FAYETTEVILLE, WV (WOAY) There has been a lot of discussion around the Fayette County Commission’s decision to cut levy rates for fire departments, the sheriff’s office, and county libraries.
Firefighters had a strong showing at the commission meeting Wednesday, where the Fayette County Commission announced the annual budgets for their county’s fire departments on Wednesday.
The meeting had a lot of attention on it after the commission decided to cut the voter-approved fire levy by 48 percent.
According to Commission President John Brenemen, this was after the state auditor’s office highlighted the fire levy account having $5.4 million in it.
They told us that we couldn’t have a glorified savings account, and then they educated Ruth Lanier, our county administrator, on what the levies can be used for,” Brenemen said. “So at that point in time, we decided that we needed to reduce that levy and we did. Not only the fire levy, we did all three levies. Library went down, the law levy went down, and the fire levy went down.”
In a Facebook post on Wednesday, Delegate Elliott Pritt said he reached out to members of the auditor’s office and was told that no such recommendation had been made.
We also reached out to the auditor’s office, and we will update this article when we hear back.
The budget passed at Wednesday’s commission meeting was $1,107,750. Overall, the Fayette County Commission increased the county fire budget by $84,794, in addition to more than $654,000 in truck payoffs.
Fayette County voters overwhelmingly passed the original rates. However, Breneman said that voters also approved the commission to make adjustments to the rates.
“As the levy funds get spent down, we can go back and make that levy whole again,” he said.
This reduction in the fire levy is concerning local fire departments, which was evident by their strong showing at the meeting. All fire departments did get an increase in their annual budgets, however, their concerns were not extinguished.
“We had a levee budget committee and we saw what everybody’s needs was. How many members they got, how many calls they run, and stuff that directly impacts how much it costs to run your station,” Joshua Davis, vice president of the Fayette County Firefighters’ Association, said. “We took all that into account and made up a formula and we gave it to them. The budget we gave them nowhere reflected what these individual departments got.”
Some residents say they are left wondering why not just leave the levy alone and save money for when the need arises.
“We are the second-highest excess taxpaying county in the state. I saw that in January, and I went to Eddie [Young]. Eddie agreed with me, and actually, he was bringing us a letter stating that, hey, is there anything that we can do to reduce the taxes for our citizens? So we had the same idea and then we were able to work.”
Eddie Young is the Fayette County assessor.
Fayette County has 15 volunteer fire departments. Time will eventually tell if this reduction was the right move.
“We don’t know till we see what it brings in next year. But, you know, if it brings in what they’re projecting, it won’t sustain year after year after year with the rising cost in the fire service,” Davis said. “Everything in life that you buy is going up. For the fire service, the budget won’t keep up in, you know, in four years time.”
