NEWS-TIMES WHIDBEY
SATURDAY, JANUARY 28, 2012 | Vol. 113, No. 8 | WWW.WHIDBEYNEWSTIMES.COM | 75¢
Volunteer firefighter tradition strained by modern island living By JUSTIN BURNETT
SEE FIRE, A7
Staff reporter
Justin Burnett / Whidbey News-Times
A Central Whidbey Fire and Rescue firefighter douses the flames of a burning Coupeville home in 2011. The district is running a levy lid lift this month in hopes of addressing a decline in volunteer levels.
First of a series tied to levy This is the first story of a three-part series looking at declining volunteer levels at Central Whidbey Fire and Rescue. The issue is beginning to adversely affect the department’s performance with increased response times. The district is hoping to address the issue with a 34-cent levy-lid increase on the Feb. 14 special election ballot. Estimated to garner an additional $510,000 a year, the money would fund recruitment efforts and the
maintenance of existing apparatus. If passed, homeowners would pay about $1.34 per $1,000 of assessed valuation in 2012. For a $300,000 home, that tabs out to $33.50 per month or $402 annually. Part two of the series is scheduled to run Wednesday and include an in-depth look at two of today’s new volunteers: Brad Sherman and Bob Moore. The story will focus on who they are and why they serve.
The Barefoot Bandit insulted the Island County sheriff, the prosecutor and members of the media in private while he publicly professed remorse and humility for his high-profile crime spree. The revelations made by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in a sentencing memorandum appeared to have some effect on the sentence 20-year-old Colton HarrisMoore received from a judge in federal court Friday, though his defense team tried to minimize the damage by releasing other emails that showed HarrisMoore as contrite and modest. The federal judge sentenced Harris-Moore to 6 1/2 years in prison for seven felony charges connected to his crime spree that included a bank burglary and airplane theft. Under the plea bargain, the sentence will run concurrently with (at the same time as) the slightly longer sentence he received last month in Island County Superior Court. But it’s still bad news for Harris-Moore, since he’ll be able to earn much less “good time� in the federal system. Island County Superior Court Judge Vickie Churchill sentenced HarrisMoore to seven years and three months in prison. Yet the judge said this week she may have sentenced HarrisMoore differently if she had known about the emails and phone calls, which he
Colton Harris-Moore made both before and after the sentencing hearing in Island County. “I am dismayed to learn the recent news about Colton Harris-Moore and his ridicule of the prosecutors and sheriff who were doing their job to protect the public,� Churchill said in a statement. “Likewise, I am dismayed to hear that Mr. Harris-Moore has allegedly bragged about his exploits. Naturally, this would have been important information to have when he was sentenced and would have affected his sentence. “The information that I had was that Mr. HarrisMoore was truly contrite for the fear and for the property damage he caused his victims. His willingness to totally repay his victims for their monetary damage by SEE BAREFOOT, A4
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Barefoot Bandit’s insults considered in federal sentence By JESSIE STENSLAND
Staff reporter
So you want to be a firefighter, huh? Great, here’s a helmet and a slicker. Sorry we don’t have money for boots. The next time you hear the sirens go off, come on down and we’ll have some fun. More or less, that was the induction an enthusiastic 29-year-old Stan Anderson recevied more than 45 years ago when he was first received as a Coupeville volunteer firefighter. It was a pretty standard welcome aboard for new recruits in the mid-1960s, and to the young dentist and aspiring fireman, it sounded pretty good. Riding around on the backs of fire engines, battling raging infernos and saving lives; it was real hero stuff. “I had a little kid’s dream,� Anderson said. At the time, two fire departments called Coupeville home and both were manned entirely by volunteers. Anderson said, in a big way, it felt like he had become part of a larger family, a brotherhood of self-sacrificing people who would drop what they were doing at a moment’s notice to help a neighbor in need. Lacking the tax base to fund a full-time paid staff, volunteers have long served as the backbone of small community fire departments. It’s a proven model and one that’s been relied upon for generations across the country. But something is happening.
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