Big Day

It is Tuesday. That means county commission day and today will be a fun one, as they have been recently.

I expect to see a room full of people for the 1pm public workshop on the Fire Services fee.

Social media has been on fire (pun intended) recently over this increase in the MSBU. Nothing gets people riled up more than increases in their taxes. I expect residents to be out in full force today to push back on the fees. We shall see.

But lets dive into it.

During the June 10, 2025 meeting, Chief Stevens presented the board with a few different options for fire services. Currently, fire services is paid for via a MSBU and a MSTU. The MSBU is a fee placed on each dwelling. Homes are currently charged $79 each. Commercial buildings are charged per square foot. The MSTU is currently set at .578 mils and is based on the property value assessment. That means it costs 58 cents per $1000 in property value. A $200k assessed home will pay $116 per year in the MSTU, so a total of $195.

The options discussed below are for the MSBU. Without getting too technical, MSBU are taxing units separate from property taxes. One can be increased without the other increasing. That is the case here. Chief Stevens is proposing an increase in the MSBU. The BOCC already voted to not change the MSTU millage.

Here are the options.

Option 1: $100 MSBU

Option 2: $125 MSBU

Option 3: $150 MSBU

Now there was a 4th and 5th option that was not really discussed since I do not think it is on the table, but worth mentioning here since they were included in the mailings home.

This is increasing the MSBU to $$175 and $232 respectively. The study conducted by Fire Services suggested these fees as options. Chief Stevens asked for them to remain beyond the initial hearing so that they could implement them if they desired to do so. If the BOCC only approved the 3 options above, the $175 and $232 is out of the discussion.

So keeping it in there, even if not talking about it, keeps that door open.

My guess here is the board will say "The study showed we could have increased them to $232, but we chose to do a lesser option". But I don't think they go with either of these options, so we won't discuss them much.

Here is what this will look like revenue wise.

Keep in mind this is ONLY the MSBU. The MSTU, while not changed, will increase a bit as well (I can't find that number) due to the property values increasing. But for now, we are talking the MSBU, since that will be the hot topic today.

As you can see from the data above, Fire Services will get additional revenue from the MSBU. Chief Stevens has said this is needed to get 3 firefighters on each engine. At current staffing, there are only 2 firefighters per engine. So this will help bring in additional revenue to cover the staffing shortfall.

Chief Stevens also said that apparatus funding is falling behind. These are things like equipment for the fire fighters, hoses, etc. Everything they would need to do their jobs. This is due in part to the equipment being older and not replaced as often and costs to replace the equipment are going up.

Also, there was talk about fire stations. Currently, the newest station is 23 years old. The oldest is over 50 years old. When these stations were built, they were built for volunteers as the fire department was largely volunteer. They were not built for full time staffing for a full time fire station. So renovations would be needed in many of them as well as potentially new ones.

The charts shown were to show how Citrus compares with other fire departments in the surrounding area. It shows that we are underfunding out fire services compared to other counties.. However, that is just the MSBU. That does not include the MSTU, which Commissioner Finegan pointed out. I am not sure if that changes anything if we include the MSTU, but funding certainly increases.

That said, the board discussion was mostly around option 1 and 2. This would increase the MSBU by $21 or $46 per home per year. There was not much appetite to go beyond that, even as Commissioner Davis suggested that we have neglected things for so long it's time to get them fully funded. Commissioner Kinnard said he was against the 3rd option as well.

One thing of note, Commissioner Barek asked questions about the growth and if the new houses being approved were factored into the equation. There was not a clear answer from Chief Stevens as its impossible to know how many houses are actually going to be built, but he did factor in growth, I assume by the rate we have seen recently.

Commissioner Kinnard chimed in on that and suggested that we will start seeing staff ask developers how much they are willing to pay towards increasing fire services, either new stations or more employees to cover the number of homes that they are adding. He sounded pretty certain that they will get developers to contribute to fire stations.

Good idea, in theory, but will they hold them to it? Remember, they did not ask Metro for more money for Tuscany just a month later. Metro was required to build a station as part of the original agreement back in the 80s. The county and BOCC could have asked them to foot the bill for the entire station in order to get approval.. but they didn't. Will BOCC be willing to put their foot down on this? We shall see.

To wrap all this up. I think the BOCC ends up going with their original plan of option 1 or option 2. That is not going to make them the most popular people in that room, but I do agree that expansion is needed and the only real way of paying for it is via the MSBU. I do not think they currently have an option to pull money from elsewhere.

They might be able to come up with over $1m for option 1 but cutting things like consultants, but I don't see them coming up with $3m for the 2nd option, without increasing the MSBU.

One interesting thing floating out there that may help... The Sales Tax. I will go into more on this later, but it is possible to implement the sales tax and have a portion go towards public safety. That would enable to BOCC to reduce the MSBU/MSTU and other millage and use the sales tax as funding mechanism... which makes sense, because like roads, tourists also use public services like Fire and police.