Deleting fire fee cap from laws would help local finances

Taking the matter up prior to its April 12 regular meeting during the Committee of the Whole, the Boyd Village Board mulled whether to strike language from Section 5-2-12 (b) (2) of the village ordinances, which language limits the amount the village can collect for fire calls to $1,000.

As it stands, the village ordinance obligating property owners to pay the Village and its Fire Department for calls reads as follows: “Liability of the owners of structures or land shall be limited to the actual cost of suppressing or confining the fire, as determined by the Boyd-Edson-Delmar Fire Department, not exceeding One Thousand Dollars ($1,000.00) for any one (1) response to a parcel.”

Discussion at the April 12 meeting centered on the need to strike “not exceeding One Thousand Dollars ($1000.00) for any one (1) response to a parcel,” from the ordinance language, as it had the possibility if not probability of being read according to the strictness of the letter, meaning that the village would then stand to get $1,000 for fire suppression calls and be left on the hook to pay the rest.

Striking the restrictive ordinance clause would allow a fuller recovery of firefighting and other costs, with the village finances also stressed by responses to accident calls from nearby Highway 29. Put it together and restricting the village to collect just $1,000 per call from a legal standpoint could have a greater long-term effect on department funds and funding. That wasn’t all, though.

“If there’s an accident out on the highway and the fire department assists the ambulance, then the ambulance bills for their own but we pay for that,” Clerk Sandi Isaacs said of fire department costs in Boyd. “We’ve gotten nailed on a few of them but those are only a few hundred,” she said of accident calls. Not so with fire.

“We got hit hard last year,” President Randy Setzer said, saying that he was in “complete agreement” and that Edson and Delmar were talking about the same thing. Setzer said that incoming president Geist should take the matter to Edson and Delmar so that the fire district could deal with it as a whole, rather than Boyd alone.

“A lot of people, a lot of districts, the homeowner is responsible,” Setzer said, adding in contrast that, “ours is set up that the owner covers $1,000, and the municipality covers the rest.” If the local ordinance was changed, it wouldn’t necessarily solve cost issues, as Setzer said the highway would still factor in.

“A lot of the Highway 29 stuff, you’re paying for that,” he said. “You’re going to get sucked in.”

Returning to the subject of fire and why the Fire Department couldn’t bill homeowners directly without the village’s involvement, a difference is that the village can put it on the tax roll if left unpaid, whereas the fire department isn’t able to do this. Any costs to the department are in addition to the costs of maintaining it in existence.

“We should really be covering everything, but I can see where we should put a cap on it,” Setzer said of municipal responsibility.

“I looked in Cadott and Stanley’s ordinances and they don’t have anything like this in there,” Clerk Isaacs said of the restrictive language. “They don’t even have a section like this.” If desired by the board, Clerk Isaacs said that Allen Harvey (who writes the village ordinances) could strike the line from the code book and leave things there. Property owners would then be expected to turn over their bills to the insurance company, rather than letting the insurance company give the bill to the local municipality as paying everything above $1,000. Make it easy to pass the buck, and response from insurance companies could be predicted. It would seek to direct excess costs toward insurance companies, rather than municipal finances or the homeowner.

“Nobody wants to put the whole cost on the homeowner,” Setzer said of fire protection costs, also saying he didn’t think removing the $1,000 restriction on what the village could collect would solve the issue, in part due to calls from Highway 29.

“You’ll still get nailed for…probably more than $12,000,” he said of annual department costs.

As of the April 12 meeting no definitive action had been taken on removing the ordinance language in question.

Grey Area: Left for action pending the Fire Board meeting was a clause in Boyd statutes restricting collection to $1,000.