As Carefree residents we are led to believe that unless we approve a property tax to fund emergency and fire services public safety will be endangered and lives will be lost. The message is that the current system isn’t working, that all other avenues for funding have been explored and a property tax is literally the only remaining solution to preserve life and property. One must therefore assume that the current approach for emergency response and fire prevention has been inadequate, has resulted in poor response time to medical emergencies, and has caused the loss of property and lives. One must also then assume that the Town Administration has exhausted all means via due diligence to identify funding, (other than a property tax) to pay for participation in the Automatic Aid Program. That would include extensive research into past response times, evidence of negative results to both health and property as well as a ROI/Financial analysis that supports the argument that there is no flexibility in the current town budget to cover costs for moving to an Automatic Aid program.
The solution offered by the Town Council, the Town Administrator and the Carefree Improvement PAC offers to Carefree residents is a binary choice, either support public safety by voting for a property tax or imperil public safety by favoring substandard emergency services and fire response.
Those of us who have been around for a while and engage in critical thinking know that life is not a matter of binary choices. Neither is the question of how to best achieve adequate emergency medical and fire response times, which according to emergency services response history in Carefree has not come into question to date. The healthcare community considers a targeted/ideal response time for emergency medical services to be 4-5 minutes, ( typically necessary for cardiac related emergencies). On average many municipalities experience response times averaging four to nine minutes, not ideal but in most cases workable unless it is related to a afore mentioned cardiac emergency.
Given that the town has a current contract with Rural Metro and that Rural Metro has, by all indications, been able to provide adequate response to emergency and fire incidents, Carefree residents would be better served by its town government to revisit the current draft and next year’s budget to search for alternative sources of revenues to pay for the Town’s incremental expense associated with navigating to Automatic Aid program participation.
For example, the SG&A for Carefree seems bloated considering the town size. To wit, the FY 22/23 Human Resources component of the SGA (17 FTE’s) portion of the draft budget represents roughly 30% of the total operations budget. Interesting, the AVERAGE salary and benefits of each of the 17 FTE’s is $100,000 or more, (some lower but some significantly higher such as the salaries for Town Administrator , Economic Development Director, etc.). Perhaps room exists to carve a portion of the Automatic Aid program cost out of SG&A and or operating expenses with the remainder coming from the anticipated increase in Sales tax from the newly constructed hotel and the increased anticipated sales revenue spending that was attributed by town government to the expected supply of hotel visitors and owners of the homes being constructed.
Bottom line, this author neither endorses or disapproves of a Carefree Property tax that may be appropriate at some point. Legitimate reasons may exist for a future property tax which is supported by data driven needs. However, when the residents of Carefree complete their ballot on May 16th or before, the choice of voting yes or no should be based on answers to the following questions: Have all other means for funding the Automatic Aid program been explored; is data available to suggest that the current system has been harmful to Carefree residents; will Carefree have good stewardship of the tax dollars generated from a property tax including a commitment from town government that the funds generated are restricted to the fire fund? If the answer to any of these questions is no, don’t know, or adequate information is lacking- then vote no on May 16th.
Respectfully,
John Nimsky
Carefree
