YAKIMA--Local firefighters are not fans of cutting more firefighters.
"As of right now, we are a bare minimum fire department so further cuts are just not in the books," said Ken Johnston from the Yakima Firefighters local IAFF 469.
This is the fire unions response to city leaders looking into making a 10 percent cut from the fire department.
At yesterday's study session, fire chief Aaron Markham showed what that would look like.
Right now, the city is looking at cutting 12 firefighters which is projected to save the city around 1.7 million dollars.
The fire department currently has 23 firefighters available daily through all their stations combined and with these cuts, that number would decrease down to 20.
With less fire fighters available that means the fire department will have to close station 92 out in west valley and that is going to impact response times for people who live in this area and need immediate help.
With the west valley station closing, the fire department says others will now have to cover that area.
According to a map from the fire department, station 93 is the closest at about three and a half miles away.
But if they aren't available station 94 would have to go and they are almost four miles away.
The fire union tells us this could add at least another four to five minutes to response times.
It may not sound like much, but the union tells us in a structure fire, it doubles in size every 30 seconds meaning more damage is being done.
"You're drastically changing response time to that area," Johnston said.
People living in west valley are not happy about this saying it doesn't make sense to remove firefighters from an area seeing more people move into.
"Your proposal to shut down a city fire station is going to cost lives and property as well as put our firefighters at risk," said a local resident from West Valley.
City council is looking into short and long-term options for funding, one of them being creating a regional fire authority which would replace the fire department with a fire district.
That would remove it from the city's general fund but mean more taxes would fund that fire district.
City council is going to discuss opening a study on this at their next meeting.