UPDATED-Mayor: Volunteer fire department not paying fair share of costs
By JIM BROOKS
Nelson County Gazette
Mayor Bill Sheckles, center, gestures while talking about the need for the volunteer fire department to pay an equitable share of the cost of fire protection. Photo by Jim Brooks. Click to enlarge.
(ADDED LINKS TO ADDITIONAL DOCUMENTS, July 7, 2012) Thursday, July 5, 2012, 2:50 a.m. — Fireworks came a day early to Bardstown City Hall as tempers flared during a meeting of the city council Safety Committee Tuesday evening.
The sparks were kindled during a conversation that focused on the funding of the city’s fire protection. Two fire departments operate as one at the city’s main fire station — the Bardstown Fire Department and the Bardstown-Nelson County Volunteer Fire Department. If the volunteer department can’t bring in more money and pay its fair share, the department could be forced to leave the fire station at Bardstown City Hall.
The Bardstown Fire Department operates in the city limits and is funded by city tax dollars, while the volunteer fire department – known as “the corporation” – is funded by fire dues paid by those who live outside the city limits but inside the corporation’s fire protection district.
According to figures compiled by city staff, the City of Bardstown has long been subsidizing fire protection to the areas outside the city limits that the corporation serves.
Mayor Bill Sheckles’ June letter canceling the contract for firefighter funding between the City of Bardstown and the volunteer firefighter corporation sits on the conference table during the Safety Committee meeting Tuesday, July 3rd. The 2005 contact allowed the City to add two fulltime paid firefighters. Click to enlarge.
Mayor Bill Sheckles opened the discussion by saying he began taking a closer look at the fire departments after the fire chief election on Jan. 16 that resulted in two fire chiefs. He said in his opinion, the operation of the fire departments “has been a functional dysfunctional operation ethically, contractually, expenditure-wise [and] personnel-wise.”
“The more I looked at this, the more I realized this was not a situation in the best interest of the citizens of Bardstown and the people that elected us to serve them,” he said.
MAYOR CANCELS CONTRACT TO FUND 2 CITY FIREFIGHTERS. Sheckles said he found a contract that he had never seen before between the incorporated fire department and the city that created a mechanism for the corporation to fund two full-time firefighter positions.
Mayor Dixie Hibbs signed the 2005 contract when Sheckles and Safety Committee members Bobby Simpson and Francis Lydian were on the council. Lydian said he did not remember seeing the contract in the past.
The agreement allowed the city fire department to add four paid firefighter positions; the city funded two positions while the corporation funded the other two. The corporation raised the money by increasing homeowner’s fire dues from $40 to $50. The extra $10 was earmarked for paying for the two-firefighter positions. Nelson Fiscal Court also allowed the corporation to place the fire dues on the county property tax bills.
Sheckles noted either party with one year’s notice could cancel the contract. On June 25th, Sheckles sent a letter notifying the corporation that he was canceling the contract that funds two firefighter positions, noting that members of the corporation and city staff were “working on a comprehensive agreement for the equitable funding of both Fire Departments.”
FIRE DEPARTMENT FUNDING CALCULATIONS. Larry Green, assistant city administrator, read a narrative to explain how he and city CFO Mike Abell arrived at the figures that illustrate the apparent funding disparity.
The message Sheckles, Abell and Green presented was clear: The city’s incorporated volunteer fire department must pay a greater share of the total cost of fire protection. Green’s statement suggested the corporation either raise fire dues or lobby public support to establish a fire tax district.
Sheckles read a letter from Frost Brown Todd attorney Robert D. Hudson that cited numerous possible conflicts of interests and ethics problems with the current arrangement of how the two fire departments work together, calling it “fraught with legal problems.”
CORPORATION QUESTIONS CALCULATIONS. Bardstown Fire Chief Marlin Howard said he hadn’t seen how the city staff calculated its figures, and didn’t believe the funding disparity was as great as it might appear in their calculations.
Green told the committee they evaluated the fire protection several ways. They examined the populations served by each department, the value of the property in each coverage area and the number of fire runs to each coverage area. The final analysis is that the corporation receives the majority of the fire protection benefit that the city is paying for.
In his statement, Green said the City of Bardstown “needs to consider its responsibilities to provide the appropriate level of service to its growing community as well as the appropriate cost of those services,” adding that it was assumed the city paid more than its share of fire protection costs, but it wasn’t known how much until they began crunching the numbers.
“Not all parties agree on the figures,” Abell noted, “but they’re pretty darn close.”
According to Abell’s figures, city customers pay an average of about $140 per year for fire protection, versus $50 a year paid for those who live outside the city limits in the corporation’s fire protection area.
Howard argued that the level of fire protection is better inside the city limits than out in the county. The fire protection rating determined by Insurance Services Office (ISO) gives city residents a better ISO rating, which can mean lower insurance rates. Most of the unincorporated parts of the county have a much higher ISO rating, which means residents can be hit with higher homeowners insurance costs.
Howard didn’t dispute that city residents pay more, but he noted that city residents also receive better fire protection ratings. “Do you expect a county resident to pay the same amount and not get the same service?”
He expressed concern that the city’s calculations didn’t account for the intangible benefits of the city having the corporations’ equipment to share, noting that a city pumper truck failed at the downtown fire last week and was replaced by a corporation truck that was on standby.
Howard said that without knowing how the figures were calculated, he felt they could be very misleading, a comment which brought a strong reaction from Abell, who objected to Howard’s use of the term “misleading.” Howard retracted the statement, but said he believed there was room to improve the figures.
Abell told Howard that differences in figures wouldn’t make a significant difference. “You all are not going to be close to spending what we’re spending,” Abell said.
Howard said the firefighters did not want to split the departments. Such a move would raise fire protection costs for both city residents and residents in the corporation’s fire district.
In his narrative, Green noted that if the incorporated fire department decided to leave the city fire station, the city could offset the loss of the corporation’s contributions by annexing Maywood and Woodlawn Springs subdivisions. The $178,000 in additional property tax revenue would offset the loss of the corporation’s funding for two fulltime firefighter positions.
IN THE DARK. Abell said he and Green had been meeting with representatives of the corporation’s board of directors, and wanted to update the committee before proceeding further. “This is not finalized, but we didn’t want the committee to be totally in the dark while we continued to meet time after time,” Green said.
Councilman Bobby Simpson, chair of the committee, expressed his frustration about hearing about the meetings from people on the street, and that he and other councilman had been questioned about the meetings, and that the council members felt they were left in the dark about what was happening on this and other issues.
“Some things have to be done by the city and some have to be done by the staff,” he said. “But this a major thing we’re talking about.”
Sheckles said he wanted the city staff and the corporation to move quickly to fix the disparity in the corporation’s financial contributions to the joint fire protection efforts.
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