Who Should Pay for City Fire Protection?
A debate over whether Tacoma’s waterfront industrial interests should fund their own fire safety apparatus.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Let the interests on the waterfront that need a fireboat furnish it to the city and then let the city maintain it. That will cost $20,000 a year, said Councilman Armstrong last night. There is the Northern Pacific which pays no taxes to the city for its waterfront and in addition to that it has its own waterworks and supplies all the boats that come in here with water and the city gets nothing out of that. I am for a fireboat, but these interests should build it and then let the city run it. This statement by Armstrong, with objections to the limitation of the plans to a steel hull, caused the fireboat scheme to be sent back to the fire and water committee again last night. Sentiment is growing that the waterfront, which pays no taxes to the city, should build its own fireboat if the city is willing to bear the expense of running it after it is built.
“Sentiment is growing that the waterfront which pays no taxes to the city, should build its own fireboat if the city is willing to bear the expense of running it after it is built.”
The tension between private waterfront industrial wealth and public tax responsibility remains a persistent theme in Tacoma. Much like the 1909 struggle over fireboat funding, modern debates often center on how major corporate landowners contribute to (or evade) the civic infrastructure they benefit from.
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