District aims to renovate stations, increase brush truck fleet

By Kyle Troutman [email protected]

The Central Crossing Fire Protection District is seeking approval of a $4.5 million bond issue on Aug. 4, aiming to renovate two stations, add to its fleet of brush trucks, purchase new equipment and pay off leases.

Fire Chief Rusty Rickard said the district has been planning for several years to replace two outdated fire stations and modernize portions of its fleet, but paying for projects of that scale through annual property tax revenue would significantly delay progress.

“We’ve been looking for ways to replace a couple of our fire stations and make some apparatus purchases,” Rickard said. “Doing that on a current property tax levy is not a great option. The bond just seemed like the best option for us, especially with the way prices are increasing each year. It allows the money to come up front, similar to a loan, and then be paid back over time.”

The proposal includes replacing Stations 3 and 4, which Rickard said no longer meet the district’s operational needs.

“These stations are both very small,” Rickard said. “They’re basically two-car garages.”

Station 3 is located south of Shell Knob at the intersection of Highway 39 and Highway H in Stone County, while Station 4 sits east of town on Highway YY near the Barry-Stone county line. Both stations were built years ago on U.S. Forest Service property and lack basic amenities.

“They have no running water, no septic, no bathroom,” Rickard said. “At the time they were adequate, but they’re not building fire trucks smaller.”

As apparatus have grown over the years, the stations have become increasingly difficult to use.

“We struggle to be able to fit fire trucks in them, let alone have the rest of the things that we need in those stations,” Rickard said. “We’ve been challenged with them for the last several years as far as the size of the stations and have been looking for ways to get those two stations replaced.”

The replacement buildings would be significantly larger and designed to serve the district for decades.

“We want to expand on the size and build them to carry us well into the future,” Rickard said. “They’ll be built with running water and septic and room for decontamination of our gear and equipment.”

The new stations would also include room for future living quarters if the district’s staffing needs continue to grow.

“They’ll have adequate space to put small living quarters in them,” Rickard said. “If and when we get to a point of needing those things, we’ll already have them.”

In addition to station improvements, the proposal includes replacing several aging brush trucks.

“The brush trucks that we have currently are trucks that we’ve acquired over the years from the military,” Rickard said. “The trucks we’re looking to replace are from the 1980s.”

Rickard said maintaining those vehicles has become increasingly difficult.

“They’re having maintenance problems, they don’t have a lot of the newer safety aspects, and two or three of them we’re struggling now to get parts for,” Rickard said.

One truck required a major modification simply to remain in service.

“A few years back we actually had to take the diesel engine out and put a gas engine in it because we couldn’t get parts for the military diesel engine,” Rickard said.

The district also hopes to purchase a dedicated rescue truck to consolidate specialized equipment used on increasingly complex emergency calls.

“With the growing amount of calls and the more need that we’re starting to see for advanced rescue-type calls and technical rescues, it’s not just vehicle wrecks anymore,” Rickard said.

Rickard said fire departments routinely respond to emergencies many people don’t associate with firefighters.

“People hear of fire departments, but they don’t quite realize the extent of rescue,” he said. “Getting into high-angle rescues, farming accidents, equipment accidents, people who’ve fallen off bluffs or incidents related to the lake — each one of those requires a lot of different type equipment.”

The proposal would also retire the district’s remaining apparatus leases.

“With the exception of our current lease, the district is debt free,” Rickard said. “Paying those final leases off will free up some money in the annual budget to allow us to do a few other things as well.”

Rickard said the district currently covers approximately 140 square miles with six stations, 25 emergency vehicles, 10 full-time firefighters, 28 active volunteers and seven part-time firefighters.

“We’re running about 1,200 calls for service a year,” Rickard said.

The district’s $1.4 million operating budget is supported almost entirely by property tax revenue, which Rickard said limits how quickly large capital projects can be completed.

“Property tax comes a little at a time,” Rickard said. “It’s kind of a challenging way of doing projects like this.”

Rickard said some residents have asked why the district does not pursue a sales tax instead of relying on property taxes.

“We don’t have the retail market here to support a sales tax,” Rickard said. “We don’t have the Walmart or the Silver Dollar City or the big sales-generating businesses here to pull that off.”

He said district leaders previously examined the possibility and found the tax rate required would have been impractical.

“When we passed our tax levy to bring on our full-time help, we were looking at having to raise the sales tax rate here like 5% or something crazy like that,” Rickard said. “It put us in very high rates similar to what you see at Branson Landing. It just was not remotely appropriate.”

Rickard said the district’s existing tax levy funds staffing, with about half of the annual revenue supporting personnel costs.

“We have a full-time staff of 10 people with minimum staffing of two firefighters 24/7,” Rickard said. “The funds that we generate from that part of our tax levy have to be used for staffing.”

Although state law would allow the district to seek a much larger bond issue, Rickard said the board intentionally kept its request well below that threshold.

“We could be asking for somewhere in the neighborhood of $21 million on this bond,” Rickard said. “Our board is very conservative. They took a strong look at our long-range plan, what we feel like our needs are and what we can realistically ask the people to support and be able to afford to pay back.”

Instead, the district is requesting less than one-quarter of its legal borrowing capacity.

“We’re not asking for $21 million,” Rickard said. “We’re asking for less than 25% of what we, by law, could be asking for.”

Rickard also emphasized that district officials have worked to be transparent about the financial impact if voters approve the measure. Approval would come with a property tax increase of 23 cents on every $100 of assessed valuation.

“Our goal has been to be 100% upfront with the voters and the taxpayers of the district,” Rickard said. “We’ve intentionally distributed information explaining that the bond issue would be a tax increase.”

To help residents understand the proposal, the district has provided tools to estimate individual tax impacts.

“There’s a link on our website that allows you to put in your assessed valuation from your tax bill in order to calculate how much your taxes will increase,” Rickard said.

Ultimately, Rickard said the proposal is rooted in the district’s responsibility to maintain reliable emergency services for a growing community.

“We wouldn’t be asking for the bond if we didn’t feel it was needed,” Rickard said. “It’s not just a want. It’s a need, we feel.”