by Robert Lynch; September 17, 2024
Following nearly another hour of trimming and tweaking at this, its fourth budget meeting in little more than a month, the Enfield Board of Fire Commissioners Tuesday handed up a Preliminary 2025 Budget that will hike the tax levy more than some townspeople would like, yet increase basic costs very little beyond the huge bond payment it must make for the first time on a pricey new fire truck.
“It is what it is,” Board of Commissioners’ Chairman Greg Stevenson said of the budget following the five-member Board’s unanimous vote of approval.
The $620,475 preliminary spending plan next heads to an October 15th Public Hearing. It’s one that Stevenson predicts will be shorter and less contentious than the one last year, when a then-appointed Board for the newly-minted Enfield Fire District fielded numerous criticisms that might have kept them there until Midnight had not the chairman shut things down after two hours.
Compared with spending for the current year, the newly-modified 2025 Enfield Fire Budget would raise spending by 28.28 per cent when one includes the fire truck’s bonding, but only by about 2.1 per cent if one excludes bonding costs. Non-bond-related expenses in the projected budget would rise by little more than $10,000.
Among Tuesday’s final decisions, the Board locked-in $10,000 for an Equipment Repair and Replacement Reserve account and another $10,000 for an Apparatus Repair and Replacement Reserve.
Chairman Stevenson called the combined $20,000 set-aside reserves “super-low… next to nothing.” But he added, “We understand there’s pressure on the budget for the bond payment.”
“We’re transitioning from an operation that didn’t have a savings account to one that maybe does,” Stevenson explained.
In August of 2023, at the Town Board’s direction, Enfield transferred fire protection services from the Town’s oversight to that of an independent Fire District headed by a Board of Commissioners. Whereas, the Town Board’s contract agency, the Enfield Volunteer Fire Company (EVFC) had kept neither an equipment nor an apparatus reserve account for years, the Fire District now chooses to have one.
The 28.3 per cent Fire Tax levy hike projected Tuesday falls about one percentage point below the tentative figure that emerged from a prior budget planning meeting two weeks earlier. Officials Tuesday credited much of the revision to correction of an earlier error that had overestimated one line item by a power of ten. Its correction moved $9,000 in the taxpayer’s favor.
Other adjustments Tuesday were only minor. Commissioners budgeted a little more for insurance; but subtracted a little from training expense.
Given property assessment data in hand, Commissioners calculated next year’s Enfield Fire Tax Rate at just under $1.90 per $1,000 assessed valuation.
As for the budget’s big item, the principal and interest payments on the most expensive fire truck Enfield has ever bought—an $825,000 pumper engine delivered last year—those outlays will cost Enfield taxpayers $126,576 for 2025, during the first in the truck’s ten-year bonding cycle.
Subtracting the truck’s financing, the Enfield Fire District’s expenses next year would total $493,899 under the preliminary budget, up $10, 207 from the current year’s spending.
The Fire District’s Public Hearing October 15th will provide taxpayers their first—and only—opportunity to sound off on the proposed budget. There’ll be no referendum. Yet only after the hearing can the Board of Commissioners make figures final.
Last fall, Commissioners received howls of criticism when they took testimony at the hearing, but then raised the proposed budget’s total by 24 percent just four days later. Stevenson perceives no similar perceived sleight of hand this time.
“We will strive to hear all of what the public says and do our regular business in a more orderly manner” hearing night, Stevenson Tuesday predicted.
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