The Board of County Commissioners heard hours of comment from concerned citizens regarding the Hernando County Fire Rescue MSBU assessment increases.
Attempting to quell the oncoming storm, Chairman Nicholson stated,
“Before we get started we had to advertise in the newspaper, correct me if I’m wrong, what the maximum rates could be. By law that’s what we have to do… I don’t believe anybody on the board wants to do that, but it’s what we had to advertise.”
The reason that governments advertise the maximum rate is to keep their options open. By law you are only allowed to decrease from the advertised rate.
Tindale Oliver completed an evaluation of the Fire Department, how it uses it’s resources and provided options (A, B, C, and D) for restructuring the tax assessment methodology accordingly.
Discussion began in regards to Option D, since commissioners agreed that A, B, and C were less viable.
Nicholson stated, ‘Option D is only a 15% increase.” This was met by grumbles from the audience echoing, “Only?”
Nicholson further stated, “What happens in Option D is it gives a 15% increase on single and multifamily, but it adjusts the multifamily unit rate. “What our consultants have done and they’ve done a great job at this, they’ve studied the actual usage of the units going to fires at individual types of complexes whether it’s commercial, or industrial, residential, multifamily, church.”
Ultimately none of the options (A through D) provided by Tindale and Oliver were chosen.
Commissioner Nicholson asked Chief Hechler to explain the merging of the two departments (Spring Hill and Hernando County) questioning, “You’ve been spending reserves, is that correct?”
Chief Hechler responded, “Because we’ve added 5 additional stations, now we have additional costs to maintain those 5 different facilities, the personnel as well as the apparatus for those stations… because of that we’ve been dipping into the reserves. Like any other non general fund agency we are required to maintain an 18 to 18.5 percent reserve rate.”
Nicholson added to his comment, “Also, we have just settled two different contracts with the two different unions, one of them being the firefighters union and what we’ve been trying to do since the merger of the two departments was try to bring the wages inline… With the settlement of this last contract in negotiations we are now doing that over a two year period of time… So obviously we have to be able to pay their salaries, which means we need some additional revenue to do that…”
In a previous meeting it was stated that $3 million of the increase was due to the salary increases the BOCC negotiated with the Unions.
Scott Hechler reviewed other major cost drivers as well.
Interestingly, Commissioner Holcomb was very supportive of a tax increase because as he explains only half of property owners actually pay the full amount. He stated, “The property tax situation is broken in the county in my opinion. That’s one of the reasons I was for the gas tax because that’s a consumption tax. The property taxes in this county are really being paid by half the property owners. Police, Fire, all the county services… If you are looking at 125,000 property owners in this county it’s a little less than half that are paying the full boat. There’s a couple that are paying at reduced rates and the rest are paying zero. So when we have those issues come up for property tax, I’m an advocate, I’m staunch on any increases on property taxes…When it comes to the rest of the budget, and the Sheriff’s budget and anything else, I really want to make this a neutral situation for our property owners so if we have an increase here I want to look at a tax cut for our county budget going into this budget season.”
After the numerous questions and concerns posed, Chief Hechler responded with answers. Some interesting answers he provided follows.
He mentioned that Highpoint is included as of Oct.1 and there are two stations near by that would cover Highpoint.
In response to the concern that Hernando County has a platinum fire department, he stated,
“I can assure you that this department is not a platinum fire department.” He pointed out, “We try to staff our engines with three firefighters. Three firefighters is the minimum necessary to affect an interior attack.”
He stated that the cost of the work done by Tindale and Oliver to evaluate the fire department’s finances costed $77,303.00.
The Fire Department receives 27,000 calls for service each year.
In response to scrutiny about firefighters at the grocery store:
Chief Hechler stated, “Firefighters work 24 hr shifts to save money…Under federal law, we are able to work a firefighter 53 hours a week before we pay overtime. If we did not, we’d have to work them 40 hours which means 4 platoons instead of 3… When they’re on duty they have to eat… so they give them permission to go to the store and come back.” Chief Hechler explained that when they are at the grocery store they are on duty and they will drop what they are doing to respond to an incident. He described the fire engine as their office. They have to bring their office with them wherever they go. Also, when they are out in public like the grocery store they have a policy to talk to those who are interested and will show them around the truck.
When asked by Commissioner Dukes, what happens if the assessment increase does not pass today (July 14th), Chief Hechler stated, “My plan is to sit down with staff, with the budget folks, and with you folks to decide how to prioritize which operations to sustain, what operations that we need to reduce.”
The audience applauded.
Dukes, being a former Fire Chief stated, “Every time you roll a truck it costs money… [but] the money you’re asking for Scott I don’t think is going to make it. I think we’re going to have to get closer to the bone and quite truthfully, I think the inflation rate is a good way to start.”
Commissioner Adkins also felt that the options given by Tindale and Oliver were not going to work and Commissioner Adkins stated he’d like to see, “Option E, the first six dealing with vacant and residential, leave them the same, that’s what impacts people the most. Try to come back with all the other increases and see what they can be lowered to. I do know churches are taking a hit on this, see what you can do there.”
In the end the BOCC decided to go with what they consider an “inflationary rate increase” of 3% for 5 years with the board authorizing the fire department to use their reserves beneath the 18% limit to compensate for the smaller increase to assessment rates.
Commissioner Rowden was the sole member in opposition to the motion made by Commissioner Dukes.
Ultimately this a shifting of funds. They are emptying the bucket that will have to be refilled later. Under certain circumstances, the Fire Department may need support from the county general fund since they are intending to use their reserves to some level that has yet to be identified. If they have no reserves, which are there for emergencies, then the support could come out of the county’s general fund.