City considers modest fire assessment hike

A modest increase in the Sebring's fire assessment rate may be in the cards for city residents and nursing home facilities, accompanied by a downward shift in the city's tax rate.

While nothing is official it was the consensus of the city council, by a 3-2 margin during a budget workshop on Tuesday, to raise the fire assessment rate to the 2 percent level.

Councilmen Scott Stanley and John Clark proposed increasing the assessment to a 5 percent level. Council President John Griffin and council members Margie Rhoades and Bud Whitlock indicated preference of the 2 percent level.

"It wasn't a vote so they haven't officially gone to 2 percent," said City Clerk Kathy Haley on Thursday. "That's what my minutes will reflect."

City Administrator Scott Noethlich explained Thursday the whole issue came about as a result of a requirement by the state legislature for cities, statewide, to reduce their ad valorem taxes. The city needed to continue funding its fire department.

Noethlich said that this change, if adopted, raises the fire assessment rate for residential property from $3 per year to $6 per year, but it would be accompanied by an adjusted ad valorem tax rate (or millage) drop from 5.5204 per $1,000 assessed value to 5.4966.

Nursing home facilities are the only other ones affected by the change, raising fire assessment rates from 2 cents per square foot to 4 cents per square foot under roof.

Including residential and nursing homes, there are six categories in all, with commercial, industrial/warehouse, institutional and land.

At 2 percent, fire assessments on commercial, industrial/warehouse and institutional facilities remain unchanged at 1 cent per square foot. However they stand to benefit because their ad valorem taxes would go down.

After a public hearing in August 2008, the city implemented at a 10 percent funding level, but elected to ease into funding the fire assessment at the 1 percent level.

"They can't fund it above 10 percent without re-noticing the public followed by a public hearing," said Noethlich. "The public that spoke at the hearing was opposed to funding at 100 percent and implementing at 1 percent.

"Some people who spoke (at the August 2008 public hearing) didn't want a fire assessment at all. Those were going to be the non-profits. But the idea of a fire assessment is to spread the cost (of fire protection and services) more evenly - to everyone who benefits from having a fire department."

Funding costs are based upon records of call volume.

"Nursing homes pay more per square foot because they had a greater call volume due to they have more calls for medical services," said Noethlich. "They could perhaps reduce their fire assessment by not paging out the fire department - in effect - if they had someone on call to respond to those."

City documents indicated at the 1 percent funding level the city implemented in August 2008, it realized revenue of $71,152 for 2008 - 2009 and at 2 percent funding it would realize estimated revenue of $87,438 for 2009 - 2010.

Potentially if implemented at 100 percent fire assessments on residential property fire assessments could climb to $259 per year; 11 cents per square foot for commercial; 3 cents per square foot for industrial/warehouse; 30 cents per square foot for institutional; $1.99 for nursing homes and $36 for land.

In theory, if the fire assessment was implemented at 100 percent the city fire department could nearly be self-funded, Noethlich said.