Firefighters, police find the island too expensive, head across the bridge to live.
Dollars to Dwell: This is the second in a multi-part series on curent affordable housing issues on Bainbridge Island.
Saturday: Donated land could accommodate subsidized homes.
Firefighter Dag Liljequist has made a career out of saving Bainbridge homes from roaring fires.
Finding a home of his own has proven a tougher task.
“I’ve waited and waited and waited to find something that I could possibly buy,” said Liljequist, who also serves as a Bainbridge Island Fire Department emergency medical technician. “I make a good salary and I’m happy with it, but everything here is out of reach.
“I can’t afford to live here.”
Liljequist, an island native who grew up at Fletcher Bay, will likely join more than half of the island’s emergency responders in more affordable digs off-island.
Three out of four fire department EMTs and two-thirds of the police force live on the Kitsap Peninsula, commuting from as far away as Bremerton and Port Orchard.
The growing exodus threatens the island’s safety, said interim fire chief Glen Tyrrell, as fewer emergency responders can leap from their beds or dinner tables to lend a hand.
“I can’t tell you the scope of what this means for us, but it’s huge,” said Tyrrell, a retired state trooper and former fire commissioner. “In our business, every minute counts.”
It typically takes 30 minutes for Bainbridge police officer Dale Johnson to commute from his Silverdale home. When the bridge is jammed with traffic and the highway’s clogged, the drive can sometimes hit an 60 minutes.
It wasn’t always such a haul for the 16-year Bainbridge Island Police Department veteran.
“I was born in Winslow clinic and grew up in a farmhouse on Rolling Bay,” said Johnson, who serves as the Bainbridge Island Police Department’s K-9 specialist. “I lived here all my life and had a small piece of land and a mobile home on High School Road.”
Johnson married and his household quickly grew to four people, necessitating a new residence larger than his single-wide mobile home.
“We tried to get something on the island, but just couldn’t come up with the money,” he said.
Bainbridge police salaries are around $50,000, which is enough to qualify for a loan-assisted home purchase of around $174,000, according to a city study on local housing needs.
Firefighters, who typically make just a little less than their police counterparts, can hope to buy a house priced in the $170,000 range.
But with median home prices in the mid-six figures, fewer firefighters and police officers dream of owning a home on the island they have sworn to protect.
“I had a real estate agent talk to me in 2004 about affordable housing,” said Police Chief Matt Haney. “He was talking to me about a home priced $330,000 and said ‘hey, your police should look at this!’ I said ‘some of my guys make around $55,000 and you’re talking about $330,000?’ How does that compute?’”
“I don’t know what the prices are like now, but I’m glad I bought my house years ago.”
Most in his department weren’t so fortunate. Only eight out of 23 officers live on Bainbridge.
“To me, it’s great if they live on the island, but it’s just not an option,” Haney said, adding that many of his officers commute from North Kitsap, and some from as far away as Seabeck and Port Orchard.
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Connected to the rest of the world via bridge and ferry, some fear that a large-scale crisis could cut off most of the island’s emergency responders when Bainbridge needs them most.
“Think about if we have a situation here where (State Route) 305 grinds to a halt or if there’s an earthquake and the bridge goes out,” said Wini Jones, who plans to develop affordable housing for emergency responders and other public employees on an eight-acre property she owns.
The fire department has enough staff on duty at one time to handle the usual emergencies that come up. But Tyrrell is wary of the recent sharp rise in aid calls, which have increased over 40 percent in the last seven years, and occasions when two serious calls come in at the same time.
“We’re an organization that doesn’t have an abundance of staff,” he said. “If we have a second incident of any kind, having (backup) living on the island who can respond is important. It means we’ll have delays, but they won’t be too long. But having the closest medic in Silverdale, that’s a really long (wait).”
Jones believes that failing to provide affordable housing for those who keep the island safe reflects poorly on the community’s values.
“The community needs to be responsible enough to look after the people who look after us,” she said.
Once emergency responders find off-island homes, it’s tempting for them to look after their new communities rather than Bainbridge.
“I’d be a liar if I said it didn’t thing about that,” said Liljequist, who has rented for years on the island but plans to buy in North Kitsap, where the median home price is $340,000. “I owe a lot to this department, and it’s my home, but I don’t know anymore if I can stay here forever.”
The police department lost four officers last year to other law enforcement agencies. Some resigning officers cited the desire for more pay or career advancement, while others mentioned the high price of island housing and long commutes, Haney said.
While the island’s workforce increasingly trades blue collars for white ones, other traditional community safety nets have begun to fray.
Firefighters say that the shrinking middle class has reduced their pool of committed volunteers, on which the fire department largely depends.
“The driving force used to be blue collar, the people in the community that make things work and keep the city running,” said Liljequist, a former carpenter and BIFD volunteer. “That really benefited fire services when you had people that did construction, or were mechanics or worked with heavy equipment. Our bodies are our tools, so it really helps to have people that work with their hands.”
Today’s would-be volunteers busy their hands with legal documents, stethoscopes and on mouse pads. They also don’t work on the island as much, with the 9 to 5 day spent in Seattle and away from island emergencies. The department’s required volunteer training – which ranges beyond 100 hours during the initial gamut of classes – can also dissuade some busy professionals.
“That’s absolutely something we’re dealing with,” agreed Tyrrell. “Your typical volunteer was 20 to 30 years old and worked here on the island. That group’s not here anymore.”
Having emergency responders close by and who are a familiar with the island – its geography and people – has many payoffs, said Johnson, who specializes in drug enforcement, serves on the BIPD’s marine unit and is a member of the county SWAT team.
“I lived here all my life so I know a lot of people, I know their families,” he said. “People open up more when they’re familiar with a person and know you’re from the area. It benefits the force.”
And it benefits the island, said Liljequist, who takes his radio pager with him when he goes home. He takes every aid call he hears crackling over the line personally. A house fire on Miller Road could be an old classmate’s. The heart attack emergency on Sunrise Drive might be one of his dad’s sailing buddies.
“In other fire departments, you drop your gear when you go home,” said Liljequist. “But the radio system’s always on my hip. It’s not mandatory….but growing up here, I feel like Bainbridge is my home and I like knowing I can help.”
