South Summit Fire District's current budget is $728,000, and board members don’t think that’s enough for current and future bills.
“Most of the homes in Kamas Valley, in the Kamas district, will appraise for more than that,” said board member David Ure. “This last year, we had to borrow $400,000 out of our reserves, in order to cover our expenses.”
Ure said the fire district will be able to return some of the reserve funds, but the board doesn’t know how much.
So going forward, the board wants to raise taxes.
Residents in and around the Kamas Valley got their notices earlier this month that South Summit Fire will pursue Truth in Taxation, the state-mandated process when there’s a tax increase on the table. It will allow residents to provide public comment before any such increase is approved.
There’s an election Nov. 21 for two of the four board seats; however, the current board will be the one voting on the tax increase in December. New board members begin their terms in January.
Candidate Larry Leifson took to Facebook when he received the tax notification.
“Make sure you know who you’re voting for,” he wrote. “I am not in favor of tripling your taxes!”
Leifson is not one of the incumbent candidates, so he won’t be voting on the tax increase either way. Neither will candidate Thayne Stembridge. Neither responded to multiple requests for comment as of Nov. 14.
Ure and fellow candidate Julie Black are incumbents, so they will be voting on the tax increase. Black didn’t respond to requests for comment either, but she did weigh in on Facebook to correct Leifson’s math.
He had initially posted that it was a 300% increase, but Black clarified what’s being proposed is a 183% increase, which would result in a 2.8 times higher tax payment. The tax rate would change from 0.000283 to 0.0008.
Leifson has since edited his post to remove the claim about a 300% tax increase.
For Ure’s part, he said the proposed increase is likely steeper than what the board would actually approve. He said he wants to leave as much money in constituents’ pockets as possible.
“I am a taxpayer. I know how dang hard it is,” he said. “But sometimes you have to bite the bullet for the safety and welfare of the constituency to get it done and protect them.”
He said the tax increase would pay for current staffing, a future full-time fire chief and help build emergency medical services so the district no longer needs to contract with other departments for ambulance service.
Summit County is reorganizing EMS, which the Park City Fire District has run countywide for years, to provide a basic level of ambulance service as state law requires.
The county’s three fire districts will eventually handle their own EMS, but South Summit doesn’t have the resources to do so immediately, which some have seen as essentially forcing a tax increase.
The North Summit Fire District upped taxes 300% last year, which stung taxpayers but put the department in a better position to provide its own EMS and pay full-time staff.
South Summit Fire is considered all-volunteer, though some are paid when they respond to emergencies or are on-call. The fire district brought on almost a dozen new recruits this year, which was one of the reasons it dipped into reserve funds.
And Ure says three out of every four volunteers work day jobs outside the Kamas Valley, which hampers the district’s ability to respond. He says that drives up insurance costs.
“Now, this is my own assumption here, but I'm almost willing to bet that the increase in taxes will offset the cost of insurance premiums,” Ure said.
He acknowledged his seat on the board might be more secure if the board proposed the tax increase after the election, but he said it’s the right thing to do right now to plan for growth in the valley.
“So if they throw me out, they throw me out. But everything will have already been put into place,” Ure said.
It’s not a done deal yet: there are public hearings Nov. 27 and Dec. 13 at 6:30 p.m. at South Summit Fire Station 41. Only after public comment will the board decide whether to raise taxes, and if so, by how much.
