The Dexter Leader
A Heritage Newspaper
Weekly Publication
Dexter Fire Department budget done
By Sean Dalton, Staff Writer
PUBLISHED: January 17, 2008
The Dexter Area Fire Department is going into a new year with a new budget and negotiated union contract.
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The budget was passed recently after amendments were presented last month to the municipalities served by the department — Dexter, Webster and Lima townships, and Dexter Village.
The amended budget was originally projected to increase by 4.8 percent, but department officials were able to bring that increase down to 1.48 percent over the 2007 budget, or an increase of $13,243 to the previous year's $923,757 budget.
That portion is the amount split between the municipalities based on number of fire runs.
The total 2008 budget, with state and federal grants included, comes to $1,001,950.
A number of factors played into the proposed 2008 budget, according to Fire Chief Loren Yates.
"We had a goal of where we wanted to be, as far as increase, and ended up with a 4.8 percent increase over last year," he said of what was presented before the reduction to a 1.48 percent increase.
"We had about a 3 or 4 percent increase on runs and everything else went up."
Of 824 DAFD runs year-to-date, the village accounted for over 35 percent (a 14 percent increase in runs over the previous year), Dexter, Lima and Webster Townships accounted for 24 percent, 11 percent and 29 percent respectively.
There were some changes to the layout of the 2008 budget and there are more to come, according to Yates.
Payroll was broken into different categories, so it's clearer what money the Dexter Area Fire Board is authorizing for regular pay, overtime and paid on call.
Yates also said that the department will be basing future budgets on five-year averages of runs, citing Lima Township's "drastic jump" from 58 runs in 2006 to 86 in 2007, or over 48 percent, which translated to Lima's portion of the 2008 budget increasing by over 29 percent from $80,042 to $103,753.
"Because Lima is such a small part of the budget, just a few runs can really increase their percentages," Yates said. "(A five-year run average) enables you more stability and planning for the future. I think (the board's) intention is to look at it and get it in place by the next budget."
According to Yates, the last five or six years have been a struggle to get the budget stabilized in the face of general growth.
"We're up to two guys going 24 hours a day and that was a huge hurdle to get over," he said.
In addition to the number of runs, driven upward by the significant growth of the communities within the DAFD's service area, other factors drove the cost of delivering fire services up.
"Health care costs have gone up and there was some equipment we were asking for," Yates said. "Each expenditure through 2007 for normal equipment replacement was carefully review with some replacements deferred for the future if it was feasible."
The contract between the department and Dexter Area Fire Fighters Local 4090 even leaves room for changes to carrier and policy to reduce costs, according to Yates.
"Insurance is one of our areas that cost is increasing at a faster rate than anything else," he said.
"We're looking at alternatives. The union is working with us very closely and they certainly understand the problem."
The department's insurance coverage, including medical, dental, vision and life, is budgeted for a 2.5 percent increase or $2,400 over what the department paid in 2007.
The department has requested $98,400 to be paid to Blue Care Network for the department's coverage in 2008.
"We are trying to get some proposals into us and we hope to have come up with something in March," Yates said. "There are so many different plans, even within Blue Care Network, that we're going to investigate every option until we find something that will be to the benefit of both the union and the fire department."
Overall, Yates says he is comfortable with the budget and the contracts as they stand. "We didn't get everything we wanted, but we never do ... it ended up being a tight budget, but not unreasonably so.
"We're not looking at new equipment or adding additional personnel at this time or in the near future. The only thing we're getting desperate for are some new facilities."
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