Council should vote no on fire district

To the editor:

I have had a few people ask my opinions as to why I would not want Hillsboro City Council to disband the Hillsboro Fire Department. I have tried to separate my opinions from emotions to give clear facts about the situation.

So let’s take a fresh look and see what kind of ideas we can come up with as to where to go from here.

Fiscal responsibility

We, as the City of Hillsboro, need to regain a grip upon our finances. There is no doubt about that. The spending that has gone on for years has not been within a responsible nature.

However, I don’t think that contracting with Paint Creek Fire District will result in any savings. I actually think that it may cost more than we can currently afford. I’ll get to some of those facts in just a second, but I quickly want to address the theory of fiscal responsibility (at least in how I see it). Being fiscally responsible actually contains the word responsible.

So, the answer is not to do things in haste, recklessly or in extreme. If I were having trouble paying the mortgage on my house, most would agree that the first order of business would not be to allow the bank to foreclose. That is not responsible. Revamping my finances, obtaining another job, seeking refinancing options, etc....would be more responsible measures.

When the fire/ems department is not fiscally sound, it is irresponsible to simply throw it away and contract those services out. As an aside that someone else voiced to me, outsourcing our fire/ems doesn’t help with the shop local campaign for Hillsboro.
Back to the facts. Here is why I think that it will cost more than what we can afford if we contract out the fire/ems service.

According to Gary Lewis, Hillsboro Auditor, the city received approximately $3,100,000 from the 1.5% income tax. Of this amount, $775,000 should be spent on the fire/ems department.

If we contract out for these services, we will still receive about the same amount of money.

So this is it, $775,000, is the bottom line in which we have to spend. Now lets look at what the individual costs are:

Paint Creek District Contract Fee - $600,000

Fire/EMS Building Mortgage - $135,000

Fire/EMS Building Insurance - $15,000

Fire/EMS Personnel Pensions - $???,???

Ongoing Legal Fees - $???,???

Even without having exact figures, it is easy to see that the total expense is more than the $775,000 that we have. Very difficult to say that there is a savings there with those numbers.

Moral responsibility

Council and Hillsboro City Administration has a moral responsibility to solve this problem. Everyone knows that to fix complex problems it takes time and effort.

If there is an easy solution, usually it is considered to be half-baked, incomplete or a Band-aid. We cannot afford to continue putting temporary Band-aids on our problems.

Real effort is needed here. It is a problem that has existed for a long time and it will take a long to fix. The efforts up to this point have been to either strong-arm the townships to join fire district where Hillsboro would be king or to force the townships away in an effort to strong-arm council into joining Paint Creek District. Those options were not what council authorized this administration to do.

Council’s resolution was to authorize the Safety Service Director to negotiate contracts with the surrounding townships. Those negotiations never really took place.

Truth

There are 88 counties in Ohio. Highland County has a population roughly consisting of 43,000 people. There are 14 other counties with similar populations as us (between 40,000 and 50,000).

Of those similar counties, only ONE has the county seat participating in a fire district. That would be Holmes county and Millersburg is the county seat. Millersburg isn’t a city, but rather a village. It has been a participant with the fire district since approximately 1975. As you can plainly see, this is not growing trend.

Now, I didn’t call the other 73 county commissioners offices because they are not of similar makeup to us and I thought it would be a waste of my time. So, if this is a growing trend, it isn’t within our demographics in Ohio. Maybe this works well for someone else, but no data supports it for us here.

Historical facts

Is it possible to still maintain our own fire department with all the other townships going away? I don’t know. The contracts were a vital part of paying the city’s bills. Not just in dollar amount, but in timing as well.

Those contracts were partly paid in January. This is an extremely important time for the budget. That money collected and the carryover are what pay the bills until income tax collections begin to roll in.

Looking at the fire/ems budgets going back to 2005, the lowest that it has been was $1,300,000. Across-the-board cuts would be needed along with substantial cuts to the fire/ems department.

Are we able to get ourselves into a budget that fits within our means while maintaining an acceptable level of service? I don’t know, but it should be known before there ever is given another chance to have this situation come to a vote.

Sincerely,
Terry Mikkelsen
Hillsboro