City won't absorb county stations
By Ethan Smith
Published in News on November 6, 2014 1:46 PM
When the Pinewood Fire Department shuts its doors Dec. 1, the area it now serves will not be merged into the Goldsboro Fire Department.
Instead, the Pinewood Fire District will be divided among five county volunteer fire departments -- Belfast, Elroy, New Hope, Patetown and Saulston.
The proposal has been discussed with the departments, and all have agreed to the arrangement, County Manager George Wood said this week.
Wayne County commissioners tried Wednesday to distance themselves from comments made by the Goldsboro City Council on Monday night that implied the city would merge various county fire departments with the city fire department.
County commissioners decided to divide Pinewood's area among the five other districts instead of asking the Goldsboro Fire Department to provide coverage.
"It was never a proposal to merge those fire departments with the Goldsboro Fire Department," Wood said.
The county had been looking at different ways to best continue to provide fire coverage for the Pinewood area. As the county looked at fire district maps, it became apparent that there are "islands" of county property within the city limits, Wood noted.
There are county fire departments responsible for fire protection in those areas, even though in some cases there are city fire stations closer than a county station, he said. For example, Belfast fire trucks actually pass a Goldsboro fire station to get to one of those areas.
Assigning parts of the Pinewood area to the city presented the county with the opportunity to "clean up" some of those islands, Wood said.
The idea was to see if the city would be willing to provide that protection for just those specific areas, not an entire fire district.
Wood said City Council comments, combined with disagreements over money, caused the county to go forward with the new redistricting instead of working with the city.
"What it came down to was the money," he said.
The rural fire departments are independent, nonprofit corporations that the county contracts with for fire protection service.
The county sets the tax rate for each fire district. Those rates range from 4 cents per $100 of property value for Seven Springs to 8 cents for Antioch and Little River.
During Monday's City Council meeting, council members bristled at the lower tax rates. They argued that city residents pay 12.5 cents per $100 of property value, and felt there would be an outcry by city residents if the coverage plan was enacted.
Council members proposed slowly raising the fire district tax rates to bring them in line with the city's rate.
Those comments and the confusion over what had been proposed prompted commissioners' decision Wednesday to scrap the idea and divide the area among the five other districts.
The county did not agree with charging a higher tax rate for people living in those areas and abandoned the idea of asking Goldsboro to provide the fire coverage, Wood said.
Wood said current property tax rates will not be affected for the rest of this fiscal year by the Pinewood dissolution.
A shrinking tax base is the primary cause of the Pinewood department closing, Wood pointed out. Over the years, the city has annexed much of the property once served by Pinewood and that provided tax revenues for the department, Wood said.
The county will take on all of the assets and debts of the Pinewood department. It will sell off the equipment, but will continue to use the building to stage an EMS unit.
-- News-Argus staff writer Steve Herring contributed to this report.