Quote:
Originally Posted by Rainger99
Why does the Fire Department have a special assessment? Is there a special assessment for police, schools, libraries, roads, recreation, etc.?
I would think that the Fire Department is an essential service and should come out of the general budget and not be based on a special assessment.
The Sumter County Fire Chief said that this will result in a $12 million shortfall in a $24 million budget and the he will have to lay off 30 firefighters and abandon plans to hire 27 more employees. If we just had the revenue from last year ($124 per house), it doesn't seem like costs have gone up that much that we have to have such drastic measures.
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The schools have taxing authority. There is a separate line on your yearly bill for school tax. The others, I don't know.
Sure, take the money out of the general fund. That's my Possibility 1 above.
We all paid much more than $124 for fire protection last year. $124 was the assessment (and it turns out the assessment was way too low) but the amount transferred from the general fund to VPSD and the amount spent by SCFEMS was much greater than what the $124 brought in.
Costs have gone up. As more stations are added in the VPSD, more employees need to be hired. Wages have increased. Inflation has increased costs across the board. The VPSD pays management fees to the District and those have gone up. It looks like the VPSD budget increased by about 30% and the SCFEMS budget increased by about 50% over last year.
The VPSD budget is part of the VCCDD budget and can be found on the districtgov.org page. The SCFEMS budget is part of the Sumter County budget and can be found on the county webpage.