More than 100 East Side residents on Wednesday attended the Summit County Council meeting to protest a nearly 300% tax increase for fire services, a move that comes 10 months after community members shared concerns about their safety, urging the panel to provide more support to the fire department.
The North Summit Fire District in September announced plans to go through the truth-in-taxation process to raise the tax rate to .0014% to create additional revenue that will be used to address several issues within the Fire District. It’s the first tax increase in at least 15 years, but homeowners in the service district argued during the public hearing that the steep hike is unjustified.
Several speakers recognized the challenging position Chief Ben Nielson is in after he joined the Fire District as its first full-time employee earlier this year during a time it was doused in controversy, but they were unwilling to support the increase that would add $1.5 million to the department’s budget. Many people said the funds shouldn’t be used for wages and questioned why the large increase was needed if the Fire District has been operating without it for so long.
Coalville resident Thomas Moore said he understands the Fire District needs a full-time chief, but suggested it return to the volunteer model used earlier this year as hiring part- and full-time workers is too expensive.
Melanie Bosworth and Blaine Blonquist seemingly agreed. In separate statements, they criticized the increase as “wasteful spending” on personnel, saying the Fire District doesn’t have the call volume to justify the expense.
The North Summit Fire District currently spends around $280,000 on stipends for 26 firefighters. Nielson has suggested adopting a hybrid model that will bring on six full-time and around 30 part-time firefighters in hopes that it will boost morale, improve loyalty, reduce turnover and increase service. It will cost more than $1 million.
Some speakers also suggested the increase includes a raise for Nielson in 2023 – from $80,000 to $105,000 – but the higher number actually represents a full year of pay, rather than the partial year in 2022 (as Nielson started in March) as well as a proposed 10% cost-of-living adjustment for all Summit County employees.
Nielson is hopeful the staffing changes will improve fire crews’ response times and allow the Fire District to reposition resources to the fire stations in Wanship and Henefer, which are not staffed and are in need of significant repairs. With only one station in Coalville, it can take the North Summit Fire District up to 30 minutes to arrive on the scene. The standard response time for rural areas is 14 minutes.
The fire chief is also working to enhance training for firefighters to include emergency medical services as 80% of calls are medical related, and to replace outdated equipment. Nielson acknowledged residents’ concerns, but has said he needs additional revenue to fix the problems.
Chris Robinson and Roger Armstrong, both county councilors and members of the Administrative Control Board, which is the governing body of the North Summit Fire District, said the way the Fire District has been operating is no longer working, prompting the need for change. Under the current plan, a person with a home valued around $100,000 pays around $32 a month for fire services, which is “absolutely unsustainable,” according to Armstrong.
Tonja Hanson, the latest member of the County Council, sympathized with residents. She lives in the North Summit Fire District boundaries and said her bill will increase by $682 next year. But Hanson urged residents to see the value in spending more for fire services by sharing her own experiences with a chimney fire in 1994.
“It was a fiasco. So for me, to pay an extra $600 a year is worth it because I’ve lived the nightmare. I was displaced from my home for months, my insurance went up. For years, I would open up a box or something in my house and I would smell smoke,” she said. “I look at it through a different lens, and I think, folks, you need to look at it from that different lens because it can happen to anybody. It happens.”
The County Council did not vote on the tax increase Wednesday, opting to continue the discussion next week so Nielson can provide more information about the payroll breakdown. It’s scheduled to take place around 4:10 p.m. on Dec. 14 at the Sheldon Richins Building in Kimball Junction.