Fire 17, Brinnon Fire fight about merger

Matt Baide | Jan 12, 20230

Mason County Fire District 17 based in Lilliwaup, and Brinnon Fire appear to be at odds with each other over a recent proposal for the two fire districts to merge.

According to a Dec. 31 letter to the community, Brinnon Fire Chief Tim Manly submitted a merger proposal for the two districts to “streamline resources and provide even better patient services. A merger would have increased Mason County levy rates proportional to Jefferson County residents.”

The two fire districts had been working with each other as mutual aid partners.

“We were backing each other up as people would do, but then as you read my letter, they formally asked us to start helping them and at one point in time, we were the only ones responding because they had gotten sick and people were on vacation,” Manly told the Journal in a phone interview. “We were the only agency responding for a while there, we were helping them out. COVID came into play.”

According to Manly, they spoke with each of the Fire District 17 commissioners separately about a merger and all were interested in the idea, and Manly came and spoke at the September commissioner meeting about the proposal. The Fire 17 commissioners then went to a Brinnon Fire meeting a couple of weeks later.

“We sat down and looked at it and we told them at that point that we would let them know,” Fire 17 commissioner Pat O’Brien told the Journal. “We came back and at our next open meeting, which was all recorded and everything, everybody, all the firefighters came, everybody came and they all said we don’t want to work with Brinnon. There were issues with what would happen when they would show up on one of our calls. We didn’t feel they were respecting our personnel correctly, lots of issues and so we sent them a letter that said, you’ve been a great help to us, we still want mutual aid when it’s required, but we’re not going to merge and we want you to quit coming to every one of our calls because they were generating revenue by doing that. They took offense to that and instead of attacking the commissioners who signed the gosh darned letter, they attacked her (Sunflower Miles) and our chief (Nadine Brown), who are women. So apparently they have an issue with women in Brinnon.”

Fire District 17 Captain Sunflower Miles said there is something to be said about men who bully, prey on and attack women.

“It’s the kind of personality that we’re dealing with,” Miles told the Journal.

Chief Brown sent a letter to Brinnon Fire on Nov. 3, stating the staff thanks Brinnon Fire for the assistance and coverage provided during a time of need, but they are happy to announce “we have come to a point that Mason 17 no longer needs constant assistance or transports for our medical or service calls except those listed or when toned for mutual aid as per the attached document.”

Chief Manly received a letter from MACECOM on Nov. 9 requesting Brinnon Fire be removed from Active911 and not be automatically dispatched in their system for EMS calls anymore, according to his letter to the community.

Fire 17 accused Brinnon Fire of bullying but declined to comment on the specifics of the bullying.

District 17 commissioner O’Brien said among the reasons for not merging, one of the biggest was the tax rate.

“We have the lowest tax rate for fire and EMS in the state at our little district here at Colony Surf,” O’Brien said. “We’ve got a nice station, we’ve got all the people volunteering. We have no paid help. The only paid person we have is a secretary and she gets $300 a month or something. Everybody else is volunteers and Brinnon has the highest tax rate that you’re allowed to have. If we merge with them, we would have to get our constituents to agree to go to their tax rate because they have to match. That’s what just happened down with Cushman and Hoodsport. Hoodsport got buffaloed into thinking that they were going to get something else and they voted the tax thing in and it surprised everybody.

“How they run their department up there is of no interest to me or I think anybody else here. We want to do the best job we can for our constituents,” O’Brien said. “They’ve now been spreading untruths that we can’t respond, we don’t have enough personnel. We have all the personnel we need.”

Miles said she wanted to make clear that Fire 17’s issues are not with Jefferson Fire District 4, they are having issues with only three members.

“When we shot down, as Manly puts it, when we voted down the merger, it was we are not opposed to merging with anybody. If that is best for our communities, we will absolutely consider that. We will not merge with Chief Manly, very specifically. He has created tremendous upset by being dismissive, disrespectful to my crews, particularly disrespectful to me,” Miles said. “I’m not sure what’s up with that because we’ve never had an issue. The only thing I can think of is maybe because I’m female and my education is higher than his, maybe that’s threatening to him. I honestly don’t know, I’m only speculating, but he bad-mouths me, he’s very unprofessional. I’ve got notes and notes because nurses document, they are my own private journals. That is what it came down to and the reason why we don’t want to work with him is we don’t trust him. He’s not very honest, we’ve all caught him in lies here or there.”