Lane County Commissioners voted unanimously to merge the Pleasant Hill and Goshen fire districts at a County Commission meeting June 6. The combined district will also extend protection to some areas outside the current districts’ boundaries, including Lane Community College.

The fire districts, both established in the 1960s, have worked closely together since 2013 and respond to calls in each others’ districts. The district leaders said a formal merger would let the district be more cost effective, hire more paid staff, and replace aging facilities and equipment in an area that covers nearly 5,500 residents and sees an 8% increase in calls for service each year.

“The reality for us is we don’t actually have enough staffing,” Andrew Smith, fire chief of both districts said at a town hall last year. He said this means that without this tax increase, as volunteerism declines the fire authority will have to choose between leaving Pleasant Hill unstaffed at night or splitting staff between the stations, either of which would hurt the fire authority’s ability to respond to overlapping calls or calls that are big enough to require more than one crew.

“Your next available help is coming from much much further away or it’s not coming,” Smith said. “It may be so bad that it’s actually not available to come for a long enough period of time that you’re waiting for just the ambulance to come from the city.”

The Pleasant Hill fire district currently collects the lowest tax rate of any fire district in Lane County. The combined district would increase taxes for both areas, with an average Pleasant Hill homeowner paying $319 more annually and an average Goshen homeowner paying $114 more annually. 

This rate increase means the merger will have to be approved by majorities of voters in both districts in the November election.

Leaders from the fire districts and residents of the area spoke in favor of the merger at the meeting.

“Consolidating our resources will be a benefit to the community,” Todd Anderson, president of the Pleasant Hill Fire District, said. He said the merger would let them rebuild the Pleasant Hill fire station and staff it 24-hours. The current fire station doesn’t have living quarters and the district rents an apartment for firefighters to stay after hours.

“What [the merger] would do is allow much better service to both communities, have overlapping calls be handled in a much more expedient way, and overall give the taxpayers of the community a better district,” Anderson said.

Smith said when the districts were created in the 1960s, they received less than 100 calls per year. “We did that in the month of May,” he said. “Our fire district is changing. Our demand is changing. And the threat in our community is changing. This effort to form a new fire district is the most realistic effort to encompass all of our challenges in one solution.”

Smith said that when the districts were founded, they were run primarily by volunteers responding to this lower volume of calls and putting out fires for their neighbors. He said the merger and the associated tax increase reflects how fire districts have changed, both because of a greater demand for calls and a move toward career firefighters.

The two districts received 1,163 calls in 2021.

Jake Shaffren owns land near LCC, which is in between the Eugene-Springfield and Goshen fire districts, and spoke in favor of the district’s expansion to include his property.

“I don’t think I need to educate anyone in this room about the dangers, nor the realities of wildfire, and every year it seems to get just a little bit closer to home,” Shaffren said. “There are literally homes and families with children whose house could go up in flames, they could call 911 and [dispatchers could] say, ‘Sorry no one’s coming.’”
Anne Marie Levis, a business owner who lives in Goshen, praised the plan for raising taxes at a consistent rate, unlike many fire districts that supplement a base rate with a renewable levy.

“Yes it will raise taxes, but it will also be reasonable about this, and ensure that these services will go on forever,” Levis said.