by Robert Lynch; October 17, 2024
Yes, what a difference a year makes.
In October 2023, about a score of people attended a Public Hearing on the newly-formed Enfield Fire District’s first-ever budget. That night, seven of them spoke to the budget (this Enfield Councilperson among them). The atmosphere was charged. The fledgling Board of Fire Commissioners—appointed by the Town Board only two months earlier—was desperately in search of its sea legs, unsure of itself more than otherwise. The Enfield electorate, meanwhile, was sharply divided on both fire service spending, and most particularly, on whether to buy and bond a more than $800,000 fire truck or else send it back to its Iowa factory.
This past Tuesday night, by contrast, at this year’s Fire District Public Hearing, the relative silence proved deafening. Aside from the four or five regulars who attend the current Board of Fire Commissioners twice-monthly meetings, the massive room was empty. Just one hearing attendee appeared and spoke. (She requested that her picture not be shared here.) This lone speaker read a budget-critical statement written by her husband. Coincidence or not, her husband is a former member of the previously-appointed Board of Fire Commissioners.
The budget hearing was open and closed within five minutes.
About an hour later, after trudging through some routine business, the Board of Fire Commissioners approved its 2025 budget, the largest fire budget Enfield has ever seen. It totals just over $620,000, up 28.3 per cent from the 2024 Budget its predecessor Board had adopted last year.
“We’re all under the same tax crunch,” Board Chair Greg Stevenson said after the vote was taken. “I don’t think the commissioners are tone-deaf” to taxpayer concerns.
But that big, pricey fire truck’s cost still looms over the Enfield Fire District and its taxpayers. Its decade-long bond financing kicks in next fiscal year. Its $126,576 in first-time charges for principal and interest are what make the 2025 Enfield Fire District Budget so weighty. In addition, continuing charges loading down the budget include more than $72,000 in financing for another fire truck still under a bank loan, and $75,000 to lease its fire house from Enfield’s volunteer fire company.
“Commissioners went through the budget with a fine-tooth comb,” Stevenson insisted. “There’s not a lot of fat in this budget,” he informed the meeting.
And as for the past controversy over the $825,000 pumper engine’s purchase and payment, Stevenson insisted the matter’s been “put to bed.”
“Approval to bond 602 (the pumper) was on the ballot in 2023,” the chairman reminded everyone. Voters approved the truck’s bonding. “It’s behind us,” Stevenson reiterated.
Marcus Gingerich’s wife had left by the time Tuesday’s vote was called. Gingerich had been appointed to the Board of Fire Commissioners by the Enfield Town Board in August of last year. He was one of five Commissioners the Town Board had to appoint to get the fire service’s new governance structure operational. He was not a firefighter, but rather just a private resident some on the Town Board seemed to trust to cast a critical eye to Fire District spending.
But when the Fire District held its first elections for all five seats that December, Gingerich did poorly. He finished ninth among ten candidates running. He was the only appointed board member who’d chosen to compete for election, but then lost.
“As someone involved last year in projecting the budget for years to come while taking into consideration future capital needs, I don’t understand why such a dramatic increase is actually necessary,” Gingerich wrote in his hearing statement read into the record. “I didn’t think it was necessary to break $600,000 until at least 2032,” Gingerich continued. “Yes, it would require making tough decisions.”
Never stated outright within Gingerich’s complaint, yet implied nonetheless, was that the former Board Commissioner may fault the current Board for paying off the pumper truck too quickly. Gingerich’s appointed Board had envisioned 20-year bonding for the truck. Last March, at both Stevenson’s and a new attorney’s urging, the elected Board opted for shorter, ten-year bonding. Shorter-term bonds lessen the truck’s overall, long-term cost, yet heighten the immediate payments due each year.
“We kept payments down as much as we could,” Stevenson told the largely-empty hearing room Tuesday. “I’d like to have gone for seven or five (year financing), he reminded everyone. But that fast a payback, the Chairman acknowledged, would have led to “consternation at our public hearing.”
Tuesday’s Board of Fire Commissioners’ decision constitutes final action on the Enfield Fire District’s 2025 Budget. Enfield voters get to elect one member of the Board of Fire Commissioners this December, but they get no vote on the budget.
The adopted budget would impose an Enfield fire tax rate of just under $1.90 per $1,000 of assessed valuation.
In his statement, former Commissioner Gingerich chose to go back four years and compare the proposed—and now established—2025 tax levy to that of 2021. He maintained that the levies for 2022 and 2023 “are possibly somewhat anomalous and thus may not be a good benchmark.”
“If one looks carefully at the budget, it represents a 58 per cent increase over 2021,” Gingerich said of the 2025 spending plan. “This makes me question whether this Board truly has the best interest of the residents of Enfield in mind.”
Gingerich reflected on the budget before him, “Does it concern you at all as to the amount of financial strain this may put on some residents? I certainly doubt whether any residents have seen or will be seeing these kinds of increases in their personal incomes.”
“I hope you are carefully considering all sides of this,” Gingerich concluded.
Marcus Gingerich’s spouse prefaced her reading by saying that her husband was ailing that night and could not attend the Public Hearing in person. She’d left the meeting before she could be asked whether Marcus might run again in the December Fire District election and seek to regain his position as a commissioner.
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