The measure, if approved, will appear on the May ballot and would authorize the Bend City Council to levy 20 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value for five years, beginning July 1, 2014, to raise a projected $1,800,000 a year.
The temporary levy will add firefighter paramedics to the department reducing response time for firefighting and medical emergencies. Approval of the levy may be made more palpable to voters as two Deschutes County levies are set to expire in 2014.
One of the levies was for the Deschutes County Library on Wall Street in Bend and the other was the jail levy which funded the parole building, the juvenile detention center and the inmate work facility.
