By an informal show of hands, Commissioners Anne Hines, Margaret Stinnett and Jim Thompson almost certainly assured a penny increase in Wake Forest’s property tax rate for next year.
The vote Tuesday night during the budget work session is not binding. The official vote will come next Tuesday when the commissioners can discuss again and must vote on a budget for 2014-2015. The budget has to be in place by July 1.
Commissioners Zachary Donahue and Greg Harrington voted against the penny increase – from 51 cents per $100 valuation to 52 cents.
The additional cent will be the first of two property tax raises – another penny next year – to staff and equip Station #4 on Jenkins Road. There is $1.6 million in the town’s fire impact fee fund which the commissioners can vote to give to the fire department to build the station.
Harrington challenged Fire Chief Ron Early to “convince me why Wake Forest residents should suffer from a tax increase” for a station on Jenkins Road that will also serve a large portion of the county’s rural fire district. The fact that the town provides between 80 and 90 percent of the Wake Forest Fire Department’s funding is a sore point for town officials and the commissioners.
“The Town of Wake Forest still would need four stations,” Early said. “We need those stations to cover the town responses.” Early said the goal for the intown response time had been agreed on between him and Town Manager Mark Williams. “We are still pushing the county to pay their share.”
Wake County could change the way it pays for fire service in unincorporated parts of the county based on a study underway that has not gotten far. “We have not even received the first draft,” Early said. He said the third party company doing the study is still looking for more information and data and Michael Wright, the director of the fire services division, “hesitated to give out any information.”
Early told Donahue that, of the 500 or so calls each year, the percentages were about even, 50-50, between the town and county areas. But he later expanded on that to say that given the rapid growth he anticipates in the town and the slower rate in the county area the balance will tip to a higher percentage of town calls.
“I don’t disagree with the need for the station,” Donahue said, “but I think it is premature to make that decision without that study.”
“It does greatly improve the coverage. It does benefit the town residents,” Early said. “My problem is with waiting. Time equals life. The wait will put residents in that much more deficit.” He said he does not want to see the loss of life or property because the station is not there. “We need it now, not tomorrow.”
“Is it worth the risk to wait that long?” Thompson asked.
Hines said it took eight minutes for Wake EMS to respond to a call for Bob Bridges, who died two weeks ago, and wondered if a faster response could have saved him. Bridges, vice president of the fire department board, lived on Capital Boulevard very near the intersection with Jenkins Road. The Wake Forest Fire Department was not called that day, apparently because the Bridges home is in the county.
“We don’t see the need for another station [after the one on Jenkins Road] for another ten years,” Early said.
Donahue said the recent budgets for the fire department have grown 50 percent more than those of the town’s police department.
Early said the fire department had only two stations in 2004. Since then it has added the Forestville Road and the Falls stations and purchased an aerial truck with the need for additional personnel and training.
Donahue said the additional penny on the tax rate may only mean $20 in a property tax bill, but, he said, the sales tax on electric retail sales went up and Wake County may increase its tax rate this year. He compared the cumulative effect to the frog in a pot of water who does not jump out as the water temperature climbs and boils to death.
“Mark and Aileen (Staples, the finance director) will make sure the pot doesn’t boil,” Early said.
Just before the vote, Harrington said it was the first time as a commissioner he had been faced with a tax increase. “It’s a tough decision.
After the vote, Williams expanded on why the town does not appoint members of the fire department’s board of directors. “We used to appoint two members to the board of directors back in the 1980s and 1990s. We owned some of their equipment. I attended all meetings.”
All that changed when the OSHA rules changed and treated local governments just like private companies, which included facing possible liability.
The League of Municipalities studied the change and made recommendations to towns and cities. Williams said, “The league said you ned to remove yourself from as much of those volunteer agencies as you can to keep you from being liable so the town does not end up paying fines.”
The fire department board amended its bylaws, the town stopped appointing board members but did begin appointing one town commissioner as an ex officio liaison, signed over the equipment and now stay “at arms’ length away from them,” Williams said. He added he had not been aware until Stinnett said it was true that the county still appoints one board member based on recommendations from community members.
Although there were questions about a few items, the only change made was to add $2,000 for the Wake Forest Historical Museum to be a primary sponsor of the Smithsonian traveling exhibit, “Hometown Teams,” which will be at the museum from May 16 to June 30 next year. Williams had budgeted $4,000 for outdoor lighting for the museum. Harrington said, “I think it would be a good thing” to be a sponsor, and Hines noted that the offerings at the museum are now “much broader than what they could offer when it was just the Birthplace Society.”
Note: Hines, who has been married to Mike Reeve for 18 years, officially changed her name recently as an anniversary present. The Gazette will refer to her after this week as Anne Hines Reeve and Hines-Reeve for a few months and then just as Reeve.
