Enfield Commissioners approve $638k Fire Budget
by Robert Lynch; October 21, 2025
The Enfield Fire District’s tax will rise next year, but not by as much as first thought.
Following a brief Public Hearing at which the only person who spoke was the same ex-commissioner who’d addressed the board last year, the Enfield Board of Fire Commissioners Tuesday further trimmed proposed spending and contained its 2026 budget increase to slightly less than three percent above that for the current year .
As finally adopted, the Enfield Fire District 2026 Budget totals $638,631.50. The 2025 Budget totaled $620,475. That’s a 2.93 percent increase.
“It’s not exactly a town that is flush with rich people,” Marcus Gingerich, the hearing’s lone speaker, described Enfield in his hearing comments. Gingerich, who’d been the sole commenter on the fire budget last year— only at that time in writing—said in-person at this year’s October 21 hearing that he was “a little surprised” that the budget’s total “keeps going up and up.”
When Tuesday’s meeting began and the hearing was held, next year’ proposed budget before Fire Commissioners had called for an approximate 3.8 percent spending increase.
“What would it take to get down to three percent?” Board of Fire Commissioners member Barry Rollins asked a half-hour after the hearing had adjourned and the board had then taken up the budget for adoption.
And with Rollins open-ended question, commissioners began searching for minor ways to cut costs.
What they settled on during their 20-minute review could be seen as a calculated gamble.
First, commissioners reduced a $47,854 budget line for liability insurance by $5,000. And secondly, they subtracted $1,000 from a $15,000 line item reserved for accounting services. Reduction of those two accounts, unglamorous as they are, lowered the annual projected spending increase to just over $18,000 from the 2025 budget, or a hike of 2.93 percent.
Board of Fire Commissioners’ Chair Greg Stevenson declined Tuesday to state the precise impact the modified budget would have on the property tax levy or tax rate without first checking with the Tompkins County Department of Assessment.
Whatever the final number may be, however, the Enfield Fire Tax the next year will rise by only about half as much as will the projected tax levy for the rest of Enfield government. A Preliminary Budget the Enfield Town Board will consider the following evening, Wednesday, the 22nd, proposes a tax levy increase of 6.53 percent over that for 2025 to cover general and Highway Department expenses..
The Town Board has scheduled its own Public Hearing on the Town Budget the night of the 22nd and will likely adopt the budget thereafter, including any final revisions.
The Enfield Fire District budget process of this fall stands in stark contrast with that of a year ago when first-ever bonding for a new, expensive fire engine ballooned the budget’s total by 28.3 percent over the year, making it Enfield’s largest fire budget ever.
For 2026, of course, the budget still sets a record, but the shock of the increase has worn off. The Enfield Fire District will still spend more than $115,000 toward paying off the expensive pumper, and also nearly $72,500 in continuing loan payments on another truck. But the newly-heightened debt service has begun to be baked into Enfield’s expectations.
Newly-created, one-time expenses projected within the 2026 Fire Budget stand far more benign.
Still budgeted for the year ahead is the possible repainting of a second tanker truck, an older model, whose red paint has inexplicably begun to peel. The problem first gained attention as Fire Commissioners pieced together their preliminary budget in early-September.
Commissioners then put an extra $10,000 into the budget toward repainting the entire rear portion of the 2007-vintage tanker. And while the truck’s manufacturer may have been to blame, there’s been no recall and the vehicle’s warranty expired years ago.
Although no repainting decision’s actually been made, Stevenson reported after Tuesday’s meeting that one estimate’s already come in and places the repainting cost within the budgeted amount. Stevenson said Board policy requires Commissioners get at least one more quote before deciding whether to authorize the work.
One spending increase that could have drawn attention from the public never did. And neither did commissioners touch the item when they sought to cut costs. The Fire District’s budget sets aside additional money to elevate pay for the appointed District Secretary and District Treasurer to $7,500 each, a 50 percent raise in each instance.
No one talked about the staff raises Tuesday. Stevenson said in September that just because the Fire District budgets the raises doesn’t require it to actually award the increases.
“Firefighter physicals are under-funded,” Stevenson again Tuesday complained. The Commissioners’ chair has remarked several times this year that the fire district may have to migrate its federally-mandated volunteer physical exams from a family medicine practice in Trumansburg to an occupational medicine provider, a change that would substantially elevate cost. The new budget reserves $6,000 for those physicals, unchanged from the 2025 budget.
When he spoke at the public hearing, Marcus Gingerich questioned the amount the Enfield Fire District pays the Enfield Volunteer Fire Company (EVFC), a separate non-profit corporation, for use of the Enfield Fire Station. Gingerich maintained that the fire district’s lease payments to the EVFC “went up more than double what building expense went up.”
A restructured, one-year fire station lease, approved by Commissioners in September, raises lease payments to the EVFC from $75,000 to nearly $100,000. But the agreement also transferred many operational and member-related expenses from the fire district to the EVFC, making it difficult to verify Gingerich’s assertion.
The lone commenter, Gingerich, also questioned why an allocation for the EVFC’s annual “Inspection Dinner,” its catered Christmas party for volunteers and invited guests, grew in cost from $10,000 to $11,000. At a prior meeting, it was explained that the cost of food had gone up.
Marcus Gingerich was among five people the Enfield Town Board had initially appointed Fire Commissioners when the Town Board separated fire matters from Town Government in 2023. Gingerich subsequently lost a later election and was voted off the Board after only a few months’ service.
There’s a “layer of separation” between the Board of Fire Commissioners and the community, Gingerich observed as he provided the brief four-minute hearing its only public comment. “And that’s unfortunate,” the onetime commissioner said.
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