Franklin County nears decidion on MSBU increases

County commissioners feel they may have reached a fair agreement with local fire departments on increased MSBU assessments, but the commission says it wants to hear from its constituents before taking a final vote on the issue in two weeks. Local volunteer fire departments are seeking an increase in the amount homeowners and business owners pay to fund the departments and medical rescue units. Every homeowner in the county currently pays 42 dollars to fund fire departments; businesses pay 75 dollars a year, while motels and mobile home parks pay a maximum of about 300 dollars a year. The problem is the assessments are not enough to fully fund the fire departments’ budgets. Firefighters say with the current assessments fire departments are seeing budget shortfalls ranging from 600 dollars a year for Dog Island to nearly 90 thousand dollars a year for St. George Island – those shortfalls have to be made up through fund-raisers like the annual chili cook-off on St. George Island and rib cook-off in Eastpoint. And the problem is bigger than just current budget shortfalls. Because of the ever increasing number of regulations and requirements and because the costs on everything from fire trucks to equipment to training goes up almost every year it is becoming more expensive every year to operate a fire department , yet the amount local property owners pay for fire service has remained unchanged since 2001. Not only that, but volunteer firefighters are now performing more services, ranging from first responder care to water rescue and that increases their costs even further. Fire departments have now requested that the county commission approve an increase in MSBU assessments to 57 dollars for homeowners, and 100 dollars for businesses. They also want a new assessment on vacant parcels of land which they say make up 70 percent of the fire calls they respond to. They were seeking an assessment of 12 dollars per vacant lot. County commissioners agreed that the fire departments need more money but not quite as much as the departments were seeking. On Tuesday the board said they would be willing to raise the MSBU for homeowners to 50 dollars instead of 57 and to 100 dollars for businesses. The board also agreed in principle to increase the minimum trailer parks and motels pay to 100 dollars with a maximum annual payment of 500 dollars for motels and 375 dollars for trailer parks. The most contentious item was the new assessment on vacant lots – the board did agree to an assessment of 10 dollars per lot, not the 12 dollars the fire departments were hoping for. But none of the higher assessments are final yet – the county commission tabled their final decision until their next meeting on August the 18th. They said they want to take the next two weeks to consider the increases further and to publish the proposed increases in the local newspaper so that voters can have a chance to comment on them.