BERLIN– Continued fire and EMS funding challenges highlighted a work session among elected officials and Berlin Fire Company leadership.
The Berlin Town Council last week held a work session with fire company officials to kick off funding discussions well in advance of the town’s next budget process.
“Hopefully as we get along in the budget process we won’t have those hinderances like we have had in previous years,” Councilman Dean Burrell said.
During last week’s meeting, elected officials were presented with estimates from Berlin Fire Company (BFC) officials on what will be requested in the next budget. For fire, the Berlin Fire Company will be asking for $200,000 for operating (up from $116,961 included in the current budget) and $150,000 in capital to replace aging equipment.
For BFC EMS, the request from the town in the next fiscal year will be $450,000 (an increase from the current budgeted amount of $408,039) and $52,500 for capital.
BFC President David Fitzgerald offered suggestions for the town to come up with the new funding required to maintain fire and EMS services at an adequate level. He said the town could increase impact fees on new construction and create a public safety tax within the municipal tax rate. He said the county in the 1970s carved out 3 cents of the countywide tax rate for public safety and he reported the county is considering an increase to that in its next budget to offset rising public safety expenses.
He reminded officials that the study the town had done several years ago supported the level of funding the fire company was requesting.
“That study is old,” he said. “There will have to be adjustments done.”
Burrell said the fire company did excellent work but that the town needed the agency to provide more financial detail, as there was taxpayer funding involved.
“Studies are studies,” he said. “We need for you to come in here and say to us this is our assets, this is our operating and our capital and this is what we need from the town… I don’t think that is an unreasonable request. When we provide grants to any folks, that’s the information they bring to us.”
Fitzgerald said the town would be provided with everything it was requesting and would continue to answer any questions during the quarterly meetings with elected officials.
Councilman Jack Orris asked if the fire company would still need to charge a response fee if the agency received the amount of money it was requesting from the town.
“That would probably not be needed…,” Fitzgerald said. “The reason we started the billing for service is because we were not getting enough operating funds from the town to balance our budget and provide the service. We brought that back to the membership and since the town is not providing capital at this time any money we get billing for service is going to our capital apparatus fund.”
He added that the fire company currently had no contingency fund in the event of an unbudgeted emergency.
According to Fitzgerald, the county committee tasked with studying fire and EMS funding is still working on identifying a long-term solution to the challenge of paying for the service. He said that while there was currently a funding formula, the county had also had to provide supplemental funding in recent years.
Burrell said he thought municipal officials still needed a better understanding of the fire company’s financial position before a formula could be developed.
“Before we get to a formula or a tax rate, we need to understand what the need is,” he said. “That seems to be lacking … If we can get the understanding of need, including Station 3, that will allow us to possibly work toward an equitable formula.”
