Erecting a fire wall

UA says no to ongoing funding for city service

Atask force of Fayetteville’s Town and Gown Advisory Committee is struggling with a question: Who should pay for fire protection for the campus and for the thousands of students, faculty and staff who swell the city’s population?

The task force has held two meetings now and doesn’t seem to be making much headway on an answer.

The Fayetteville Fire Department says its citywide call volume has increased and response times are slower than desired. The fire chief attributes the greater demand in part to the university’s rising enrollment. He has a point. From 2010 to 2014, Fayetteville’s population grew by about 6,000, according to the U.S. Census. In the same time frame, the university reported an enrollment increase of 5,000.

The fire department projects it will make 10,000 calls in the city this year, compared to just over 7,000 five years ago.

The conversation gets more complicated because only 400 of the calls so far this year have come from the campus. Fire Chief David Dayringer, a task force member, noted that many more calls come from students and university employees off campus. The department doesn’t know exactly how many; but Dayringer estimates the number at about 3,000, or 10 percent of the university population.

For a couple of years now, the city has been pitching the idea that the university should help resolve the fire department’s problem with slowed response times. The answer to that problem is money. Dayringer has said the city needs to expand or replace Station No. 2, located north of the university at 708 N. Garland. He specifically cites the addition of rent-by-the-bedroom apartment complexes in the core of Fayetteville as contributing to the need to enlarge facilities and hire a new 10-firefighter company.

Mike Johnson, associate vice chancellor for facilities at the university, told the task force last week the university would look into leasing land the university owns near the fire station at nominal cost to the city. Or the university might help the department buy a replacement engine or ladder.

The fire department wants more, enough to help build a fire station and help pay the ongoing costs of added firefighters.

The chief has suggested a fee of $3.50 per credit hour be imposed on students.

Half of the money would go to the fire department to build and staff a new, expanded fire station. The other half would go to University Police. Each agency could get roughly $1.4 million next year from student fees, according to Dayringer.

“We’re not going to be able to entertain that at this point,” Johnson said last week of the fee or any other continuous source of money from the university.

He made the point that students and faculty and other university employees pay sales and property taxes, just as any other consumers in the city’s population does. Even renters pay property taxes indirectly in their rents and everyone pays sales taxes.

Plus, Johnson cited the university’s economic impact, estimated at more than $900 million in Northwest Arkansas in 2014.

Truth is, the UA’s economic impact has everything to do with Fayetteville’s growth and with the resulting levels of sales and property tax receipts. That translates into revenue for all manner of city services, including fire protection.

Students probably shouldn’t have any greater responsibility for paying for their fire protection than any other segment of the population. But, because they can be assessed fees, the city sees a potential revenue source, one that could keep pumping money into the fire department.

Importantly, no matter what this task force might recommend, any fee hike would have to be approved by university officials and the UA Board of Trustees.

Johnson said the one-time cost for equipment or the lease of land the university already owns, maybe for a token $1 a year, are options he thinks “have resonance with the senior leadership.”

The idea of splitting the money from a fee with University Police might make the idea more palatable to the UA, but that does not answer the underlying question: Why should students pay anything more for fire protection than anyone else in the city?