Today at 1:30pm the Alachua County Board of County Commissioners will be discussing in more detail the Fire Assessment fee proposed to be voted on this summer. Current the county funds its fire protection services through an MSTU, or an additional property tax, but are looking to replace it with a fee calculated on square footage and fire risk instead of property value. Although this does not affect High Springs city residents, it will be paid by those directly outside our city limits in unincorporated Alachua County.
Much of the debate at last week’s meeting centered around whether churches, synagogues, and other non-profits would be required to pay the fee. It would appear the consensus on the board is for the fee to be paid by every property owner, regardless of tax-exempt status.
Commissioners are arguing residents are not paying an equitable amount, citing an example of three homes on the same street, with similar value, and a nearly identical size and layout. These three homeowners paid grossly different values, due to exemptions including Save our Homes. The argument being made is the fire risk, response time, and water flows are all identical, so really all three homes should pay the same amount.
Here in High Springs residents pay a flat rate of $73; Newberry residents pay a flat rate of $75. During the meeting an example was given of a homeowner paying about $140 for a “median” 1800 sq ft home. Even though the commission makes the argument this system is more “fair” for everyone, the budget shortfalls in the fire department coupled with the MTSU rate being maxed out leaves a lot of residents seeing this as just another tax. In fact, the assessment is designed to replace the MSTU, however, some of the commissioners were a bit hesitant to remove it completely, in effect hinting that the resident may pay for fire services both through the property tax and the assessment.
I personally would never support another tax hike on already cash-strapped residents. But, to see the upside this issue, it would appear that our city commission will have an upper hand in our negotiations with the county as we proceed to ratify a contract for fire services. It is hard for the county to justify paying High Springs less when they are increasing the rates being paid by citizens.
To all residents of the unincorporated county, I apologize, but it looks like higher taxes are soon on their way. To all our city residents, we will continue to be good stewards of your money and require the county to pay for the services they receive.
I will try to keep you updated as this issue progresses through the Board.
Eric May
Conservative local blogger and former elected official Eric May provides readers a view on government they rarely get: one from the inside. As a local leader, Eric champions the causes of limited government, lowering taxes, and increasing liberties. He is married to his beautiful wife Jenna, who both enjoy serving actively in their church and community.
Commissioner May, What you fail to disclose in you post is that the city’s fire assessment fee only pays for approx 25% of your fire department budget (less than $200,000). The remaining 75% (approx $660,000) is paid from the city’s general fund budget, which is funded through our property taxes inside the city. Therefore your argument, as posted, that city residents only pay $73 for fire suppression is misleading. A resident who lives in a $50,000 home within the city would only pay the $73 assessment fee since their home is exempt from any property taxes, but any residence valued above $50,000 pays the $73 fee PLUS a portion of their property taxes toward the fire department. Additionally, commercial property is assess the fire assessment fee per SqFt on top of their general fund taxes.
The County’s fire rescue system is split into 2 sections, Fire suppression and Emergency Medical (ambulance). The Emergency Medical section is funded out of the county General fund, which ALL county residents pay (including city residents) as the county provides ambulance service to all resident within the county. The fire suppression side is currently funded through the MSTU-Fire which is only paid by unincorporated residents. The proposed change to a county fire assessment would replace the MSTU-Fire, leaving only a slight residual in the MSTU-Fire to fund “hardship” exemptions. Commissioner Long has even requested that the exemptions be funded out of another funding source within 3 years to totally eliminate the MSTU-Fire.
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Kevin,
Thank you for the information. You are correct, only a portion of our Fire Department is funded through the assessment, with the remaining 75% being funded out of the general fund. Bear in mind High Springs has only recently-in the last 4 years-implemented such a fee, meaning the department was funded completely out of the general fund.
This funding balance is a choice the City has made, as indicated by our residents desire for strong police and fire protection. The commission has historically understood that and has always funded both services very well completely from the general fund. Your numbers are very helpful for people to understand how the county funds the two different services. The county, however, has elected to create a tax outside of the general fund revenues to fund some or most of their fire services. Why do they do this whenever cities and counties simply fund out of the general fund?
Simple. The county has so many other programs, projects, and departments it must fund it leaves fire suppression, a large budget item, unfunded. Thus the old MSTU or proposed Fire Assessment fee.
I would agree, in premise, that if you are going to charge some sort of fire fee, it should be an equitable number, using square footage, water flows, distance from station, or other factors. High Springs does a flat rate, because with a City our size, by the time you pay for the man hours to do all the calculations for different fees for each home, you will really end up paying more in personnel costs than you would bring in in additional revenues. The county however, due to their large size, would find this approach more advantageous.
So really one could say cities like High Springs, which fund their fire services from the general fund, are doing things the right way, while cities and counties with separate taxes for fire are truly just using those taxes to fund other departments.
What’s next? An animal services assessment? Perhaps a parks and recreation tax?
While cities who are responsible like High Springs continue to make the necessary cuts and reductions, counties like Alachua believe that simply raising tax rates or levying new fees is the way to go rather than making those difficult cuts.
I have a lot of respect for the men and women of the Alachua County Fire Rescue service. Some people will say if you oppose a fire assessment you are opposing funding that department. Not true. I think the department should receive adequate funding, because their services are 100% necessary. Really I fault the Board for not eliminating those other, unnecessary spending items in their general fund, to appropriate the necessary funds to the truly needed departments.
Instead, they leave those other wasteful programs in place, and simply pass the bill to you and I, the taxpayer.
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Eric, Thanks you for your reply. The county has opted for an assessment as a more stable funding source for Fire Rescue, as the MSTU-Fire is tied to property taxes, and thus fluctuates with the economy. Since Fire Rescue is not an “optional” service provided by local governments, the decision to move to a more stable funding source is a responsible move.
The reason the county has an MSTU-Fire vs. funding Fire Rescue out of their General fund is due to the fact that the county general fund is dedicated to providing county wide services. Since the county fire rescue (Fire Suppression) only covers unincorporated residents (and cities who opt into the MSTU-fire), this MSTU can not be levied on city residents. By separating the General fund and MSTU-Fire, it is possible for the county to levy the general fund taxes to ALL county residents for county wide services, and the MSTU-Fire to only unincorporated (and opted in cities) residents.
We all agree that there are programs within County government (and argubly all governments) which could be cut or eliminated to reduce gov’t expenses, and therefore tax rates. It is my personal belief that government should be tasked with providing key services to the citizens, priorities should be infastructure (roads, water, sewer, ect), Public safety (Law enforcement, Fire Rescue), and public health concerns. Anything else is just “icing on the cake”. County’s should concentrate on these basic services, with municipalities concentrating on the “Icing”. Conservation, parks and recreation, and other similar programs are nessecary, but lower on the priority list, and should be provided by the most local level of government as these are “quality of life” services, not “essential” services.
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Kevin,
I’d like to get your thoughts on structure fires vs medical calls. I know the county provides ambulance service, which is funded from the general fund, but I am wondering specifically about fire rescue responding as a medical provider. If the county is anything like High Springs, the majority of calls are not actual “fire” calls, but medical or automobile accident type of calls. So how does either a city or county factor that into their fee?
If the fire assessment is based on square footage of a home, wouldn’t that only be a factor for a structure fire? If a 1500 sq ft home has a family of four in it and a 2800 sq ft home has only two in it, wouldn’t the medical risk be higher for the smaller home with more people in it? And how do you factor in the response to the Interstate or other highways where non-county residents travel?
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Eric,
You have a Great point. You are correct, medical calls are the majority of the call load for fire apparatus, throughout the fire rescue profession. Funding a combined Fire/EMS system is always a challenge for any size/type of government. Funding these services in Alachua County is based on primary functional responsibility, it is not based on response type. If it were based on response type, over 80% of the funding would need to come from the general fund. Conversely, it could be based on the cost of providing services and stocking apparatus, of which fire suppression is clearly the most expensive. The county has chosen to fund based on the primary responsibility of the apparatus type. It can be argued that all 3 of these funding methodologies are the “right” way to split the expenses, instead of changing this split, it would make more sense to create a dedicated funding source to cover both fire and EMS.
The Fire side’s primary responsibility is fire suppression and extrication/rescue. As a way to maximize the utilization of resources, fire apparatus are also cross trained in emergency medical response. This allows fire apparatus to respond to EMS calls and begin providing medical treatment to the citizens in need until the ambulance arrives. On the flip side, personnel on ambulances are also cross trained as firefighters and assist with fire suppression and rescue operations upon arrival on such a scene. This practice maximizes the utilization of staffing resources instead of having firefighters sit dormant in a fire station when a medical call is awaiting a response from an EMS apparatus. In a perfect world, we would have an ambulance stationed in each fire station county wide, but fiscal restraints prohibit this practice as there are 22 fire stations, but only 11 ambulances that serve Alachua county.
The option remains for the city to opt to only respond to Fire and Extrication calls, leaving EMS calls for the county ambulance to run alone. This would, without a doubt, decrease the call load and slightly reduce the cost of providing services to the citizens of the city, but it would also decrease the level of service provided to our city residents to an unacceptable level. Additionally, it would be hard for the commission to justify paying 6 people, 4 firefighters on duty daily along with a Chief and Captain, on a daily basis when the fire department only ran an handful of calls (3 – 5) per month. The city’s cost to provide only Fire suppression would remain nearly the same as providing fire and EMS first response as the majority of the cost of providing any public service is personnel cost. Fuel costs and ancillary expenditures per call are minimal when compared to the annual operating budget. As a city resident I am adamantly opposed to this option. Fire Rescue, along with law enforcement and infrastructure, is a primary responsibility of government. Elected officials must look at the BIG picture and make choices that best benefit the citizens, not the city image. Most city officials are more concerned with being able to say they have their own fire department when they should be making any decision necessary to provide the highest level of service possible.
The best option for all residents, county wide, would be a unified fire rescue service. This county currently has 8 fire departments (Gainesville, Alachua County, LaCrosse, Melrose, Micanopy, Newberry, High Springs, Cross Creek, and Windsor), with Alachua county and Gainesville having multiple stations in their departments. This means there are 8 fire chiefs, 8 administrations, and 8 ways of doing things (we call them Standard Operating Procedures or SOP’s). A combined service would eliminate excess administration and cut duplication. SOP’s would truly be standardized county wide. Although this item seems somewhat minor, when on a fire scene having everyone working off the “same sheet of music” makes the task much more successful, thus saving more lives and property (providing a higher level of service). The idea that fire suppression is just spraying water on a fire (“puttin’ the wet stuff on the red stuff”) is grossly inaccurate. Firefighting is a technical, tactical profession that takes coordination to protect lives and property, including the lives of the firefighters. Training would also be standardized throughout the county. Currently, the county conducts training sessions with their personnel, but municipalities do not train along with them. This goes back to the “same sheet of music” idea. A group who trains together will work better together on an actual emergency scene. Although the county has offered to conduct training with municipalities, the current political wrangling prevent this from happening currently. Historically, when the county did offer training opportunities, municipalities did not participate. Lastly, it is not fiscally possible to staff each fire station (regardless of which department they belong to) with enough personnel and resources to mitigate a fire by themselves. High Springs, even with 6 employees on duty/on call daily, cannot safely and effectively handle a working structure fire. The State has a law, the 2 in 2 out rule, which requires at least 4 firefighters to be on scene before anyone enters a burning structure. High Springs is currently able to enter a building themselves, but this does not in any way imply that they will be efficient in suppressing a fire by themselves. This is just a starting point for allowing the FIRST hose line to enter a structure. The NFPA, an organization who sets standards for fire protection nationwide, states that the average working residential structure fire requires 12 – 15 personnel to be effective. Not one station in our area has enough personnel to meet this requirement. This means all stations/department must work together to accomplish our goal. Under the current system, we rely on you, the politicians, to create relationships which allow us to assist neighboring stations. Under a unified department this would not be a problem as all stations would be part of the same system.
Funding is the largest stumbling block. The County is in the process of implementing a fire assessment fee to replace the Fire MSTU. High Springs instuted their assessment fee about 2 years ago, but used this income to increase the fire department budget, they did not use it to replace funding from the general fund. The $73 per residence fee in the city only pays about 25% of the fire department budget. Therefore 75% of the city departments budget comes from the general fund. Thoretically, the city fire department costs each homeowner about $300 per year on average (granted, this funding mathmatics is skewed since the fire assessment is a fixed rate and the general fund is a millage based tax, meaning some residents pay the base $73 while others pay well in excess of $300 based on their taxable value). By consolidating fire rescue with the county, the residents of High Springs will see a reduction in their taxes as they will no longer have to pay the general fund portion of the approx $300 average for fire service. In addition, they will receive a higher level of service thanks to the “same sheet of music” philosophy, gain Advanced Life Support initial response (which is vitally important due to our aging population and due to the distance to local hospitals meaning the ALS Amulance’s will be out of pocket for a longer period of time when transporting other patients), and be assured adequate resources will be available for a timely response to all types of emergency calls.
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