Area finds solution on funding fire crews

A simple solution is in the works to a long, complicated debate over how Jerome Township residents of a Dublin subdivision pay for fire services.

They probably will become residents of Washington Township, which has provided them with fire and emergency services for nine years without receiving tax revenue.

Both townships— and last night the Dublin City Council— signed off on a deal that will require the 37 or so property owners in part of the Tartan Ridge subdivision to start paying a fire tax to Washington Township.

The 9.63 mills will cost them $295 a year for every $100,000 of property value.

In exchange, Jerome will

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receive a one-time payment of $210,000 for a badly needed medic vehicle for its own fire department.

“I knew it could be worked out,” Jerome Township Trustee CJ Lovejoy said yesterday.

Union County commissioners are expected to add their OK to the deal, which would be the last stamp of approval.

Dublin annexed all 189 acres of Tartan Ridge at McKitrick and Jerome roads in 2005. Most of the homes, which range between $400,000 and $900,000, are in Washington Township, which provides Dublin with fire and emergency services. That includes all of Tartan Ridge.

Tartan Ridge is planned to eventually have 270 homes.

Jerome Township could not tax its own residents in Tartan Ridge after they were annexed to Dublin because its levy applies only to unincorporated areas.

The annexation had set up a community authority to collect fees from Tartan Ridge residents for government services. It called for all residents to pay a new fee for fire and EMS service. Washington Township officials objected because their residents of Tartan Ridge already paid a fire tax to their department.

In 2012, the authority assessed a fire-EMS fee on Jerome Township homeowners but collected a total of only $2,700. The authority said it would instead ask the Jerome residents to pay a bill for fire services equal to the annual average $1,200 thatWashington Township residents pay.

Most residents agreed, but in January, the Jerome Township trustees said they were working on another idea. They did not elaborate.

Tartan Ridge’s developer, Edwards Land Co., has paid Washington Township $45,000 since the land was annexed, Washington Township Trustee Denise Franz King said.

The majority of the former Jerome Township board had refused to release requests to transfer the Tartan Ridge property in their township to Washington Township.

After new trustees Lovejoy and Lonnie “Joe” Craft were elected in the fall and took the time to research the issue and discuss all options, the threemember board agreed to the transfer.

“I got a couple of good ones, a couple of guys who are really interested in the community,” longtime Trustee Ronald L. Rhodes said of Craft and Lovejoy. “We agreed that we had to find a solution that would benefit everyone.”

Rhodes said he had often disagreed with his former colleagues over the Tartan Ridge question.

Dublin and Edwards Land Co. will split the $210,000 payment to Jerome Township.

Lovejoy said it would take Jerome Township decades to get that much money from the small amount of taxes it receives from its few residents of Tartan Ridge homes.

King said the township would not seek back taxes from its newest Tartan Ridge residents.

“It’s not their fault that they were caught up in this,” she said.