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Lee County looks at emergency service funds

• Lee County commissioners struggle with funding numbers for providing expanded emergency services.

Susan McCord

LEESBURG — A week before its first fiscal year 2009 budget hearing, Lee County officials turned away from a plan intended to generate approximately $2.4 million to pay for county fire and emergency medical care, including the addition of several new units around the county.

The funding, included in administrator Alan Ours’ proposed $21,656,472 budget for FY ’09, would have come from a $250 annual fee imposed on every individual household or business in Lee County.

“Up until this point, the entire budget has ... been focused on having an additional EMS unit on Palmyra, a fire and EMS unit in Smithville and a fire and EMS unit on New York Road,” Ours said at a first reading of the proposed fee ordinance Monday. “If not, we need your direction on where you want to go.”

Operating both new and existing fire and emergency medical services would have been paid with the fees. The fees would not have balanced Lee’s budget, however, which reflects a 9.8 percent increase over FY ’08, Ours said.

Commissioner Jo Ealum, sporting an ultra-short hairstyle in preparation for her upcoming departure for Marine Corps basic training, said the proposed fees were unfair.

“I don’t think it’s a fair tax,” she said. “You’re paying the same dollar amount, whether it’s commercial or residential.”

Commissioner Ed Duffy said a millage rate increase would face greater public opposition, while the county still has a budget deficit of more than $1 million.

“We either raise the millage rate or we have the fees and we have fire and EMS all around the county,” Duffy said, repeating that the U.S. Highway 82 station lacks emergency medical services.

“We sell Grand Island, take the $1.2 million (for the deficit), put a four-lane through it and put commercial property through it,” said Commissioner Dennis Roland, drawing cheers.

The county-owned golf course on Ledo Road will not require an interfund transfer for the first budget year since the course was donated to the county, according to a budget summary by Finance Director Caree Elder.

The commission voted down a plan earlier this year to sell the course.

“Commercial and industrial are the only thing that’s going to save Lee County from the situation we’re in today,” Duffy said.

“All the development is in Dougherty County because y’all refuse to develop Grand Island,” Roland said.

Commission Chairman Morris Leverett said county services had improved dramatically since he moved to Lee.

“I’ve been here 47 years — when I first came here had one fire truck, one ambulance, volunteers and three full-time personnel that covered the whole county,” he said. “This county’s come a long way to what we have today.”

“And we still haven’t found a way to pay for it,” Ealum said.

“And people demand the services,” Leverett said.

No vote was taken on the fees measure and Ours recommended another called session for 9 a.m. Thursday to search for other areas to cut spending.

The Monday gathering was not a public hearing as previously reported, but a first reading of the proposed ordinance, required when the county adopts a new law.

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