voting no, as if you don’t care about people needing care. Often times things seem like great ideas until you check the fine print. Thanks again.
Thank you, Tomi, for your new substack. It is informative
and I appreciate the work that goes into writing it. I disagree with you on the EMS issue and will vote yes for a third time because our EMS issues are not just a recent concern but a longstanding problem that has persisted for at least 10 years. The recommendations that the fire commissioners and chiefs have made have been repeatedly postponed by the previous and recent county commissioners, exacerbating the situation, which is why we have an EMS levy before us for the third time. I have also listened to the stories and concerns of many of the EMS workers, such as firefighters and hospital staff. Unfortunately, we lacked leadership on this issue for over ten years, especially over the last 5years when there were other solutions.
I attend many county commissioner and zoning meetings and the City of McCall meetings. I have also written many LTEs for the Star News.
Our EMS, water quality, sewer, road, and bridge infrastructure and housing issues have worsened due to our carcinomatous growth approvals in Valley County. It is crucial that our officials consider the adverse impacts of growth before they approve applications and require the developers/exploiters to pay for their growth impacts. Until this responsible growth management is in place, the taxpayers will see future levies and bonds on the ballot. A sewer bond will be next. The commissioners' and city councils' modi operandi is to approve first and figure out how to solve the adverse impacts of the growth they continue to approve. The taxpayer will always be the fallback for thoughtless decisions and suffer the consequences.
As you pointed out to one of your commenters, “But like everything in this world, there's a broader context to consider.”
You used a sentence from my explanation against temporary levy initiatives and used it in this, out of context. I am happy to engage in spirited debate and dialogue, but doing this type of “journalism” is unfair at best and mean-spirited at worst, and I am having a hard time understanding how it is constructive.
In context, it is important to consider the sentences in front of and behind what I said regarding your argument in favor of temporary funding. I stated, “Watching different agencies take the temporary override approach to funding operations has made me cautious about using a temporary plan for anything other than replacing capital. (Look up Middleton Fire, circa 2010ish). The main reason is that when operations and staffing are mainly paid for with temporary funding, the agencies use “layoffs” as leverage with the voters. We often hear that people don’t want us to create “fearmongering,” which is the last thing I want to do. But, when that is the reality of not getting funded, it is arguably the responsible thing to do. When salaries are tied to temporary funding and people working at the agency have to wait in angst every couple of years, they are less likely to keep working at that agency, and, in my experience watching other Fire/EMS agencies, it creates significant turnover.”
The point was and still is that if an agency relies on temporary funding, then jobs and response would/could be on the chopping block every two years, and agencies would/could be positioned to say vote yes or you get no service, which would/could be framed as “fearmongering.” I know I don’t need to explain this to you, but I would like to clarify to the readers that you are culling specific sentences and using them out of context.
Similarly, in your previous post, “Here’s spit in your eye,” you used the headline, “Fire chiefs say no way to consolidation.” That is a headline that you came up with. We did not say “no way to consolidation,” if you can quote me as saying that, as one of the three fire chiefs, I would love to see it. There is a way to consolidation, and we are slowly working that way at a local and state level, but similar to your argument about the hospital district funding, “there is a broader context to consider.” I’m sure you’d like us to hire a consultant to look at it…. haha, or take our word for it… haha, but the current Idaho statute for consolidation, which was written before I was born, is completely impractical. We are working at a state level to make it more viable. I would encourage you, or anyone who cares about that issue, to reach out to their legislators and encourage them to make consolidation legislation that benefits all local governments. I would love to explain the nuance in the current consolidation code, but I am confident that this blog is for you to vent and not intended to solicit feedback.
If anyone is interested, please feel free to reach out to me at: firechief@mccallfire.com or 208-315-7081
This is so informative! I agree, the steps taken to get this passed follows the model. I also think the "quilt trip" is alive and well here. There are so many grants, gov't assistance for "rural" programs and there is no information on attempts to obtain any of these. Thank you Tomi for relaying your knowledge and experience!
Hi Paula, Valley Countywide EMS here. We appreciate your feedback on the lack of information as it pertains to alternative funding sources. We will update the FAQ page on valleycountywideems.com to include what grants/funding sources have helped bridge the gap in funding. Thank you and feel free to reach out with any questions 208-271-1933.
Thank you David, for your compliment and thoughtful post. I do not disagree with anything you said regarding EMS. However, I think a temporary, two-year, renewable levy is in the best interests of the electorate. As you say, government can be mighty unresponsive, especially if funding is in their hands.
As I've mentioned in the posts, there are other forces at work, including an initiative being kicked around the legislature to get the state into the EMS funding game. It's not being taken seriously so far, but I have enough experience with how the legislature operates to know that can turn on a dime. There are just too many variables in play here to make me comfortable approving a permanent, single solution to a problem that can be managed a better way.
We don't need to solve this forever today. We need to work together toward a funding mechanism that is responsive. I don't know exactly what you mean by "other solutions" but I think you know what you are talking about and that they are out there. I do not think EMS has done an effective job of communicating with the public. They gripe that we never come to their meetings or visit them at their firehouses. But it is not the job of the public to come to them. It's the other way around. One of the reasons I started this Substack was to be a platform that will help us quit talking past each other and help us talk with each other. We'll see how that goes. I, for one, am willing to risk another six months of the status quo to see if we can achieve that. Cheers! Tomi
This certainly feels like an invitation! Considering the many requests we've made to engage in dialogue, if your intention was merely to have us visit, we could have coordinated that a while ago.
I wholeheartedly believe that in-person, face-to-face interactions foster more meaningful communication, enhancing our understanding and connection in ways that online exchanges simply cannot match. At this moment, it’s evident that we’re not effectively sharing information even on this platform; and selectively quoting sources is only adding to the confusion and misunderstandings.
You have valuable insights and critiques about our current system, and I can only imagine the potential impact of our collaboration! As a journalist, your expertise must truly shine in the pursuit of deeper understanding. You are positioned perfectly to engage in face-to-face open dialogue with us, bridging the gap and cultivating a more informed perspective! Let’s indeed work together by arranging a time to discuss this matter in greater detail.
For anyone who has questions, we're here for you! Please reach out or provide your contact information, and we will get back to you! Additionally, we will be hosting informational public events to improve communication and clarify information.
Tuesday October 29th - 6:30pm ONLINE FORUM: Chat with us from the comfort of your home!
Wednesday October 30th - 6:30pm at Alpine Playhouse
Saturday November 2nd - 2:00pm at the Roxy Theatre
I'm sorry for the delayed reply Danielle, I just saw this. I'm still trying to figure out Substack's comment structure. Sometimes I get notifications of new ones and sometimes I don't.
I'm afraid you've lost me. What misunderstandings? What confusion? Cheers! —TSG
I am sorry I upset you Garrett. Reading the full text of your comment again, it doesn't change, for me, the context of what I lifted. But my opinion doesn't matter. Before I used the quote, I told you what I objected to in what you said, and you yourself said that you 'framed it wrong'. That suggests to me that you said something that you would re-phrase if you had the chance. That's what I was commenting on. That's the beauty of these exchanges. It's all on the record and the reader can decide. I urge all readers to look at the comments to my second post "If it's good enough..." I had a wide-ranging conversation with Garrett and a couple others in the EMS ranks.
I didn't write the "no way" headline for purposes of the post and I didn't use it in the post itself. It was the headline that appeared over the original news story, which I don't recall anybody from your ranks objecting to at the time it was published. I merely reprinted it so that readers could get the full context of the report.
There are two kinds of journalism, reporting and opinion/analysis. I am engaging in the latter. You can call that "journalism" with your air quotes, but commentary, opinion, satire and analysis was the original form of my profession.
If you will go back to the exchange we had a couple posts ago, we had a quite lively discussion that I thought was extremely productive and informative. If, in the minds of those who read this blog, I am "mean-spirited" and using it to "vent", I will be put out of business pretty quickly. Nobody is going to stick with reading a repetitive, ego-centric personal rant. So you better hope that I prove to be what you say I am because you will soon be rid of me.
There appears to be a major difference in our world views. I trust the electorate to be discerning and wise. I think your metaphor of you guys on a chopping block with the voter holding an axe over your head should be just as mean-spirited and vengeful in the voter's eye as you accuse me of being.
It is a repeating refrain in my posts that there is a lot more emotion involved in the EMS organization than I think is healthy for a public agency. You are a public official. I am a journalist. Journalists and public officials are in an adversarial relationship—and should be. It's necessary to the survival of our republic. The problem with the contemporary iteration of my profession, as I think you yourself noted in our earlier conversation, is that the adversarial relationship between the press and government is turning from a war room into a bedroom. That's where I would put my air quote around "journalism". It's no longer a matter of government vs the people's watchdog. It's a matter of figuring out who's sleeping with whom in an ideological sense.
I made a really big deal in the first few posts that I would not be balanced, if there even is such a thing. I've lived up to the pledge that I would champion and give voice to people who are not being heard because they are intimidated. You can challenge my interpretation of the facts. Please, please do. You can even call me names, I'm no stranger to that either. But how is that going to get us anywhere?
I am grateful for this exchange. I didn't post your full response because it was in the comments section of this blog and I didn't think I needed to. You will note that I posted the full text of our newspaper report on the consolidation because it was a while ago and I wanted to refresh my readers' memories. But I just learned from you that if I am going to lift a quote from a comment exchange, I should link to it. I am resolved to do that in the future. Thank you for that. I'm really new to this social media game, so I kinda feel like a cow on ice.
Buckle up Garrett. If you think I'm in this to be mean-spirited and vent, you didn't read the opinion page of the newspaper we ran. This is just an extension of it on a much more responsive platform. I hope you and anybody else with strong opinions and passion, or even wobbly ones that we can help perfect through an open exchange of ideas, find a home here. That is my mission.
Thank you for your reply. I am sorry that you have been yelled at, and I cannot begin to understand the life of a small-town journalist. I appreciate your and Tom's contributions to our community more than you know, and I respect the role that the media plays.
I may be clumsy with my words and will try a final time to clarify. You posed a question: why not do a temporary levy? I was offering up one of my concerns. I agree with so much of what you say and am familiar with bad actors in the form of elected officials, agency heads, etc., and from my perspective, a temporary levy could give agencies leverage to be manipulative with the threat of layoffs or service reductions. I offered up two instances where this was the case, and even in the case of Cascade School District, their first bullet point under “why this levy is important” is "keeping our teachers.”
It is not explained, and I don’t know how accurate it is. Perhaps you would not be concerned about an agency relying on temporary funding, which is fair. From my perspective, it is a big deal to me, and I would hate to see an agency set up like that. Perhaps you would like to see a temporary override once, a couple of times, and then a permanent levy established. Honestly, I don’t know your entire position, so it is hard to understand how it would work or what your vision looks like. I was trying to give you the most salient reasons that temporary funding doesn’t appeal to me based on watching it across the state.
You are an incredible writer, and I have always enjoyed reading your work and Tom’s. I am not a professional writer and feel like I am playing a game of pickup basketball with a Hall of Famer from the NBA. In this instance, your Substack, you seem to be taking a very critical view with little to no solutions other than the temporary levy. I am sure that from the Grote perspective, which is enormously broad and experienced, these initiatives seem to form patterns, and some of the moves seem silly. None of the people involved have the breadth of experience that you do. I can assure you that none of us have a “book” or education on orchestrating a levy initiative.
You argued in this comment thread that “I do not think EMS has done an effective job of communicating with the public. They gripe that we never come to their meetings or visit them at their firehouses. But it is not the job of the public to come to them. It's the other way around.”
If that is your position, yet you make fun of using a communication professional, “Even with the fancy $13,300 PR consultant the taxing district hired”, using consultants “somebody had the bright idea (not) to pay a consultant $58,000”, and using ad space in our only local newspaper “Voters are exposed to a parade of newspaper ads, paid for with their tax dollars,” how would you recommend that we effectively communicate with the public? What does good look like? I am genuinely interested in being better in my role and meeting the expectations of our whole community. How do we create a new model to educate and help people feel knowledgeable, regardless of how they vote, when they fill out their ballot?
Thank you for the kind words, Garrett. Yes, I would like to see a temporary levy system given a try. I appreciate your fears and I did read the links to the Middleton experience, which didn't give much in-depth information. I examined your arguments carefully as I do all input from people I hold in high regard. I suspect that there was a lot more to what was going on in Middleton than was the fault of a temporary levy structure. At any rate, there isn't time now to flush that out. Let's see what the voters think Nov. 5th. If your permanent tax passes, then you have your funding for "many, many years" and game over (to use your basketball reference).
But if it doesn't, then I don't think you have much choice but to come back with the temporary option. I think trying for a permanent tax again would be irresponsible.
As for your reference to the Cascade levy. They have voted to "keep their teachers" time and time again, so what's your point? Same in Meadows Valley. I implore you to trust the electorate and not think of your bosses as executioners waiting to chop your head off, a phrase you have used a couple times in our exchanges.
You don't have to be a great writer to be an effective communicator, Garrett. You only need to think more before you react. A certain amount of emotion is to be admired in a man in your position. And, believe me, I do appreciate that aspect of your personality. But after a lifetime of learning at Tom's knee, I am convinced that emotion is a very poor mechanism on which to build an argument.
The next post, which will drop over the weekend, will talk about your communications strategy. Fair warning: it's going to be extremely critical, but it's not an opinion I haven't expressed to you directly in our earlier exchanges, so it shouldn't come as a surprise. Some, but not all, of your questions on that topic will be answered there.
The final post will simply be a summary of all that I have covered in this series so that my readers can see all their alternatives. I won't be breaking any new ground. Remember, my mission is to send voters to the polls confident in their decision. I don't care which conclusion they come to. If the levy passes, I will be just fine with it because I know that my readers made their choice based on a wide menu of viewpoints. If I had anything to do with giving them more perspectives than just yours, mission accomplished.
If the levy fails, I plan to write a detailed submission to you and your board giving you my thoughts on what the vote taught us and suggesting ways that you can alter your thinking to be more in tune with the electorate's. At this stage of the game, I don't know what more we can say to each other that isn't ground we haven't already covered. But I will be delighted to keep this dialogue going all the way up to election day if you think that will be useful. Keep in mind that this is business, it's not personal and it will never get personal at least on my side. Journalists don't sugar-coat because it's our job to sort through wordy explanations and pick out the highlights. You might not agree with what pops for me, but know that I don't ever write to vent or be vengeful. I really don't think of people's feelings at all when I write, to be honest. That's not what readers want of me.
I also want to remind you and your team that my Tom has been an eye-witness to many of the horrors they have experienced themselves. I wasn't on what we call the "police beat" but he was for many years before we could afford to hire a reporter. He has seen blown apart faces, watched bodies being pulled out of the lake and walked the devastation of propane explosions knowing that little children had been blown to bits. I have seen all that through his eyes and through our newspaper reporting. We know what EMS/fire does. We know your value and we know first hand what your challenges are. We could not in good conscience support a temporary tax if we didn't wholly believe that it is a reliable solution to your funding gap. We came to that opinion knowing intimately who you are and what you do. Please remember that we are half on the same side. EMS needs more funding. The other half is how and how much.
I look forward to getting a verdict Nov. 5th so we can see what direction this conversation needs to go, if it even needs to continue at all. Until then, please know that we have another important goal in common. We both want a logical, practical and businesslike approach to EMS/fire. That's a mighty strong foundation on which to build the future. Agree? Cheers! Tomi
Thank you for all of this. I appreciate your willingness to share your thoughts if the levy fails, and I sincerely appreciate your perspective. Tom has certainly been involved in some seriously heartbreaking muck, and I understand its challenges, particularly when living in a small community.
As you rightly stated, Tomi, our shared goal is to approach EMS/fire services in a logical, practical, and businesslike manner. This strong foundation is the essence of teamwork, and if our community can unite under this goal, we can achieve significant progress. I appreciate your role in facilitating this exchange and believe it will enhance the livability of our community.
This taxing district reminds me of the McCall Memorial/ St. Luke's taxing district that we will never get off the Tax rolls. Perhaps the hospital should pitch in to the EMS, 'cause we all end up there if we are still alive. Now I'm not belittling our wonderful hospital however it is utilized by all of the surrounding counties who never paid anything into the taxing district that we paid for. That includes the out of towners. Correct me if I'm off base on this.
No, you are not wrong, Jean. But like everything in this world, there's a broader context to consider. You are not the first person to write me with the idea of using the hospital tax for EMS. But, legally, it's not practical. It is tough, but possible to dissolve the hospital taxing district. But there is no way to commandeer those funds for EMS. Funds can't be transferred from one taxing district to another, for good reason. There may be other ways to do it, but the most straightforward would be to first dissolve the hospital district and then the EMS district could ask the voters to approve a similar appropriation for them. That would require a vote and the voter would have a choice to agree or disagree. I will be doing a series on the MMH hospital district, so stay tuned. One of the reasons I'm in favor of two-year tax levy funding for EMS instead of the permanent override they are asking for, is this very thing. The landscape for medical services in this county continues to be in such flux that the straight jacket of a permanent tax on anything is going to get a fight from me. Cheers and thanks for reading! —Tomi
I would like to thank Tomi for taking on this educational project. This, and her past articles, should be read by everyone before voting on the EMT proposal. I also think there’s some guilt around voting no, as if you don’t care about people needing care. Often times things seem like great ideas until you check the fine print. Thanks again.
Thanks Janet. Talk about Bingo! You summed up my mission statement beautifully. Thanks for reading. Cheers! —Tomi
Thank you, Tomi, for your new substack. It is informative
and I appreciate the work that goes into writing it. I disagree with you on the EMS issue and will vote yes for a third time because our EMS issues are not just a recent concern but a longstanding problem that has persisted for at least 10 years. The recommendations that the fire commissioners and chiefs have made have been repeatedly postponed by the previous and recent county commissioners, exacerbating the situation, which is why we have an EMS levy before us for the third time. I have also listened to the stories and concerns of many of the EMS workers, such as firefighters and hospital staff. Unfortunately, we lacked leadership on this issue for over ten years, especially over the last 5years when there were other solutions.
I attend many county commissioner and zoning meetings and the City of McCall meetings. I have also written many LTEs for the Star News.
Our EMS, water quality, sewer, road, and bridge infrastructure and housing issues have worsened due to our carcinomatous growth approvals in Valley County. It is crucial that our officials consider the adverse impacts of growth before they approve applications and require the developers/exploiters to pay for their growth impacts. Until this responsible growth management is in place, the taxpayers will see future levies and bonds on the ballot. A sewer bond will be next. The commissioners' and city councils' modi operandi is to approve first and figure out how to solve the adverse impacts of the growth they continue to approve. The taxpayer will always be the fallback for thoughtless decisions and suffer the consequences.
Hi Tomi,
As you pointed out to one of your commenters, “But like everything in this world, there's a broader context to consider.”
You used a sentence from my explanation against temporary levy initiatives and used it in this, out of context. I am happy to engage in spirited debate and dialogue, but doing this type of “journalism” is unfair at best and mean-spirited at worst, and I am having a hard time understanding how it is constructive.
In context, it is important to consider the sentences in front of and behind what I said regarding your argument in favor of temporary funding. I stated, “Watching different agencies take the temporary override approach to funding operations has made me cautious about using a temporary plan for anything other than replacing capital. (Look up Middleton Fire, circa 2010ish). The main reason is that when operations and staffing are mainly paid for with temporary funding, the agencies use “layoffs” as leverage with the voters. We often hear that people don’t want us to create “fearmongering,” which is the last thing I want to do. But, when that is the reality of not getting funded, it is arguably the responsible thing to do. When salaries are tied to temporary funding and people working at the agency have to wait in angst every couple of years, they are less likely to keep working at that agency, and, in my experience watching other Fire/EMS agencies, it creates significant turnover.”
The point was and still is that if an agency relies on temporary funding, then jobs and response would/could be on the chopping block every two years, and agencies would/could be positioned to say vote yes or you get no service, which would/could be framed as “fearmongering.” I know I don’t need to explain this to you, but I would like to clarify to the readers that you are culling specific sentences and using them out of context.
Similarly, in your previous post, “Here’s spit in your eye,” you used the headline, “Fire chiefs say no way to consolidation.” That is a headline that you came up with. We did not say “no way to consolidation,” if you can quote me as saying that, as one of the three fire chiefs, I would love to see it. There is a way to consolidation, and we are slowly working that way at a local and state level, but similar to your argument about the hospital district funding, “there is a broader context to consider.” I’m sure you’d like us to hire a consultant to look at it…. haha, or take our word for it… haha, but the current Idaho statute for consolidation, which was written before I was born, is completely impractical. We are working at a state level to make it more viable. I would encourage you, or anyone who cares about that issue, to reach out to their legislators and encourage them to make consolidation legislation that benefits all local governments. I would love to explain the nuance in the current consolidation code, but I am confident that this blog is for you to vent and not intended to solicit feedback.
If anyone is interested, please feel free to reach out to me at: firechief@mccallfire.com or 208-315-7081
Stay Safe,
Garrett de Jong, McCall Fire Chief
This is so informative! I agree, the steps taken to get this passed follows the model. I also think the "quilt trip" is alive and well here. There are so many grants, gov't assistance for "rural" programs and there is no information on attempts to obtain any of these. Thank you Tomi for relaying your knowledge and experience!
Hi Paula, Valley Countywide EMS here. We appreciate your feedback on the lack of information as it pertains to alternative funding sources. We will update the FAQ page on valleycountywideems.com to include what grants/funding sources have helped bridge the gap in funding. Thank you and feel free to reach out with any questions 208-271-1933.
Thank you, I have looked but cannot find any information on it.
Thank you David, for your compliment and thoughtful post. I do not disagree with anything you said regarding EMS. However, I think a temporary, two-year, renewable levy is in the best interests of the electorate. As you say, government can be mighty unresponsive, especially if funding is in their hands.
As I've mentioned in the posts, there are other forces at work, including an initiative being kicked around the legislature to get the state into the EMS funding game. It's not being taken seriously so far, but I have enough experience with how the legislature operates to know that can turn on a dime. There are just too many variables in play here to make me comfortable approving a permanent, single solution to a problem that can be managed a better way.
We don't need to solve this forever today. We need to work together toward a funding mechanism that is responsive. I don't know exactly what you mean by "other solutions" but I think you know what you are talking about and that they are out there. I do not think EMS has done an effective job of communicating with the public. They gripe that we never come to their meetings or visit them at their firehouses. But it is not the job of the public to come to them. It's the other way around. One of the reasons I started this Substack was to be a platform that will help us quit talking past each other and help us talk with each other. We'll see how that goes. I, for one, am willing to risk another six months of the status quo to see if we can achieve that. Cheers! Tomi
This certainly feels like an invitation! Considering the many requests we've made to engage in dialogue, if your intention was merely to have us visit, we could have coordinated that a while ago.
I wholeheartedly believe that in-person, face-to-face interactions foster more meaningful communication, enhancing our understanding and connection in ways that online exchanges simply cannot match. At this moment, it’s evident that we’re not effectively sharing information even on this platform; and selectively quoting sources is only adding to the confusion and misunderstandings.
You have valuable insights and critiques about our current system, and I can only imagine the potential impact of our collaboration! As a journalist, your expertise must truly shine in the pursuit of deeper understanding. You are positioned perfectly to engage in face-to-face open dialogue with us, bridging the gap and cultivating a more informed perspective! Let’s indeed work together by arranging a time to discuss this matter in greater detail.
For anyone who has questions, we're here for you! Please reach out or provide your contact information, and we will get back to you! Additionally, we will be hosting informational public events to improve communication and clarify information.
Tuesday October 29th - 6:30pm ONLINE FORUM: Chat with us from the comfort of your home!
Wednesday October 30th - 6:30pm at Alpine Playhouse
Saturday November 2nd - 2:00pm at the Roxy Theatre
I'm sorry for the delayed reply Danielle, I just saw this. I'm still trying to figure out Substack's comment structure. Sometimes I get notifications of new ones and sometimes I don't.
I'm afraid you've lost me. What misunderstandings? What confusion? Cheers! —TSG
I am sorry I upset you Garrett. Reading the full text of your comment again, it doesn't change, for me, the context of what I lifted. But my opinion doesn't matter. Before I used the quote, I told you what I objected to in what you said, and you yourself said that you 'framed it wrong'. That suggests to me that you said something that you would re-phrase if you had the chance. That's what I was commenting on. That's the beauty of these exchanges. It's all on the record and the reader can decide. I urge all readers to look at the comments to my second post "If it's good enough..." I had a wide-ranging conversation with Garrett and a couple others in the EMS ranks.
I didn't write the "no way" headline for purposes of the post and I didn't use it in the post itself. It was the headline that appeared over the original news story, which I don't recall anybody from your ranks objecting to at the time it was published. I merely reprinted it so that readers could get the full context of the report.
There are two kinds of journalism, reporting and opinion/analysis. I am engaging in the latter. You can call that "journalism" with your air quotes, but commentary, opinion, satire and analysis was the original form of my profession.
If you will go back to the exchange we had a couple posts ago, we had a quite lively discussion that I thought was extremely productive and informative. If, in the minds of those who read this blog, I am "mean-spirited" and using it to "vent", I will be put out of business pretty quickly. Nobody is going to stick with reading a repetitive, ego-centric personal rant. So you better hope that I prove to be what you say I am because you will soon be rid of me.
There appears to be a major difference in our world views. I trust the electorate to be discerning and wise. I think your metaphor of you guys on a chopping block with the voter holding an axe over your head should be just as mean-spirited and vengeful in the voter's eye as you accuse me of being.
It is a repeating refrain in my posts that there is a lot more emotion involved in the EMS organization than I think is healthy for a public agency. You are a public official. I am a journalist. Journalists and public officials are in an adversarial relationship—and should be. It's necessary to the survival of our republic. The problem with the contemporary iteration of my profession, as I think you yourself noted in our earlier conversation, is that the adversarial relationship between the press and government is turning from a war room into a bedroom. That's where I would put my air quote around "journalism". It's no longer a matter of government vs the people's watchdog. It's a matter of figuring out who's sleeping with whom in an ideological sense.
I made a really big deal in the first few posts that I would not be balanced, if there even is such a thing. I've lived up to the pledge that I would champion and give voice to people who are not being heard because they are intimidated. You can challenge my interpretation of the facts. Please, please do. You can even call me names, I'm no stranger to that either. But how is that going to get us anywhere?
I am grateful for this exchange. I didn't post your full response because it was in the comments section of this blog and I didn't think I needed to. You will note that I posted the full text of our newspaper report on the consolidation because it was a while ago and I wanted to refresh my readers' memories. But I just learned from you that if I am going to lift a quote from a comment exchange, I should link to it. I am resolved to do that in the future. Thank you for that. I'm really new to this social media game, so I kinda feel like a cow on ice.
Buckle up Garrett. If you think I'm in this to be mean-spirited and vent, you didn't read the opinion page of the newspaper we ran. This is just an extension of it on a much more responsive platform. I hope you and anybody else with strong opinions and passion, or even wobbly ones that we can help perfect through an open exchange of ideas, find a home here. That is my mission.
With warmth and great respect, Tomi
Hi Tomi,
Thank you for your reply. I am sorry that you have been yelled at, and I cannot begin to understand the life of a small-town journalist. I appreciate your and Tom's contributions to our community more than you know, and I respect the role that the media plays.
I may be clumsy with my words and will try a final time to clarify. You posed a question: why not do a temporary levy? I was offering up one of my concerns. I agree with so much of what you say and am familiar with bad actors in the form of elected officials, agency heads, etc., and from my perspective, a temporary levy could give agencies leverage to be manipulative with the threat of layoffs or service reductions. I offered up two instances where this was the case, and even in the case of Cascade School District, their first bullet point under “why this levy is important” is "keeping our teachers.”
https://www.cascadeschools.org/page/supplemental-levy
It is not explained, and I don’t know how accurate it is. Perhaps you would not be concerned about an agency relying on temporary funding, which is fair. From my perspective, it is a big deal to me, and I would hate to see an agency set up like that. Perhaps you would like to see a temporary override once, a couple of times, and then a permanent levy established. Honestly, I don’t know your entire position, so it is hard to understand how it would work or what your vision looks like. I was trying to give you the most salient reasons that temporary funding doesn’t appeal to me based on watching it across the state.
You are an incredible writer, and I have always enjoyed reading your work and Tom’s. I am not a professional writer and feel like I am playing a game of pickup basketball with a Hall of Famer from the NBA. In this instance, your Substack, you seem to be taking a very critical view with little to no solutions other than the temporary levy. I am sure that from the Grote perspective, which is enormously broad and experienced, these initiatives seem to form patterns, and some of the moves seem silly. None of the people involved have the breadth of experience that you do. I can assure you that none of us have a “book” or education on orchestrating a levy initiative.
You argued in this comment thread that “I do not think EMS has done an effective job of communicating with the public. They gripe that we never come to their meetings or visit them at their firehouses. But it is not the job of the public to come to them. It's the other way around.”
If that is your position, yet you make fun of using a communication professional, “Even with the fancy $13,300 PR consultant the taxing district hired”, using consultants “somebody had the bright idea (not) to pay a consultant $58,000”, and using ad space in our only local newspaper “Voters are exposed to a parade of newspaper ads, paid for with their tax dollars,” how would you recommend that we effectively communicate with the public? What does good look like? I am genuinely interested in being better in my role and meeting the expectations of our whole community. How do we create a new model to educate and help people feel knowledgeable, regardless of how they vote, when they fill out their ballot?
Very Respectfully, Garrett de Jong
Thank you for the kind words, Garrett. Yes, I would like to see a temporary levy system given a try. I appreciate your fears and I did read the links to the Middleton experience, which didn't give much in-depth information. I examined your arguments carefully as I do all input from people I hold in high regard. I suspect that there was a lot more to what was going on in Middleton than was the fault of a temporary levy structure. At any rate, there isn't time now to flush that out. Let's see what the voters think Nov. 5th. If your permanent tax passes, then you have your funding for "many, many years" and game over (to use your basketball reference).
But if it doesn't, then I don't think you have much choice but to come back with the temporary option. I think trying for a permanent tax again would be irresponsible.
As for your reference to the Cascade levy. They have voted to "keep their teachers" time and time again, so what's your point? Same in Meadows Valley. I implore you to trust the electorate and not think of your bosses as executioners waiting to chop your head off, a phrase you have used a couple times in our exchanges.
You don't have to be a great writer to be an effective communicator, Garrett. You only need to think more before you react. A certain amount of emotion is to be admired in a man in your position. And, believe me, I do appreciate that aspect of your personality. But after a lifetime of learning at Tom's knee, I am convinced that emotion is a very poor mechanism on which to build an argument.
The next post, which will drop over the weekend, will talk about your communications strategy. Fair warning: it's going to be extremely critical, but it's not an opinion I haven't expressed to you directly in our earlier exchanges, so it shouldn't come as a surprise. Some, but not all, of your questions on that topic will be answered there.
The final post will simply be a summary of all that I have covered in this series so that my readers can see all their alternatives. I won't be breaking any new ground. Remember, my mission is to send voters to the polls confident in their decision. I don't care which conclusion they come to. If the levy passes, I will be just fine with it because I know that my readers made their choice based on a wide menu of viewpoints. If I had anything to do with giving them more perspectives than just yours, mission accomplished.
If the levy fails, I plan to write a detailed submission to you and your board giving you my thoughts on what the vote taught us and suggesting ways that you can alter your thinking to be more in tune with the electorate's. At this stage of the game, I don't know what more we can say to each other that isn't ground we haven't already covered. But I will be delighted to keep this dialogue going all the way up to election day if you think that will be useful. Keep in mind that this is business, it's not personal and it will never get personal at least on my side. Journalists don't sugar-coat because it's our job to sort through wordy explanations and pick out the highlights. You might not agree with what pops for me, but know that I don't ever write to vent or be vengeful. I really don't think of people's feelings at all when I write, to be honest. That's not what readers want of me.
I also want to remind you and your team that my Tom has been an eye-witness to many of the horrors they have experienced themselves. I wasn't on what we call the "police beat" but he was for many years before we could afford to hire a reporter. He has seen blown apart faces, watched bodies being pulled out of the lake and walked the devastation of propane explosions knowing that little children had been blown to bits. I have seen all that through his eyes and through our newspaper reporting. We know what EMS/fire does. We know your value and we know first hand what your challenges are. We could not in good conscience support a temporary tax if we didn't wholly believe that it is a reliable solution to your funding gap. We came to that opinion knowing intimately who you are and what you do. Please remember that we are half on the same side. EMS needs more funding. The other half is how and how much.
I look forward to getting a verdict Nov. 5th so we can see what direction this conversation needs to go, if it even needs to continue at all. Until then, please know that we have another important goal in common. We both want a logical, practical and businesslike approach to EMS/fire. That's a mighty strong foundation on which to build the future. Agree? Cheers! Tomi
Hi Tomi,
Thank you for all of this. I appreciate your willingness to share your thoughts if the levy fails, and I sincerely appreciate your perspective. Tom has certainly been involved in some seriously heartbreaking muck, and I understand its challenges, particularly when living in a small community.
As you rightly stated, Tomi, our shared goal is to approach EMS/fire services in a logical, practical, and businesslike manner. This strong foundation is the essence of teamwork, and if our community can unite under this goal, we can achieve significant progress. I appreciate your role in facilitating this exchange and believe it will enhance the livability of our community.
Upward and Onward, Garrett de Jong