‘up to date’

By BRAD BRYAN | Special correspondent

Greg Hutson doesn’t care for blogging. To the West Salem deputy fire chief, blog isn’t short for “Web log.” It stands for “basic lack of guts.”

He said he hasn’t read online responses to the letter penned by himself, Chief Dave Munson, Assistant Chief David McClintock and other 33 firefighters in the department, posted on the Coulee News Web site and culled from the June 18 print edition.

The letter claims the village of West Salem treated the fire department unfairly when it rebuffed its 2007 budget.

Anonymous detractors — Hutson calls them cowards too afraid to attach their names to their comments — criticized how the fire department spends its money and slung other varieties of cyber-mud by the fistful.

Proponents said the department’s 35 members are under-compensated and provide a valuable community service that needs to be fully funded.

Irrespective of the conversation, the West Salem Fire Protection District seeks $388,531 from West Salem and the towns of Barre and Hamilton and voters must decide whether to fund the cash-strapped fire department or force two of the municipalities to go back to their budgets and find other ways to fund — or not to fund — their fire department.

Officials estimated that the impact of the 12 percent increase on taxpayers would be $42 per $100,000 of assessed value, meaning a homeowners with an assessed value of $100,000 would see the village’s portion of their taxes increase by $42. That figure could go down, however, when the state comes out with its updated equalized property values.

Historical lag

Last year, the fire protection district sent a budget with a 40 percent increase to the municipalities it cover — West Salem, and the towns of Barre and Hamilton.

It included the final payment on a pumper truck and an installment on a $120,000 remodeling project that gave the station a facelift, made it ADA compliant, provided some improved administrative office space and a number of other updates.

That request was rejected. Municipalities said they couldn’t find room in their budgets.

“We said we can’t do it,” said West Salem Village Administrator Teresa Schnitzler. “It was just such an increase that three municipalities couldn’t handle it in their budgets.”

That would have taken nearly all of the West Salem’s 2 percent levy increase (less $2,000).

It was much the same for Barre and Hamilton.

The town of Barre, which has traditionally made payments to the fire protection district early and has been able to keep the fire district’s June 30 to July 1 budget cycle afloat, will not hold a referendum. For officials in West Salem and the town of Hamilton, though, there seemed to be no other choice.

“We’ve been falling behind over the years,” said Hutson, of the fire department’s struggle to keep equipment in step with state and federal requirements. Although the village has grown in the years he’s been with the department, the fire department’s growth and improvements have remained flat.

While Holmen has added full-time staff, West Salem is still 100 percent paid on-call. Hutson said his department could also benefit from full-time staff, but given the department’s funding challenges, that doesn’t seem possible.

The need for boots, helmets and tools that save lives, supersede staffing requests, Hutson said.

On the scene

A walk through the facility Friday revealed a handsome exterior, gleaming new administrative offices, a modern common area and ADA compliant washrooms. Along with the cosmetic improvements, piles of boxes filled with turn-out gear and helmets sat unpacked near the door.

They were replacements to gear — worn by firefighters for as long as a dozen years — in sore need of replacement.

“Some of our stuff was pretty well beat and couldn’t be used,” Hutson said. “If any of our guys ever got hurt and you look at when this stuff was made, you’re looking at a lawsuit.”

Hutson said the National Fire Protection Agency requires firefighters have new gear every 10 years. Prior to last week, some turn-out gear worn by West Salem firefighters was as many as 15 years old.

The fire station is a former car dealership constructed in the 1930s or 40s. Hutson said designers tried to make the exterior fit in with other improvements made to the village’s downtown. The River Valley Newspaper Group building just down the block was an inspiration, he said.

Merlin Wehrs, secretary-treasurer of the fire protection district said that necessary updates — totaling about $200,000 since 1999 — to the exterior saved energy and therefore money over the long run.

The math

For West Salem taxpayers, it’s the $116,343 that may be the hardest pill to swallow.

But getting to that amount seems to more a matter of circumstance than any act of negligence.

“I wouldn’t say anyone dropped the ball,” said Schnitzler. “In order to fund this 18-month budget to put them on a calendar-year budget and to pay off their prior debt, the referendum needs to pass.”

Officials estimated that the impact of the 12 percent increase on taxpayers would be $42 per $100,000 of assessed value, meaning a homeowner with an assessed value of $100,000 would see the village’s portion of their taxes increase by $42. A property owner whose home was assessed at $200,000 would see the village portion of his or her taxes increase by $84, and so on.

The fire protection district’s budget increase comes amid loan payments and the switch from a June-to-July fiscal year to calendar year budget cycle.

To align itself with other budgets, it’s been put in the position of passing an 18-month budget. Add to that the items trimmed from the previous budget, the pumper truck payment, remodeling loan installment and $94,000 in short-term borrowing to cover the previous 6 months, and the $388,000 figure easily adds up.

“It’s about time we got it straight,” Wehrs said. “It isn’t that anyone did anything wrong, it’s just something to get us back on track.”

“It’s a lot, but it would clean the slate for them,” Schnitzler said.

Voting yes or no

When going to the polls Nov. 4, Hutson said voters need to ask themselves two questions: Do they want to have fire protection? And do they want their insurance rates to go up?

Discovering the economic difference between having fire protection and not having it requires only a phone call to an insurance agent.

The outcome of a failed referendum appears uncertain at best. In an all-or-nothing scenario as has been proposed, municipalities would go back to their budgets to find other ways, making other cuts, to fund the fire district’s request.