Town pitches proposal to fire chiefs to keep local dispatch service
Town and municipal units fail to reach funding arrangement on issue
The Town of Yarmouth has sent a letter to fire chiefs of the volunteer fire departments that use its dispatch service, outlining options aimed at maintaining the local dispatch service.
One option involves dividing up the dispatch costs based on calls for service in each fire district. For many departments, this would be a significantly higher cost than what they have been paying.
Starting Oct. 1, the town is proposing to issue bills based on a five-year average of calls for service. As things stand, the departments are each paying about $1,200 a year. For a six-month billing period, the costs to the departments vary from a low of $76 for Richmond to a high of $ 42,140 for the Yarmouth Fire Department.
For some departments, the six-month bill would not be high: Hectanooga ($ 479), Lakes and District ($403) and Middle Upper Ohio ($555). For others, the bill would be steep in comparison to what they already pay – exam- ples include Meteghan ($9,280), Island and Barrington Passage ($ 10,365), Shelburne Fire Department ($10,768) and Woods and Shag Harbour ($15,509).
Another option the town is proposing would be to charge one extra cent on all taxable assessment for an area rate. “For the entire service area, this would raise most of the $260,000 needed to fund the service,” reads the letter. “For a family with a $ 100,000 home, that works out to $10/year.”
The letter says there could be an incorporation of both options, with fire departments billed for dispatch usage and having a taxable assessment kick in on April 1, which would bring down billing costs to the departments.
The town’s letter says the rates it has proposed are contingent on every department choosing to stay with the town’s dispatch service. If departments leave, the rates would have to be re-adjusted. The letter also says there may be a tipping point “at which the Town of Yarmouth might decide there is insufficient interest, and too high a cost, to continue to offer the service.”
See TOWN, A4