{"id":44176,"date":"2019-08-14T23:35:31","date_gmt":"2019-08-15T03:35:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=44176"},"modified":"2019-08-14T23:35:45","modified_gmt":"2019-08-15T03:35:45","slug":"fire-district-assessment-rates-to-go-up-5-79","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2019\/08\/fire-district-assessment-rates-to-go-up-5-79\/","title":{"rendered":"Fire district assessment rates to go up 5.79%"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Lehigh Acres property owners may be paying more for fire\nservices next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Lehigh Acres Fire District voted to take action on the\nadoption of a preliminary rate resolution for fiscal year 2019\/2020.\nCommissioners approved the step during their regular scheduled meeting held on\nTuesday, July 30.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The FINAL<\/strong> rate hearing is scheduled Sept 16, 2019, at 6:01 pm at East Lee County High School Auditorium, because are expecting a huge crowd of very mad taxpayers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fire board voted 5-0 is looking into hiring a Public\nrelations specialist. The “Public Relations” person\/new hire would be\nassigned their own vehicle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fire Chief Dilallo is asking to hire a new mechanic. They currently only have only one mechanic. They wish to hire one new full-time mechanic. Complaints from the fire chief that vehicles are not properly maintained. They are needing to send vehicles to a third-party mechanic. Even if they hire a new full-time mechanic, vehicles will still need to be sent to a third-party mechanic.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chief is requesting 4 new vehicles. One for the squad, one for logistics, one for public relations and another.\u00a0Commissioners voted 3 to 2 keep 4 vehicles “as is.”\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Fire Chief, the board took action on the final\nrate resolution to raise the assessment by the allowed five-year average of the\nFlorida income growth rate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“That rate came in at 5.79% plus all applicable allowable fees. This was anticipated and discussed since the referendum did not pass, so the board did a motion to raise the rate this year. That is the maximum allowable without going back to a referendum,” Dilallo said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Presently the assessments work under a four-tier system:\nresidential, commercial, institutional, and land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Residential will most likely see the highest increase of $19.23 because it’s a flat fee and based on a demand-based methodology. Commercial, industrial and institutional parcels are assessed by square footage,” Dilallo said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Everyone will see an increase now. We don’t have a choice. We have three stations that need repair, plus the long-overdue need for an additional station on north Sunshine Boulevard to decrease response times. We are one of only two fire departments in the county that has our own ambulance service,” Dilallo said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2015 – $292.00   2016 – $292.00   2017 \u2013 $303.97   2018 –\n$332.15   Now 2019 – $351.38 a 16.8% increase in 4 years\n<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The district will mail out notices this year since the\nassessment will hit the maximum, previously noticed amount. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The only fix to this is to put the special assessment\nreferendum back on the ballot in 2020, but even then it would not come into\neffect until our 2021\/2022 budget year,” Dilallo said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The board also motioned to approve budget amendments\nrelating to the current 2018\/2019 budget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We knew there would have to be some amendments to factor in the assessment increase. We also had a bunch of carryover for an $8.9 million loan, and needed to adjust a couple of line items,” Dilallo said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other updates included the teardown of Station 101, which is one of the oldest fire stations in Lehigh Acres. Station 101 was severely damaged during Hurricane Irma back in September 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Crews began to tear down the station earlier this\nweek. We are looking at about an eight-month completion time frame and were\nable to save the bay and original host tower,” Dilallo said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Lehigh Acres Fire Control and Rescue District board will hold the FINAL<\/strong> rate hearing is scheduled Sept 16, 2019, at 6:01 pm at East Lee County High School Auditorium <\/strong>at 715 Thomas Sherwin Ave Lehigh Acres Florida 33974 or call\u00a0239-303-5300<\/span>\u00a0for details.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lehigh Acres property owners may be paying more for fire services next year. The Lehigh Acres Fire District voted to take action on the adoption of a preliminary rate resolution… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":44177,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,32],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44176"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}