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More than a year and a half after its contract with the Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation ended, the Smith River Fire Protection District says it will cease providing fire and emergency medical services to tribal trust property, including Lucky 7 Casino and some tribal housing, starting April 25.

Friday's announcement comes as negotiations between the parties — in particular, over how much the tribe should pay the district for its services — have broken down.

According to the Smith River Fire Protection District, the tribe’s contribution for services, roughly $6,500 annually, was about a tenth of what it ought to be. The Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation, on the other hand, says the Smith River Fire Protection District is subjecting the tribe, and only the tribe, to a new methodology.

“We’re not part of the county assessment so we don’t have a value on a piece of property that has been put there by the county,” Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation Executive Director Troy Ralstin told the Wild Rivers Outpost on Monday. “(The SRFPD) don’t want to do a typical assessment. They want a special consideration and an amount.”

There are about 83 acres of trust land belonging to the Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation and held by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs.

According to Ralstin, the tribe also owns fee lands, which it does pay taxes to the county on.

As many as 50 houses could be without fire suppression and emergency medical service if the tribe and fire district can’t resolve their differences, according to Ralstin.

The Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation has had a cooperative agreement with the Smith River Fire Protection District for nearly 20 years and has “increased the amount provided to the district to reflect the increased valuations of tribal lands,” according to a tribal news release posted on Facebook in response to the fire protection district’s announcement.

In May 2020, the tribe received a request to pay $150,000 to the SRFPD — roughly 20 times greater than its previous payments, according to the news release. The SRFPD also presented the tribe with a list of other expenses, including $250,000 to convert the former Ray’s Food Place in Smith River to a new fire station.

That $150,000 request was in the form of a bill the fire protection district sent the tribe roughly nine months after their agreement expired, said Geoff Antill, SRFPD’s project administrator. This bill was for services the district had provided to the tribe since the 2018-19 contract lapsed, which included testing fire hydrants and inspecting commercial properties, he said, and “was basically ignored.”

The Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation then sent a representative to work with the Smith River Fire Protection District in July, Antill said. But between July and September, there was no contact with the tribe, he said.

“Finally, out of desperation, we wrote a letter to the tribe and said we were going to cease responding to the casino and fuel mart immediately,” Antill said. “That kind of got their attention for a few days. Then we were invited to come to speak to Tribal Council in October, which we did do and we made a presentation.”

At that presentation, Antill said, potential future expenses were discussed to keep the district’s facilities and equipment up to date. This included the need for a headquarters with the ability to house firefighters, he said. The dollar figure the Fire Protection District gave to the tribe was between $225,000 and $250,000, Antill said.

“We were kind of describing, ‘if the tribe and fire district were in partnership, we might be thinking ahead to these things,’” he said. “We’re not counting on the tribe’s help to do the Ray’s project. However, if the tribe wanted to improve our response times, one way to do that is to have some live-in firefighters.”

According to Antill, the SRFPD had told the tribe what it could cost to add overnight quarters to the district’s headquarters.

“I think that’s where $250,000 came from,” he said. “When we met with Tribal Council, we said, ‘we presented you with a bill for $150,000 that covers these things. If we were really looking down the road, it might be something like $450,000.’ You can imagine how well that went over.”

When contract negotiations between the two parties began at the beginning of 2019, Antill said there was some discussion about a five-year contract instead of an annual agreement.

During those negotiations, the fire protection district’s legal counsel had raised the issue of liability, which prompted more digging into how the tribe’s contribution calculation was determined, Antill said.

According to him, based on the Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation’s calculation about what their properties are worth, the Smith River Fire Protection District determined that the tribe should be contributing about $60,000 for services instead of $6,500. He said he had anticipated further discussion with the tribe over which properties should be covered and which don’t have to be, but those conversations didn’t happen.

In January, Antill said, SRFPD representatives offered to serve the tribe’s residential properties even if it doesn’t serve the Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation’s commercial properties. The Tribal Council accepted that offer, he said, but haven’t come back for further discussions.

“The bottomline is Facebook is not where this should be played out,” Antill said in response to the dueling announcements posted Friday. “We need to be in face to face meetings at least once a week, if not twice a week, until this gets resolved. We’re just not getting any traction with this idea.”

According to Ralstin, the Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation’s payment to the Smith River Fire Protection District is determined by comparing the county’s assessment of a residential or commercial property to its internal assessment of the value of that property. However, he said, the fire protection district wants to treat the tribe differently.

“The way it works here in the county is that the county does an assessment and they charge a percent — 1 percent — on all properties. Smith River Fire, therefore, gets a percentage of that 1 percent,” Ralstin said. “What we’re doing is we are assessing our properties at the high rate or regular rate based on construction or square footage and then assessing what we owe them based on the same rate they’re getting from the county. We feel that’s the most fair and equitable way to do this.”

According to Ralstin, the $150,000 bill the Fire Protection District sent to the tribe was an arbitrary amount. Tribal representatives felt the requested amount was unfair.

“You’re not asking the other large commercial properties even in the county to pay a larger share based upon a profitability number or something,” Ralstin said. “You’re asking us to because of the nature of our properties.”

According to the Tolowa Dee-ni' Nation's Friday news release, the tribe's most recent counter proposal included an annual payment of $11,101, which is equitable to what the Smith River Fire District would receive from the tribe were its properties subject to taxation.

The tribe had also proposed a back payment of $18,750 to the fire district for services it had provided between July 2019 and December 2020.

Ralstin noted that for many tribal members, the Smith River Fire Protection District would be their first call for fire protection services. The district would also offer basic life support until Del Norte Ambulance could show up, he said.

Ralstin said the tribe will continue to negotiate with the district to come to a resolution.

"We, operating as trustees dealing with the federal government, get treated differently," he said. "We're one of the larger employers in the county with over 200 employees. Most of them are not tribal. We feel we're bringing a lot to the table but are being treated differently and that's not fair."

The Smith River Fire Protection District also hopes to find a resolution and continue to provide services to tribal properties, Antill said.

When asked how the fire district would respond to a request for service from a Tolowa Dee-ni' Nation member after April 25 if a resolution isn't found, Antill said dispatch may refer them to another department.

"It's up to that department to either accept or decline the call," he said. "They have to do that based on consultation with their own legal counsel. Every district has their own legal counsel. We're working with what our counsel is telling us."

 

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