Fire rescue capital improvement plan
What the county recorded
This item is not from the published agenda
This archive found it in the recording: a call to order, a recess, or business the board never listed. The county recorded nothing about it, so everything below is our reading.
The source document
The county’s agenda for Board of County Commissioners, Jul 7, 2026
The published PDF. Its text could not be extracted, because it is an image-only scan, so nothing in it is searchable here. It still reads normally.
What was said
Machine transcription of 9m of recording, with speaker names inferred from voice matching. 78% of 37 lines carry a name. It shows what was said, not what was decided, and both the words and the names can be wrong.
All right, so here's the five-year capital improvement plan for fire rescue. And so this is funded by impact fee by and large. And so you'll see we're looking to construct two new stations and then start design on two other stations. And then for those of us who are more visual, I'm really talking about me. Um I like a good map. And so where the stars are on this map, these are where stations will be built or designed. So on the right side
of your screen, those are the ones that will be built. And then on the left, those two will be in design in the next five years.
And then it's important to note that when we look at and this is just a great example, when we look at our um planning for capital, it's not just looking at can we fund the construction of this capital, but we're also looking at our long-term planning from an operational standpoint and when that thing is built, will we be able to operationalize it? So for example, when we build these stations, are we gonna have the operational funds to staff it? Right? Because the last thing we want is a fire station with no firefighters. Sure
you go.
So question, if uh property taxes pass on the ballot, would these proposed fire stations still be able to go up?
That is a great question. Um We would have to figure that out.
I would say that uh you know Commissioner, we do collect impact fees for for capital construction, but as you know, the impact fees often don't cover 100% of the cost. And so as such it is supplemented by the uh in this case the fire MSTU does does provide funding for capital. Um and so if that is impacted Yeah. Let's say through property tax reform twenty to thirty percent, I do think your pace of new construction of fire stations would slow down as a as a natural result.
Well I'll I'll say and I I think we've done a great job catching up. The go bonds were great to help us get going, though obviously inflation killed a lot of that. But I think it's gonna be important that we're as we're building these stations, which we are, that the focus may start getting to be a little bit as far as increasing the number of uh ambulances that we have. Uh uh fire and E MS together are important And you won't have the firefighters, but when you have two trucks going to a call, there's gotta be some calls that you know
you don't use both trucks there. And if you have a team set for it to be one spot to another, uh makes it easy. Even if you've got to go take at some point, like some of the old tow truck companies used to be, uh they they would have a tow truck at a accident prone place and And I know the technology we can look at where these things need to be and if you do have a shift on one area that has obviously got a couple of calls going on you can shift over to help with the coverage. planning where they think they may need to. So I think that
type of technology should help us in the future to kinda not have to build as many stations, but I think these are good where they're located and and needed. But I think especially with D Shift coming, you're gonna have that flexibility coming up.
No, no I appreciate that Commissioner. I know that our uh the Chiefs uh single certification program is is one of those programs that is designed to help um mitigate that to a certain extent. We've been working too with with Commissioner Yeager's office as well on on exploring other options to where you know perhaps the even even private sector support uh could come in to kind of help fill those gaps and and make sure that our units are are available at the right time, right unit, right time, to help
provide best possible service to our to our citizens. Okay. Commissioner Weightman? I'm sorry, Commissioner Oakley, sorry.
Yeah, I'd like to speak on that. I I think you're seeing that already. I think the system and and the fire they're reaching out and doing that where they need to. They they've already figured that out, I think, in a lot of areas. And so that's an ongoing process, but as it as the system grows, it's more important as we go down the road. So but it's very good job done by the fire departments. Yeah.
I I just wanna add that um one of the things we're talking about is in the hot zones where the response times are a little longer that the third party ambulances will come in. you know, um only for the basic the BLS calls, uh not the ALS calls for the fire safety. But then also I was looking at um the number of the fifty nine million the ambulance billing and rescue from the general fund and I think if you know, we word
it properly that that number might go down because if we do contract with a third party, they would be uh reliable for that not the county. So on um Just something we're looking into.
Well, and again I th I think this is a time to look at all the efficiency we can possibly do every single angle and I think we're doing that and it's gonna keep on going, so appreciate it.
Commissioner Weightman? Yeah. Uh for clarity. The ambulance team build fifty nine million.
Yeah let's see here. That slide I I interpret that as that's what the ambulance billing team does a great job. was able to capture
that's the total budgetary cost. You're looking at the expense side of the equation on the budget. It doesn't necessarily show the revenue side. I know we collect roughly, I don't know, Joanna is it about thirty percent? Yeah, you know, uh roughly roughly a third of of what the actual expense is through our ambulance billing group. Now we're not aggressive in terms of chasing after individual citizens because you know we believe they do pay into into their taxes, so it's pretty much what what we can get from private
insurance. Uh Um and they do a good job, in fact. They do such such a good job. I know we're doing billings for Hernando and Citrus as well because our system is set up and and that is a little bit of a revenue producer for us. Um but it we don't capture all of it. But the number that you saw is probably represents the actual cost of the EMS service, roughly sixty million. And so we we capture back twenty to thirty million roughly in in revenues on the backside. But some of that backfills fire because you'll you'll deploy sometime in an engine company
if an ambulance is unavailable. So uh there's a lot that that goes into that.
It'd be nice to understand.
Where the system is being gamed by payers. And then for our team to understand if they are if they don't already uh how to
Compete in that game, so to speak. The insurance is
Just a game.
We can report back on on kinda what we what we know and maybe there's things that we don't know that we do need to explore. So that's a good point.
Well, stick it to the taxpayer versus Their own, so Um
Sure you know somebody out there who can help us. Box 'em, maybe Morgan and Morgan. Insurance companies are
supposedly scared of those guys. So I don't know, Jeff might say they're busy suing us, so I don't know.
Well diversified organization.
Well I think I think an important thing you just bring it up. If we're only collecting thirty percent of the revenue You got all the taxes in place. From the way you've got the budget set, are there is any extra money going into that that we're not seeing that helps offset this or
it's offset. I mean it it it goes into to factoring what we charge for the millage and how we how we balance that. I mean it it's definitely counted on as a revenue stream, you know. So I mean the short answer is yes, it is accounted on. Okay. So a ad valorem MSTU, it's all put in there. If we didn't have it, if we didn't have it, we would have uh, you know, a twenty, thirty million dollar hole that we would have to fill somewhere else. And that would either be through millage, other charges, et
cetera. Uh I just want to make sure that as as the state does what they're gonna do in the next year coming up as far as if this does pass, what the effects gonna be to it, and then make sure that we're not t having a section of money that didn't get accounted for 'cause it was taken care of a different way that They know that fire E mess costs this much money that we're making sure that's protected as well. Uh I think I understand. Okay. Thanks.
And not to um belabor the point, but I will a little bit. Um we were projecting an increase in that revenue for FY27 and the um biggest reason for that increase is an is the collection rate increase, meaning the team's doing a better job. The volume's not necessarily the driver between behind their revenue increase. It really is their collection rate improving. So the team does continue to improve year over year. Um and so a little bit more of that revenue is coming back to us.
We bought them baseball bats.
I didn't say that. For the record.
I thought you just had little squares on each e each edge.