Departments can now recoup costs
By Steve Herring
Published in News on December 28, 2014 1:50 AM
A new Wayne County ordinance will provide the county's fire departments with a way to recoup expenses associated with costly and/or time-consuming operations.
"Basically what it would allow is when we have major events that are costly to our fire departments, they would be able to bill the people involved in them," County Manager George Wood said. "For example, if we were to have a hazmat situation, train derailment, or a truck with chemicals, things like that that took a good deal of material and supplies in order to deal with that issue, then our fire departments would be able to bill for that."
Unanimously approved recently by Wayne County commissioners, the ordinance creates a three-member committee that would review the bills before they were sent out.
"So you would retain control over whether that was being done," Wood told commissioners. "Two of them would be the fire commissioner which you appoint, and the other would be the fire marshal, who is a county employee.
"The third person would be an appointee of the (Wayne County) Firefighters' Association executive board."
The billing process would be initiated by the fire chief and the board chairman of the primary fire department at the incident scene. Also, the ordinance would not be enacted in the case of a state or federally declared state of emergency.
Wood said he wanted to be clear that the county is not talking about billing for minor incidents.
The ordinance includes six areas where charges could possibly be billed, he said.
"They are all pretty much high-impact incidents where we are there for an excessive amount of time, or they eat up a lot of resources in terms of hazmat, chemical spills, things of that nature," Wood said.
Most companies have insurance to handle such charges, he said.
"So really it is a means of helping our fire departments recoup these costs," Wood said. "As you know many of our fire departments are on very small budgets. So eating up $10,000 or $15,000 or more on this kind of cleanup would be a major impact to some of those budgets."
Wood said he thinks the ordinance has enough safeguards so that people won't go out "willy-nilly" and make a claim. They have to go through the process, and be vetted "pretty thoroughly," he said.
Steve L. Herring of Goldsboro was the only person who spoke during the public hearing held before the ordinance was approved. He said he supported the ordinance and thought it should be approved.
Chairman Wayne Aycock, who spearheaded efforts to adopt the ordinance, said that while Wood had referred only to fire departments, the ordinance would apply to any emergency organization.
"It does not single out the fire department, although they probably will benefit from it more than another organization," he said.
"This long overdue," said Commissioner Joe Gurley, former director of the county's Office of Emergency Services. "Although fire departments have tax districts, and the majority do fundraisers, such emergencies as described in this ordinance can drastically impact a fire department and drain its budget."
Aycock said the ordinance had been reviewed by the Wayne County Firefighters' Association, which had given its blessings.
Commissioner Ed Cromartie said he supported the document in the "larger sense," but worried that the county needs to be careful not to bill in accidents that require the use of special equipment to free people from a wrecked vehicle.
He said people should not have to pay for services that he feels the county should provide for individual citizens.
Wood said the committee would review the bills.
"It is not our intent for the individual citizen, just because they are in a vehicular accident, that they have to pay for that, whether the Jaws of Life are used or not," Wood said. "This is really for major incidents where it would be extremely time-consuming and that sort of thing."
However, Wood said Cromartie had raised a valid concern and that the comments needed to be in the public record for people to understand what the intent of the ordinance is.
The committee reviewing the process would be governed and guided by those comments, Wood said.