King County Medic One renewal levy passing overwhelmingly with 80%+ in favor

King Coun­ty vot­ers have giv­en a big thumbs up to Medic One, approv­ing a levy that renews fund­ing for emer­gency med­ical response ser­vices for sev­er­al more years and ensur­ing that King Coun­ty remains the best place in the world to be in the very unfor­tu­nate event of a heart attack (or car­diac arrest, to use the sci­en­tif­ic term).

In ini­tial returns, the levy was doing extreme­ly well, with 83.26% of vot­ers in sup­port. Only 16.74% were opposed. The levy need­ed a super­ma­jor­i­ty to pass (at least six­ty per­cent). It’s get­ting that, and then some.

The levy is still short of the min­i­mum vote thresh­old for pas­sage, but by the time the elec­tion is cer­ti­fied, it ought to be over that hur­dle. Levies like King Coun­ty Propo­si­tion #1 have to com­ply with what’s called the sixty/forty rule, which requires that six­ty per­cent of vot­ers vote yes, and forty per­cent of vot­ers turn out.

The min­i­mum num­ber of yes votes required is 234,736. Cur­rent­ly, there are 207,099 yes votes. The explana­to­ry state­ment for the levy notes that Propo­si­tion #1 would fund Medic One for six addi­tion­al years:

If approved by vot­ers, Propo­si­tion No. 1 would autho­rize King Coun­ty to levy a reg­u­lar prop­er­ty tax at a rate not to exceed $0.335 per one thou­sand dol­lars of assessed val­u­a­tion on all tax­able prop­er­ty with­in the coun­ty. The levy pro­ceeds would be used to fund coun­ty-wide Medic One emer­gency med­ical ser­vices as more ful­ly described in Ordi­nance No. 17598 and RCW 84.52.069. The levy would be autho­rized for a six-year peri­od, with col­lec­tion begin­ning in 2014. The levy would be exempt from the rate lim­i­ta­tions in RCW 84.52.043, but would be sub­ject to the chap­ter 84.55 RCW lim­i­ta­tions on levy increas­es in years two through six.

Keep­ing Medic One fund­ed was a no-brain­er — it’s one of our vital pub­lic ser­vices that enrich­es our qual­i­ty of life. Medic One is worth every pen­ny. We’re pleased to see it win­ning so mas­sive­ly, though it’d be nice if it could just be an accept­ed part of our coun­ty bud­get, and not con­tin­gent on a suc­cess­ful pub­lic vote every few years.