In spite of the handful of vocal morons that do not get it, this proposal is the first thoughtful analysis that offers a reasonable solution to what is otherwise is a complex problem fraught with vested interests who care nothing about serving the taxpayers with high quality fire rescue and paramedic services at a lower overall cost and with substantially higher performance. For the vested interests it is all about maintaining the status quo and so it will be until we as a community tell our political leaders its time for a change.
Some chiefs, politicians push for single Travis County fire department
By Farzad Mashhood
-
American-Statesman Staff
In the small northwest Travis
County village of Volente, the fire department spent $4,335 per call
last year. Meanwhile, the average fire department call in the
Pflugerville area cost $1,637. The department near Lake Travis that
includes Lakeway spent $2,330 per call.
The disparities illustrate the patchwork system of 13 fire departments serving Travis County, outside the city of Austin, where about a quarter-million people live. Some departments contend with an eroding tax base as Austin grows and annexes land formerly taxed by fire districts. And tax revenue varies widely depending on property values and the population in each district.
As poorer departments struggle to balance their budgets, one chief is pushing for a countywide department that would pool the 13 emergency services districts’ tax revenues to run a single department. Unified fire protection would give residents equal service across the county while cutting back on the overhead associated with running many departments, each with separate administrations and different training, staffing and equipment standards. The plan could also provide a remedy for diminishing revenues by taxing Austin residents to subsidize fire service outside the city, similar to taxes Austin property owners pay for sheriff’s patrols.
But some chiefs don’t want a single department pooling all the tax revenue — projected to total about $44 million in 2013 — calling it a “Robin Hood” plan that takes away revenue from wealthier districts to subsidize poorer ones with lower property values.
The disparity cleaves along a familiar divide, between the historically poorer eastern side of the county and the wealthier western half: West of Interstate 35, the departments handle 44 percent of calls countywide and collect about twice as much tax revenue as the departments east of the interstate.
The consolidation plan, quietly introduced by Emergency Services District No. 11 Fire Chief Ken Bailey, gained some traction with county commissioners when, in a May 21 meeting, they directed staffers to look into the proposal and possibly hire a consultant to study it more fully.
Merging the districts would make Travis County unique among large counties in Texas.
“We’re looking at providing a universal level of care in Travis County. I’m not proposing reducing service in one area to subsidize service in another area. Rather, with excess dollars, we can improve service” in parts of the county with less tax revenue, Bailey said.
The single fire service would also have its own paramedic and ambulance service, freeing up about $12 million the county spends on Austin/Travis County Emergency Medical Services, the city-run ambulance service.
Single county fire department?
Consolidation would benefit some service areas, such as Bailey’s district in southeastern Travis County that would get back more money than taxpayers in the district pay. But richer areas would pay much more than they’d get back.
“I think the idea of unifying the fire service is good, but the financial aspects don’t work for us,” said Chief Mike Elliott of Emergency Services District No. 9, mostly in West Lake Hills and Rollingwood. “I can’t go to my taxpayers and say, ‘I’m going to raise your taxes by a cent and a half, and you’re not going to get anything for it, and, actually, we’re going to reduce your service slightly.”
Elliott’s district, where homes have an average taxable value of $730,000, has the lowest tax rate among districts in the county, 8.45 cents per $100 of property valuation, and is one of only three to charge less than the state-imposed cap of 10 cents. Homeowners in that district have the highest average annual tax bill, however, of about $617.
Former county Commissioner Sarah Eckhardt, who recently resigned to run for county judge, called it “a model worthy of further exploration” in a May meeting. Other commissioners signaled their approval of looking into the plan further, but offered no opinions about the merits of the idea.
Commissioner Gerald Daugherty, whose Precinct 3 includes most of the districts in the western part of the county, told the American-Statesman he favored a unified fire service that would redistribute revenue “to take care of the areas that really do need the help.”
Excess revenue from some districts, as well as savings from consolidation, could increase the pool of money and stretch it further, though it’s not clear how much, Bailey said.
“If we continue to operate under the same funding structure, all you’re doing is transferring the misery,” said Ron Moellenberg, chief of Emergency Services District No. 2 in the Pflugerville area.
The 10-cent property tax cap is the real problem for districts seeing diminishing revenue, as it hinders raising more revenue as costs go up, Moellenberg said.
“When you talk about consolidation and mergers and one unified fire service, what you need to talk about philosophically is a level playing field, that everybody has the same access to resources throughout the county,” said Buddy Crane, who heads a 10-square-mile district in western Travis County, where property values are among the highest in the county.
A unified department, overseen by elected officials, would likely see more fiscal scrutiny than 13 small agencies each with five appointed board members.
Tale of two departments
Personnel costs in Volente, which has the smallest district in Travis County, are lean: The department pays a part-time fire chief, seven full-time firefighters and 17 part-timers.
Three firefighters are on duty at all times at the single station, which houses the village offices. There are no fire hydrants in the district so the department relies on former Mayor Jan Yenawine, a volunteer, to drive its 2,000-gallon water truck to fires.
Despite the struggles, there’s no evidence that this district, or other smaller districts in the county, are unable to provide adequate fire protection.
Just across Lake Travis from Volente, Emergency Services District No. 6 covers 200 square miles — including Lakeway, Bee Cave and Steiner Ranch — and has the largest budget in the county, with $11.5 million in revenue expected this year.
The department keeps at least four firefighters around the clock at three of its five stations, occasionally with a fifth, unlike most other county departments, which have three-person staffing at each station. During some shifts, firetrucks have a paramedic on board, also rare for the other departments, who can give a higher level of emergency care before an ambulance arrives. Lake Travis Fire Rescue also keeps a 28-foot fire boat in Lake Travis and responds to most emergencies on the lake.
The current emergency services district system “works for some (areas). It does not work for the county as a whole. As a first responder to fire, flood and emergency medical, it is a very fractured and lumpy system,” said Eckhardt, who is making consolidation a central part of her early campaign for county judge.
“You get a fairly wide spectrum on response times, a fairly wide spectrum on per-incident cost, a wide spectrum on training levels, property tax revenue and sales tax revenue,” Eckhardt said.
Andy Brown, the other Democratic candidate for county judge, has also said he supports consolidation. “We need to increase communication and decrease bureaucracy by having a countywide system so more dollars go directly to capacity and the trained responders our safety depends on,” Brown said this week.
Funding squeeze
As Austin and other cities with their own fire departments annex unincorporated areas, the loss in service area for emergency services districts doesn’t necessarily equate to lower costs.
“Once you commit to having a professional fire service it costs you X amount of dollars to open the doors and to operate no matter if you have one call or 500 calls. … You still have to pay for insurance, the truck, personnel, the whole thing,” said Chief Walter Groman of the Volente district.
This year, to counteract a recent annexation by Cedar Park that took about 30 percent of the Volente district’s tax base, Groman is relying on reserves for about 20 percent of the department’s $884,000 budget.
At Lake Travis Fire Rescue, officials worry about Austin’s imminent annexation of subdivisions such as River Place, which would take away $600,000 in property tax revenue and is proposed to happen in 2017.
Fire departments, meanwhile, have tried to find new sources of revenue. County commissioners this year rejected a plan proposed by residents in the Pflugerville district that would have allowed the department to double property tax revenue by establishing a second, overlapping district. In Travis County, nine departments collect sales tax, with the Volente department winning approval last month.
Efforts in the Legislature to expand the 10-cent sales tax cap have failed in the past, and this year, a joint bill in the House and Senate proposed creating a new type of fire district without a tax cap. That bill failed.
The disparities illustrate the patchwork system of 13 fire departments serving Travis County, outside the city of Austin, where about a quarter-million people live. Some departments contend with an eroding tax base as Austin grows and annexes land formerly taxed by fire districts. And tax revenue varies widely depending on property values and the population in each district.
As poorer departments struggle to balance their budgets, one chief is pushing for a countywide department that would pool the 13 emergency services districts’ tax revenues to run a single department. Unified fire protection would give residents equal service across the county while cutting back on the overhead associated with running many departments, each with separate administrations and different training, staffing and equipment standards. The plan could also provide a remedy for diminishing revenues by taxing Austin residents to subsidize fire service outside the city, similar to taxes Austin property owners pay for sheriff’s patrols.
But some chiefs don’t want a single department pooling all the tax revenue — projected to total about $44 million in 2013 — calling it a “Robin Hood” plan that takes away revenue from wealthier districts to subsidize poorer ones with lower property values.
The disparity cleaves along a familiar divide, between the historically poorer eastern side of the county and the wealthier western half: West of Interstate 35, the departments handle 44 percent of calls countywide and collect about twice as much tax revenue as the departments east of the interstate.
The consolidation plan, quietly introduced by Emergency Services District No. 11 Fire Chief Ken Bailey, gained some traction with county commissioners when, in a May 21 meeting, they directed staffers to look into the proposal and possibly hire a consultant to study it more fully.
Merging the districts would make Travis County unique among large counties in Texas.
“We’re looking at providing a universal level of care in Travis County. I’m not proposing reducing service in one area to subsidize service in another area. Rather, with excess dollars, we can improve service” in parts of the county with less tax revenue, Bailey said.
The single fire service would also have its own paramedic and ambulance service, freeing up about $12 million the county spends on Austin/Travis County Emergency Medical Services, the city-run ambulance service.
Single county fire department?
Consolidation would benefit some service areas, such as Bailey’s district in southeastern Travis County that would get back more money than taxpayers in the district pay. But richer areas would pay much more than they’d get back.
“I think the idea of unifying the fire service is good, but the financial aspects don’t work for us,” said Chief Mike Elliott of Emergency Services District No. 9, mostly in West Lake Hills and Rollingwood. “I can’t go to my taxpayers and say, ‘I’m going to raise your taxes by a cent and a half, and you’re not going to get anything for it, and, actually, we’re going to reduce your service slightly.”
Elliott’s district, where homes have an average taxable value of $730,000, has the lowest tax rate among districts in the county, 8.45 cents per $100 of property valuation, and is one of only three to charge less than the state-imposed cap of 10 cents. Homeowners in that district have the highest average annual tax bill, however, of about $617.
Former county Commissioner Sarah Eckhardt, who recently resigned to run for county judge, called it “a model worthy of further exploration” in a May meeting. Other commissioners signaled their approval of looking into the plan further, but offered no opinions about the merits of the idea.
Commissioner Gerald Daugherty, whose Precinct 3 includes most of the districts in the western part of the county, told the American-Statesman he favored a unified fire service that would redistribute revenue “to take care of the areas that really do need the help.”
Excess revenue from some districts, as well as savings from consolidation, could increase the pool of money and stretch it further, though it’s not clear how much, Bailey said.
“If we continue to operate under the same funding structure, all you’re doing is transferring the misery,” said Ron Moellenberg, chief of Emergency Services District No. 2 in the Pflugerville area.
The 10-cent property tax cap is the real problem for districts seeing diminishing revenue, as it hinders raising more revenue as costs go up, Moellenberg said.
“When you talk about consolidation and mergers and one unified fire service, what you need to talk about philosophically is a level playing field, that everybody has the same access to resources throughout the county,” said Buddy Crane, who heads a 10-square-mile district in western Travis County, where property values are among the highest in the county.
A unified department, overseen by elected officials, would likely see more fiscal scrutiny than 13 small agencies each with five appointed board members.
Tale of two departments
Personnel costs in Volente, which has the smallest district in Travis County, are lean: The department pays a part-time fire chief, seven full-time firefighters and 17 part-timers.
Three firefighters are on duty at all times at the single station, which houses the village offices. There are no fire hydrants in the district so the department relies on former Mayor Jan Yenawine, a volunteer, to drive its 2,000-gallon water truck to fires.
Despite the struggles, there’s no evidence that this district, or other smaller districts in the county, are unable to provide adequate fire protection.
Just across Lake Travis from Volente, Emergency Services District No. 6 covers 200 square miles — including Lakeway, Bee Cave and Steiner Ranch — and has the largest budget in the county, with $11.5 million in revenue expected this year.
The department keeps at least four firefighters around the clock at three of its five stations, occasionally with a fifth, unlike most other county departments, which have three-person staffing at each station. During some shifts, firetrucks have a paramedic on board, also rare for the other departments, who can give a higher level of emergency care before an ambulance arrives. Lake Travis Fire Rescue also keeps a 28-foot fire boat in Lake Travis and responds to most emergencies on the lake.
The current emergency services district system “works for some (areas). It does not work for the county as a whole. As a first responder to fire, flood and emergency medical, it is a very fractured and lumpy system,” said Eckhardt, who is making consolidation a central part of her early campaign for county judge.
“You get a fairly wide spectrum on response times, a fairly wide spectrum on per-incident cost, a wide spectrum on training levels, property tax revenue and sales tax revenue,” Eckhardt said.
Andy Brown, the other Democratic candidate for county judge, has also said he supports consolidation. “We need to increase communication and decrease bureaucracy by having a countywide system so more dollars go directly to capacity and the trained responders our safety depends on,” Brown said this week.
Funding squeeze
As Austin and other cities with their own fire departments annex unincorporated areas, the loss in service area for emergency services districts doesn’t necessarily equate to lower costs.
“Once you commit to having a professional fire service it costs you X amount of dollars to open the doors and to operate no matter if you have one call or 500 calls. … You still have to pay for insurance, the truck, personnel, the whole thing,” said Chief Walter Groman of the Volente district.
This year, to counteract a recent annexation by Cedar Park that took about 30 percent of the Volente district’s tax base, Groman is relying on reserves for about 20 percent of the department’s $884,000 budget.
At Lake Travis Fire Rescue, officials worry about Austin’s imminent annexation of subdivisions such as River Place, which would take away $600,000 in property tax revenue and is proposed to happen in 2017.
Fire departments, meanwhile, have tried to find new sources of revenue. County commissioners this year rejected a plan proposed by residents in the Pflugerville district that would have allowed the department to double property tax revenue by establishing a second, overlapping district. In Travis County, nine departments collect sales tax, with the Volente department winning approval last month.
Efforts in the Legislature to expand the 10-cent sales tax cap have failed in the past, and this year, a joint bill in the House and Senate proposed creating a new type of fire district without a tax cap. That bill failed.
What is an emergency services district?
Emergency services districts are political subdivisions allowed by state law in 1989 to provide fire and emergency medical service, typically in unincorporated areas and small cities.
There are 280 districts in 84 counties, according to data from the state comptroller’s office. Most districts in Travis County were created in the 1990s.
Voters in a particular area need to vote to create a district, which can tax up to 10 cents of $100 of property value. Districts can also levy up to two cents of sales tax, by permission of voters.
A five-member board of directors, appointed by county commissioners, oversees each district, approving its budget, appointing its fire chief and setting its policies.
Emergency services districts are political subdivisions allowed by state law in 1989 to provide fire and emergency medical service, typically in unincorporated areas and small cities.
There are 280 districts in 84 counties, according to data from the state comptroller’s office. Most districts in Travis County were created in the 1990s.
Voters in a particular area need to vote to create a district, which can tax up to 10 cents of $100 of property value. Districts can also levy up to two cents of sales tax, by permission of voters.
A five-member board of directors, appointed by county commissioners, oversees each district, approving its budget, appointing its fire chief and setting its policies.
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