Fire board member responds

EDITOR,
I have read several opinions lately that voters have said no to a new Scotts Valley fire station. As a director of the Scotts Valley Fire Protection District, I was involved with two past attempts to pass election measures to add fees to property taxes to fund the construction of a new fire station, which did not receive the two-thirds vote as required by law.
In fact, Measure F received 65.2 percent voter approval, which in most political races would be a landslide victory, albeit short of the two-thirds required by law to pass the tax increase.
The message I received from a lot of citizens was that they did not want their property taxes increased. The message was not that they were against the new fire station — most understood the need for faster response times to a larger portion of the district.
The funds the present fire board members are looking at are grant funds, $210 million the U.S. Congress has approved for fire station construction projects only. Please understand that these grant funds will be spent somewhere, and I, for one, would prefer that they be spent in our community.
As a board member, I would be remiss in my duties if I did not at least try to use some of these funds to improve fire services necessary for the whole district.
Arthur Smith, Scotts Valley