On August 4, Everett voters will decide whether to raise the property tax rate that funds the city's emergency medical services. The City Council voted on April 22 to place the levy lid lift on the primary election ballot.

The proposal would lift the EMS levy rate from its current $0.36 per $1,000 of assessed property value back up to $0.50 per $1,000. For the owner of a home assessed at the city's 2026 average of $571,000, that's an increase of roughly $7 a month, or about $80 a year.

If $0.50 sounds familiar, it should. Everett voters first approved a permanent EMS levy at that rate back in 2000, and they've twice voted to restore it since, in 2010 and again in 2018.

The rate keeps drifting down because of how Washington property taxes work. State law caps the growth of a city's total property tax revenue at 1 percent per year, regardless of how much assessed property values rise. As Everett has grown, the levy rate has had to shrink to stay under that cap. A lid lift is the mechanism cities use to reset it.

According to the city, the EMS fund currently pays for about 78 positions inside the Everett Fire Department. In a statement to the council, Fire Chief Dave DeMarco said the department is handling more calls now than it was in 2018, while labor and supply costs have risen substantially. He told councilmembers the fund has stayed solvent through that growth and through the pandemic, but that restoring the rate is necessary to keep up with demand.