Vote to come on Sept. 12, following public hearing
In advance of the formal vote scheduled for Sept. 12, following a Sarasota County Commission public hearing, county staff is inviting the public to learn about the proposed, higher fire assessments for the 2025 fiscal year, which will begin on Oct. 1.
“To meet the growing demand for fire services to both residential and non-residential areas,” a news release says, county staff “continually seeks to enhance the level of emergency services” provided by the Fire Department. Each year,” the release continues, “fire assessment rates are reviewed as part of the budgetary process to ensure adequate funding for fire protection services in our community.”
“Fire assessments are the primary funding source for fire protection services in unincorporated areas of Sarasota County and the City of Sarasota,” the release explains. “These fees are based on the square footage of a building and are charged against real property.”
As a county webpage further notes, “Fire assessments fund the services through a special assessment so property owners who benefit from the services share in the cost.”
As a result of “a comprehensive review of service delivery,” the release adds, the Fire Department’s proposed 2025 budget includes several recommendations for public safety enhancements, including more staff, radio maintenance, and advancements in technology.
Therefore, the release says, the Fire Department is recommending an increase of fire assessment rates to approximately the figures below:
- $2.81 per month for an average home with 2,500 square feet.
- $3.27 per month for an average multi-family residence with 1,600 square feet.
- $28.42 per month for an average 10,000-square-foot, non-residential building.
County residents are encouraged to attend a Sept. 4 meeting at the Gulf Gate Library to learn more about the proposed changes to the fire assessment rates, “understand the methodology used, provide comments, or ask questions,” the release notes. The one-hour meeting will begin at 5:30 p.m., the release says. Gulf Gate Public Library is located at 7112 Curtiss Ave. in Sarasota.
On May 9, 2023, as The Sarasota News Leader reported, Rich Collins, director of the county’s Emergency Services Department, told the commissioners that staff was recommending a 15% uptick for the current, 2024 fiscal year in what is called the equivalent billing unit — EBU — for parcels in each of three categories: single-family homes, multi-family residences, and non-residential structures. One EBU represents 100 square feet.
The proposed increases for the 2025 fiscal year also are at the 15% level, Collins noted during his June 19 budget presentation to the commissioners.
In May 2023, Collins explained that the proposed increase was necessary because the Fire Department had been incurring higher expenses. For example, he said, the cost per set of fire protection gear had gone up more than $2,000 over the previous year.
Further, he reminded the commissioners, they had agreed several years earlier to increase staffing on the county’s fire engines, based on a consultant’s findings.
During his June budget presentation, Collins pointed out that staff was proposing the hiring of nine new firefighters. That expense — plus anticipated overtime payments — would represent $3,693,999 of the Emergency Services Department’s 2025 fiscal year budget, he said.
Chief David Rathbun — who joined county staff in September 2022 — had “done a phenomenal job,” Collins added, in bringing down the department’s overtime payments 37.5% from the 2022 fiscal year to the 2023 fiscal year.
Yet another factor in the FY 2025 budget, Collins continued, would be the expense of equipment to enable the department to clean the firefighters’ gear instead of having to send it elsewhere for that purpose. Industry standards call for the cleaning twice a year, Collins said, plus in the aftermath of every fire.
As a result of Collins’ May 2023 report, the commissioners approved an update to the methodology for determining the annual fire assessments.
In working on that update, Collins told the board members that day, staff and its consultant — Government Services Group Inc. (GSG), an Anser Advisory Co. — reviewed the fire incident response data for the parcel types in the county. “Any call that is EMS-related is excluded from the study,” Collins pointed out.
The assessment area included the city of Sarasota and all of the unincorporated areas of the county except the Englewood and Nokomis fire districts, Collins explained.
The GSG study did find “a small shift in fire incident response from non-residential parcels to multi-family and single-family parcels,” the county staff report said.
Of the 6,025 fire protection calls in the county during the 2022 fiscal year, one of Collins’ slides showed, 2,657 involved single-family residences, or 44.1% of the total. That was up 0.54% from the percentage in a 2017 fire assessment study.
The number of incidents involving multi-family homes in the 2022 fiscal year was 1,124, representing 18.66% of the total, the slide said. That was up 1.98% from the 2017 level.
Finally, the number of non-residential parcel incidents was 2,244, which represented 37.24% of the total. The latter figure was down 2.53% from the 2017 percentage.
Based on the latest study, Collins said, the maximum fire assessment for a single-family parcel could be $9.99 per EBU; for a multi-family parcel, the figure could be $18.09; and for a non-residential parcel, it could be $25.23.
For more information about the fire assessments, county staff encourages the public to call the county Contact Center at 311 or visit scgov.net/firefees.