BY MARK J. CRAWFORD
With the advertisements placed, Bradford County commissioners are ready to hold the requisite public hearing launching the implementation of special assessment fees for fire and emergency medical services.
The vote on Feb. 15 will not impose any assessments. It is the first step in the process of notifying the public of the board’s intent to pursue this method of fee collection beginning with the tax bills mailed in November 2024.
This move by the board is not a surprise as commissioners have discussed many times it is a last resort to fund a full-time fire rescue service, which remains largely unfunded despite raising property taxes to the 10-mill cap.
Lowering property taxes is another of the commission’s goals, and both promoting economic growth and diversifying revenue sources are part of the plan for doing so.
The unknown remains how much each assessment will cost property owners, and that will depend on the analysis of the consultants at Bryant Miller Olive, the same firm that made the calculations in 2018-19.
Then it will be up to the commission to do what it hasn’t been able to do because of both public and political opposition, and that is vote in favor of the special assessments. Voters have succeeded in defeating a fire assessment in the past, which hasn’t prevented some commissioners from feeling pressure to put it back on the ballot and letting the public decide again.
Commissioners were reluctant to let the county manager in 2019 hire a consultant for a special assessment study and went no further than the resolution they are considering again next week.
A lot has changed since then, and since 2001 when the public voted down a $45 fire assessment. The county fire departments were volunteer-based. The revenue would have paid for trucks, equipment and perhaps training. By 2018, the cost of adding full-time firefighters began adding up.
Now the county has a full-time fire department that supports EMS under the Bradford County Fire Rescue umbrella. The assessment calculated to fund the fire department in 2019 was more than $145 per residential dwelling unit. The consultant also looked at an assessment for emergency medical services, which came to more than $160 per dwelling unit.
These were the maximum amounts the commission could have levied in 2019. Commissioners could have adopted lower amounts as well, only partially closing the funding deficit in both departments.
Bryant Miller Olive’s calculations were based on apportioning the cost of fire and EMS services by demand. Finding around 60% of the calls for service originating from residential addresses, 60% of the cost of funding the service was apportioned to those properties.
Commercial properties were not charged by building unit but by square foot — 23 cents per square foot for fire and 17 cents for EMS.
When it came to vacant properties, they were only assessed for the fire fee because vacant properties typically don’t generate calls for EMS. The fire charge recommended was around $65, but the charge did not apply to agricultural properties. That means timber companies that own thousands of acres in Bradford County would not pay the assessments. Other exempt properties include government properties and, if the commission chooses, churches and nonprofits.
Municipal governments can opt in or out of the county collecting special assessments within their corporate limits. Starke was included in the 2019 EMS study but not in the fire assessment study because the city has its own fire department. If, however, Starke commissioners don’t agree to the collection of a special assessment, a lot of potential revenue for the county would be left on the table. Thousands of households would be free from the assessment, but so would all the commercial square footage that is concentrated in the city limits.
Even with the limitation, the consultant told the commission in 2018 that special assessments tend to be fairer and more equitable than property taxes, which a large percentage of the population can be immune from paying because of low property values and multiple tax exemptions.
A special assessment is not a fee that can be avoided by rejecting the service. Like taxes, special assessments are mandatory. Once imposed, all affected property owners are responsible for paying them. But special assessments are different from taxes in that the revenue is earmarked for a specific purpose and cannot be used for anything else, as is the case with the county’s garbage assessment.
The resolution before board on Feb. 15 will serve as notice that the board intends to collect the assessments on the upcoming tax bill. Nothing, however, is finalized until the rate structure is revealed and collection method decided. Every affected property owner will be notified by mail of a final public hearing, after which the commission will finalize its decision in the coming months.
The next meeting of the Bradford County Commission will be held at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 15.
