[Normal]

Originally Posted by Bill14564

- The SCFEMS budget for last year was about $19M and this year they asked for $28M.
- The new assessment and structure would bring in $35M but now, changing it back to the old amount and old structure, it will only bring in about $10M
- The $25M difference will likely be split evenly between the two departments, $12.5M each.
- Taking $12.5M from the SCFEMS budget will leave $15.5M which is about $3.5M LESS than last year.
- Announcing layoffs may only be an attempt to frighten the citizens but with expenses going up and income going down by $3.5M, the SCFEMS has to do something.

The VPSD will lose the same $12.5M but because their budget had a larger increase this year, even losing that amount they will have a little more than last year. Perhaps their proposed increase was to cover the hiring of additional staff which will not happen now.

It was the SCFEMS chief who mentioned the HazMat team.


If the IFD referendum has passed we would not have received notice about the $323.64 and the VPSD would not be involved with this. The IFD referendum locked in our fee at $124 and funded the VPSD out of the IFD. The VPSD would not have been part of the BoCC budget at all.

Now, SCFEMS would have been greatly affected but that's a larger discussion with more math.


That I do not know.

I imagine there is a mix of some volunteer fire stations and some regular city fire stations in that demographic. The obvious skew for the Villages is age vs volunteerism. A “healthy candidate” may not be dependable enough to meet physical qualifications for a satisfactory length of time. Therefore a volunteer fire department is most certainly out of the question if anything just on the factor of reliability of the required physical ability.