Mayor wants more fire funds

Addis Mayor Carroll Bourgeois says the fire subdistrict that serves his town should be getting more money.

The amount of revenue each of West Baton Rouge Parish’s six fire subdistricts takes in every year is decided by a formula parish government created in 1991 using a weighted average taking into account 50 percent of an area’s population and 50 percent of an area’s assessed property values.

Based on this formula, the fire station serving Port Allen, the parish’s largest municipality, receives 50 percent of the sales tax revenue allotted for fire protection, while the subdistricts serving Addis and Brusly get 9 percent and 17 percent, respectively.

The other three subdistricts serving the parish’s unincorporated areas collect between 6 percent and 9 percent, based on the formula.

Now it’s not as if Bourgeois wants to change the formula, because he says he doesn’t.

Instead, Bourgeois says, he wants the 20-year-old formula to be applied based on the most recent property value assessments and the 2010 U.S. census figures showing that most of the parish’s growth has occurred in Addis and Brusly.

For example, he says that Addis had about 1,200 residents in 1990, while the U.S. Census Bureau’s website puts the town’s 2010 population at 3,593 residents.

Subdistrict 1 near Addis needs the additional revenue, he says, because the town has gained new subdivisions and three-story apartment complexes which can’t be properly protected with the subdistrict’s current fire apparatus.

If Bourgeois had his way and the subdistrict serving Addis were to receive a bigger slice of the pie, other subdistricts would lose money.

Fire Chief Rick Boudreaux of Subdistrict 3, which serves Port Allen, says his fire station would lose about 13 percent of its budget, or about $250,000 in revenue, if the formula was reapplied.

Losing that much revenue would surely equal layoffs for a single fire department that responds to a significant majority of the parish’s emergency calls, he says.

Furthermore, Boudreaux says, basing sales tax allotments on population “unfairly skews the distribution,” because a large portion of Subdistrict 3’s population is transient in nature and doesn’t fill out census forms. For instance, he says, there are 300 hotel rooms on La. 415 and several trailer parks which fill up at different times of year with seasonal workers.

With the fire districts at an impasse, the Parish Council has put together a committee of fire chiefs and other officials to reach a compromise. They’ve been working on it for months.

One suggested compromise keeps fire district revenue distribution the same up to the first $2.2 million in sales tax collections with any revenue collected over that amount divvied up based on the latest population numbers and property value assessments.

But both the Addis mayor and Brusly Mayor Joey Normand oppose that idea.

Parish President Riley “Pee Wee” Berthelot says that he doesn’t foresee the opposing sides coming to an agreement anytime soon, though.

The problem, he says, is that by law, any new plan has to be agreed upon by the town and city councils in Addis, Brusly and Port Allen and then by the Parish Council.

So where does it go from here?

One idea would be to hold special tax elections in the areas that feel they need increased revenue for fire protection.

But Bourgeois has already shot that idea down. Subdistrict 1 serves Addis and some of the outlying areas beyond the town limits. The mayor says it wouldn’t be fair to tax town residents and then allocate some of that money for fire protection in unincorporated areas.

But with no agreement in sight, maybe a special tax or user fee would be the way to go.

New taxes are always unpopular, but surely, fire protection is one service for which people would be willing to pay.

Koran Addo is The Advocate’s Westside bureau chief, covering Iberville, Pointe Coupee and West Baton Rouge parishes. Contact him at [phone] or [e-mail].