The special district election on May 2 has both consequences and benefits for our community. These boards oversee fire protection and emergency medical services, our water and wastewater as well as the rec center.

In other words our lives depend on them. So it is crucial people start paying attention to who is running for these boards and what their agendas are. Many have hidden agendas. These agendas are often quite expensive and have some kind of grudge or personal benefit behind them like an indoor sports facility and ice rink or perhaps not standing up to a liquor store owner when we need to build a new fire station.

For the residents of the Foothills Fire Protection District, you have an opportunity to not just gain a new state-of-the-art fire station at no cost, you also have an opportunity to conduct a national search for a fire service leader to serve as chief, but the current board members and candidates seem to be working overtime on keeping the district in the dark ages, so to speak.

The fire station at Rainbow Hills is basically a glorified Tuff Shed and double wide trailer. In its place, the developer of the Evergreen Gateway project has offered to donate a new station that will offer a much better facility. This could also allow the current facility to be deconstructed instead of torn down and moved to another parcel of land in the Lookout Mountain or Mount Vernon area to replace the other aging outdated facility well you know besides Idledale and Grapevine (below exit 256 near Riva Chase) Tuff Shed.

Foothills also seems to want to go in house to hire an unqualified person to be chief because they don’t want a culture shock. Foothills has needed a culture shock since I left in 2002 to be the county fire chief in Las Cruces, New Mexico. With that culture shock and a new facility, they could attract top talent, but the board members in charge now seem to prefer a dictatorship and fiefdom.

I encourage the residents of all special districts to participate by attending the forums and reading the information that will be in the next few issues of the Courier. Find time to ask the hard questions and press for answers. It is not just the tax dollars at work but your life and property at risk.

Nate Marshall, Evergreen