Fire Department budget shaved 14.5 percent

A responsive Fire Department, called out for an automatic alarm in the Center on Friday, will cost taxpayers less this year.

The 2010 Shelter Island Fire District budget is asking 14.58 percent less from the taxpayers than did the 2009 budget. The amount to be raised by real estate taxes is down from a total of $862,708 in 2009 to $736,908 in 2010. 


A large part of the decrease, which was approved by the Board of Fire Commissioners on Monday, can be attributed to completing the process of paying retroactive retirement benefits for firefighters, a process which the town had voted on, passed, and begun five years ago. The Length of Service Awards Program (LOSAP) line item had been inflated over the past five years in order to help pay back these owed benefits. Now that the payback is complete, the LOSAP line item was reduced by $176,200.


The capital improvements line item is reduced by $25,000, a product of the changing demands of projects from last year to this year. For example, “They’ve been doing the HVAC [program] this year, so that was an expensive project,” District Treasurer Amber Williams told the Reporter. “Next year’s projects are just going to be fewer.”


The largest single line item increase is under equipment: $50,000 for a new chief’s car after not budgeting for one two years in a row.


The fire truck bond payment, which the town voted in favor of this summer, is included in the 2009 budget and represents an increase of approximately $13,600 from 2009.


The district lowered the levy despite anticipating less than half the income it earned from interest in 2009 ($8,000 estimated for 2010 compared with $19,000 in 2009). The district will receive $32,807 from the Village of Dering Harbor for fire protection and services, which combined with income from interest, $1,000 miscellaneous income and $736,908 from taxpayers, will cover the department’s net expenses of $777,715.


The 2010 tax rate will be 0.2286 cents per $1,000 assessed value, down from 0.2670 in 2009. The owner of a home assessed at $500,000 would pay $114.29 to the fire district, down $19.21 from last year. The Shelter Island tax base this year is just over $3.223 billion, slightly less than last year (less than a one-half percent decrease).