In a 4-1 vote Monday, the Clearwater City Council approved a new contract to provide fire service to Clearwater Twp. and Lynden Twp.
The vote came at the end of a 40-minute discussion early Monday morning during a special meeting for the sole purpose of either amending the existing contract or staying with the old contract.
The council had met with representatives of both townships on at least two other occasions in the past few weeks to come to some sort of consensus on how to split the fire budget fairly.
Two workshops ago, Supervisor Anne Ackerman of Lynden Twp. suggested basing the formula solely on the average number of calls over the past eight years. She said the numbers were consistent, which meant that’s how each jurisdiction was using the services.
But some members of the council, and City Administrator Kevin Kress, said there were other variables to consider, like population, market value, number of parcels and capital equipment purchases that were used almost exclusively to service the townships.
Both townships were looking for a realistic formula so they could present a fire service levy for 2020 to their residents for consideration at the annual meeting, which takes place Tuesday (March 12).
So the council agreed to set up Monday’s special meeting in hopes of coming to a consensus.
One issue for the city, other that the percentage each jurisdiction would be paying, was how to deal with covering any overages in the fire budget. The city pays its budget first and gets reimbursed by the townships the following year. If there was an unexpected purchase or additional costs because of more than an average number of calls, members of the council wanted a way to be reimbursed by the townships without having to wait a year.
Councilman Wayne Kruchten said he was okay with Ackerman’s proposal of 23% for Lynden Twp., 24% for Clearwater Twp. and 53% for the city. But he wanted to make sure there was extra money in each jurisdiction’s budget to cover any overages in the fire budget. He suggested adding $25,000 to the current $311,000 fire levy up front and split the extra amount by the same percentages. He said it would solve the immediate problem until the council and townships could do more research.
“That would mean you would pay an extra $6,000 or $5,750 to the budget this year,” he said. “That would give us a one-year time frame to pull this together on a more accurate basis.”
Clearwater Twp. Supervisor Rose Thelen said the townships could budget an extra amount in their general fund levy instead.
“We would keep the money in our own fund in the event there was an overage,” she said.
“We could earmark that money,” said Clearwater Twp. Supervisor Bill Langenbacher. “If it’s used we pay. It if doesn’t, we don’t pay it.”
Mayor Andrea Lawrence said there still has to be a mechanism and a time frame for the townships to repay the overage.
“If we go over by $30,000, how quickly would we recoup that?” she asked. “Because I don’t think the city is interested in being the bank. Do we get that money back in 30 days or 60 days?”
Councilman Vern Scott said he wasn’t comfortable with the percentage split.
“I think that we’re providing a service,” he said. “I don’t like the call calculation being the (only) number.”
He presented a handout of the Clear Lake Fire Dept. formula with Clear Lake Twp. and Palmer Twp. It uses population, total parcels and net tax capacity to calculate the percentages, not the number of calls.
But with a short time frame, members of the council agreed there wasn’t time to get all the information they needed to develop that type of complicated formula.
When they took the vote, Lawrence, Councilmen Kruchten, Kris Crandall and Richard Petty voted in favor of the new contract based on calls. Scott voted against.
But they all agreed to continue to discuss the contract and hold more workshops.
“We have to work on this,” said Scott.
