Fire Chief: Will seek grant money to aid budget
With the proposed fire assessment voted down, the Bayshore Fire District will continue to seek grant money in hope of staving off pending layoffs.
But there are no promises there.
“A lot of work went into this,” said Fire Chief Larry Nisbet of the proposal to replace property taxes with a flat rate assessment to raise more money. “We’ll just have to apply for more grants. They’re my guys and I want to try to keep them. Unless property values increase or we get new construction, our budget won’t rebound. This is trying to fill a hole.”
Nisbet said he was disappointed at the prospect of laying off firefighters, and that the assessment was the best chance he had of preventing it. He added he thought there was a lot of misinformation circulating before the referendum vote.
“We tried to come up with the best plan we could with the capabilities we had, now we’ll have to step back and see what we can do, but we know we have significant changes coming up,” Nisbet said.
But with the prospect of having to pay triple or more for fire service, the voters in the Bayshore Fire District last Tuesday gave the proposed new fire assessment a resounding “no” at the polls.
Voters rejected the proposed fire assessment by an almost three-to-one margin, although Nisbet had warned defeat could result in the layoff of half his full-time firefighters come Sept. 14.
Of the 984 people who cast ballots, 726 voted against the referendum (73.78 percent).
Steve Brodkin, president of Concerned Citizens of Bayshore Community, said the voters have spoken, and louder than even he thought.
“They didn’t reach out to the community when they planned this. They had a bad plan and basically slapped the fire board down. Maybe they come back with a more reasonable request people can consider,” Brodkin said.
The flat-rate assessment would have replaced the ad valorem tax methodology with a fee-based system. District officials said it would have re-distributed costs among all properties, including the tax-exempt; stabilized revenues; and ensured future growth of the department.
The fire board went back two years to see where most of the calls for service have been. Nearly three-fourths of them were residential, which is where the bulk of assessment would be levied at a flat cost of $587.78 annually, regardless of property value.
It was the flat assessment that had most voters worried, since it would have meant a sharp increase for those with lower property values, while those with more expensive homes (and large tracts of land) would have paid less.
“Generally, the lowest income people would get the biggest increase. Some of them paying $80 would have to pay $587.78,” Brodkin said. “It seems galling that they need money, but the person in the $1 million home is going to get a tax cut.”
Brodkin also said there was concern that if the assessment passed and the millage was set at zero, there was no legal guarantee it would stay there.