Just as wildfire season begins in earnest, Upper Pine Fire Protection District has eliminated four full-time positions to help stabilize its budget.

“If we didn’t do this, we wouldn’t have any reserves left after next year,” District Chief Bruce Evans said. “Too many factors led to this. By this time last year, we’d had income coming into the district from fighting wildland fires on federal lands. This year, that didn’t happen.”

By laying off three firefighters and consolidating another position, a wildland coordinator with a fire captain, the district will save about $200,000 this year, Evans said. That will reduce the amount of money pulled from reserves used in 2013 to about $336,000, leaving about $500,000 remaining for the 2014 fiscal year.

A drastic drop in natural-gas and oil revenue and an unexpected drop in property values also were a one-two punch for the district this year.

“There was some drop in property values in Bayfield proper, but it’s not as significant as in some key areas here, like Forest Lakes, where some homeowners are reporting 20 percent drops in their property values,” Evans said. “We budget for a 3 percent increase, so when the assessed evaluations came out two or three weeks ago, we really got clobbered.”

Evans and the district are looking at other options to become more financially sustainable, including reducing other costs, applying for grants and going to the voters for a mill-levy increase in November.

“I don’t want to alarm the public,” Evans said. “We have a 15-person seasonal crew here on grant money that is deployable for wildland fires. There will be decreases in EMS capability and regular structural fire crews, but the district will still be covered.”