North County Fire Protection District approves budget for fiscal year 2020-21

During its Tuesday, Sept. 22 teleconference meeting, the North County Fire Protection District approved the yearly final budget for the fiscal year 2020-21 after a roll call vote.

In the staff presentation, the projected revenues for the district is $20,740,665.

According to a staff report, revenue from taxes and assessments are expected to grow by 3.5%, and ambulance fees, with help from the Quality Assurance Fee program, were expected to grow by 18.3%.

Revenue expected to drop in the fiscal year are donations and grants due to the elimination of the SAFER grant. The district expects to collect $300,000 in restricted fire mitigation fees.

Overall, the district expects an increase of more than $785,000 in revenue over 2019-20.

Staff also reported that expenditures for the district will be $15,424,695 with personnel costs increasing by 3.6% and salary expenditures increasing by 3.2%.

Due to a couple of large payouts, worker’s compensation costs will result in a 50% increase over the year before, and because of a large cost increase in vehicle insurance, firefighting equipment and personal protection equipment, Department 104 is expected to increase by 27%.

Department 108 will also see an increase in fuel costs of 15%.

“I just want to commend all the staff for making the budget so clear for us this year,” Board President Fred Luevano said. “You really did a good job in laying the whole thing out and explaining it, so, even I can understand some of it.”

Fire Chief Stephen Abbott proposed spending an additional $75,000 of the budget’s contingency money to hire three additional personnel to deal with an extraordinary fire season.

Luevano proposed adding an amendment to add the additional spending to the budget, but Director Ruth Harris disagreed.

“We need to vote on the balanced budget,” she said. “We can’t just say, ‘Oh ya, we’re going to add $75,000 to it in 6, 8, 10 weeks. If in 6, 8, 10 weeks the board decides to do that, then we make a motion and we decide to take that out of the reserves.

“We need to vote on this budget as presented.”

Abbott suggested that they could approve the budget with a modification, but Harris said if the board considered it months ago, as Abbott suggested, it should have been included in this budget.

“If we need to take up use of contingency funds next month, that would be fine with me,” one of the directors suggested.

A motion was made to approve the budget approval resolution as presented, without the contingency monies for the hirings included, and it passed unanimously.

The directors also set hearing dates and times – starting at 4:15 p.m. Oct. 27 for the adoption of updated ambulance fee schedule, updated cost recovery resolution, and updated fire prevention fees solution and ordinance.

The board also approved a resolution regarding the terms and conditions for department response away from official duty stations and assigned to an emergency event, as presented by Deputy Chief Steve Marovich.

In the approved consent agenda, the board of directors reviewed and approved August’s board meeting minutes, the financial report for August, policies and procedures, and the monthly operations activities report for August.

When the meeting began, the board and Abbott presented Marovich of the agency’s Administrative Services Division with a resolution to commemorate his retirement from NCFPD in October.

Jeff Pack can be reached by email at [email protected].