Cost numbers for fire reorganization work, county manager says

Nov. 25--HENDERSON -- The finances underlying a plan to break up the Vance County Fire Department's staff and reinforce volunteer fire departments appear sound, County Manager Jordan McMillen says.

"The numbers work," McMillen said, summarizing an analysis of the plan he and his staff forwarded just before the Thanksgiving holiday to members of the County Commissioners' public safety committee.

But "the bigger question the committee and ultimately the board [of county commissioners] will [decide] is, does it make sense," McMillen said, underscoring that elected officials have to sign off on a plan that calls for reassigning the Vance department's staff to some of the volunteer departments.

Suggested by the county's Fire Commission, the proposal would leave all the county's property owners on the hook for paying the salaries and benefits of the Vance department's 13 staff members, plus that of county fire marshal.

Six of the firefighters would go to work for the Bear Pond Rural Fire Department and another six would join the Hicksboro Volunteer Fire Department. The Vance department's chief, Chris Wright, would become an assistant fire marshal and help Fire Marshal Keith Duncan ride herd on fire services countywide.

All told, the county would pay about $1 million in salaries, benefits and operational costs for its half of the program. It now spends about $1.4 million for its own fire service.

Meanwhile, rural residents -- essentially, everyone outside the city of Henderson -- would also cover the costs of added paid part-time firefighters to five of the other six existing volunteer fire departments. Each would get the equivalent of two new positions, for 12 hours a day.

In practical terms the departments would need to recruit more than just two people apiece to fill the new jobs, as the idea is they'd have paid staff on hand every day to get fire trucks out the station-house door when 911 calls come in.

It will "take a number of people to make that work," McMillen said, adding that each of the volunteer departments would have to decide how to fill the positions and that it's likely some present-day volunteers could wind up getting paid for their labor if the plan goes through.

Officials would also set up a new volunteer department -- likely a reorganized and renamed Vance County Rescue Squad -- to cover the Goldenbelt fire district that rings all but the southwestern side of Henderson. The Vance County Fire Department covers Goldenbelt now.

Its volunteer replacement would get the same complement of paid part-timers and a $100,000 annual operating subsidy from the county like most of its counterparts. The new department would retain an existing subsidy for rescue services and would be in line for additional money because it'd take over responsibility for paying off a new fire truck the county has on order, McMillen said.

Funding for the volunteer-departments side of the plan would come from the county's fire district tax, which costs rural property owners 6.4 cents per $100 of assessed value. For them, the fire levy is a surcharge on top of the 89 cents per $100 all county property owners pay in taxes, whether or not their holdings are in the city of Henderson.

The plan's volunteer-departments side would cost a bit less than $1.6 million, more than the $1.1 million or so the county now collects each year from the fire tax.

Officials will have to decide how to fill that gap, a question the staff analysis glossed over for now. There'd be enough savings on the county department side of the plan to cover it, at the cost of enlarging city residents' subsidy of the rural fire service. Alternatively, officials could tinker with both the countywide and fire-district tax rates, lowering one and raising the other to redistribute the burden.

But one way or another, there's enough money in the pot already to cover all the anticipated annual expenses.

McMillen wasn't sure of that until he and other administrators sat down with members of the Fire Commission to go over the numbers underlying their reorganization proposal.

"Initially, I had some concerns, not knowing their assumptions," he said. "Once I understood their assumptions, their numbers work."

Among the assumptions is that the county would dip into fire-fund reserves to pay off a couple of debts, including one for a fire station near Kerr Lake.

The county also would give the Epsom and Drewry volunteer fire departments the same $100,000-a-year subsidy the other volunteer departments receive, though neither is actually based in Vance County.

Epsom is primarily a Franklin County department but covers part of southeast Vance County. Drewry likewise is based in Warren County but covers part of northeast Vance on the eastern shores of Kerr Lake.

Drewry would get a complement of paid part-timer firefighters under the plan, but Epsom wouldn't.

While the finances are clear, the practical effects on actual firefighting remain to be seen.

Advocates of the plan amongst the county's volunteer firefighters argue that the redistribution of personnel will speed the response to 911 calls in rural areas. But it's not clear, yet, whether that can be done without hurting response in areas closer to the city, particularly in the Goldenbelt district.

The county's service contracts with the volunteer departments are due for renegotiation by the summer and it's possible officials will "build in some performance measures" for the new ones, including one that addresses the service rating that insurance companies track to decide what to charge for a homeowner's policy, McMillen said.

Insurance ratings run from a meets-minimum-state-standards 9 up to a top-of-the-line 1. The city of Henderson's fire district is a 2, Bearpond's and Epsom's are 5s as of this fall, Drewry's is a 7 and the rest of the volunteer departments' are 9s.

The rating gauges not so much the skill of firefighters as the resources available to them, most notably water-pumping capacity.

The Goldenbelt fire district is now a 6, a rating local officials believe "would remain the same for approximately 18 months" following a reorganization, McMillen said.

He added that the volunteer departments in general are trying to improve their ratings but have to wait in line for inspections to verify their progress.

N.C. Department of Insurance regulators, in their training material, tell fire departments that the benefit to property owner insurance premiums lies mainly in moving from a 9 to a 6. Beyond that, insurance-company price quotes don't seem to vary.

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