The Medical Lake Fire Department has decided not to hold its annual holiday toy drive.
In the past, the department would collect toys and give them to needy families living in the Medical Lake zip code.
Fire Chief Jason Mayfield said one reason the department is not doing the drive this holiday season is because of a trend where the number of toy donations have dropped in the last few years.
“We would put out bins at various locations in the city and would have to empty them twice a week,” Mayfield said. “In the last couple of years, those bins didn’t get filled once.”
For last year’s drive, Mayfield said department volunteers and personnel used their own money to buy toys.
Another reason the department is not doing the drive was because only 20 percent of the families receiving toys were from the Medical Lake area. Mayfield said the department kept a contact list of families who received donations. What the department learned was most of the families were from Spokane.
“It’s not that we don’t want to help Spokane families, but when people are donating these toys, they expect them to be used locally,” Mayfield said. “We try and help the community as much as we can, but if the community is not donating toys and residents aren’t using it (toy drive), there’s not much of a reason to continue it.”
For Medical Lake families that need extra presents this year, Mayfield recommends they go to Toys for Tots. He said the department may revisit the toy drive in the future.
“But we would need to have support of the community for it,” he added.
Al Stover can be reached at [email protected].
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