Winter Garden City Commission talks potential fire assessment fees

The Winter Garden City Commission unanimously approved a resolution that would allow the city to possibly implement a fire assessment fee if needed in the future as an alternative source of funding for fire services. 

The city is looking into alternative funding sources due to recent property tax amendments, shrinking revenue sources and increased costs to provide the essential services. In January, the commission gave authorization for city staff to proceed with updating the fire assessment that was previously adopted in 2008. 

An alternative funding source is a fire assessment, and the resolution approved at the commission meeting Thursday, June 26, establishes the initial rate and process for assessing and collecting a Fire Rescue Assessment. 

The non-ad valorem special assessment would fund capital and operating costs associated with providing fire protection and first responder services. 

An actual rate will be established at the Thursday, Aug. 14 meeting, and the commission can lower the rate to any amount less than the advertised rate. 

The requested budget of the Winter Garden Fire Rescue Department for Fiscal Year 2025-2026 is approximately $13.8 million. The assessable budget with the fire assessment for Fiscal Year 2025-2026 is approximately $12.4 million, but once assessment related expenses are deducted, the city will be able to collect approximately $11.5 million. 

The demand by land use calculations are determined by 10 years of incident data from 2015 to 2024, the frequency of calls as well as the full resources utilized by each incident, including the number of personnel, number of vehicles and how long each incident lasted. 

Residential land use has the highest resource utilization of fire services, followed by    institutional and commercial land uses. Even if a property never calls the fire department, it still benefits from the availability of the fire department and the readiness factor. There are insurance premium discounts and property values are higher as a result of the fire department being available to serve the property. 

The residential assessment rate for homes of less than 1,000 square feet could be approximately $333 while larger homes of 3,500 square feet or more could be approximately $518.

City Manager Jon C. Williams said the passage of the resolution only gives the city the ability to mail out first-class notices to notify residents of the maximum rates their property can be charged, but the actual rates can be adopted Aug. 14, and the adopted rates can be lower. 

“We have multiple factors we’re trying to hedge against with what’s likely to come a little bit down the pipe, and you have the realization of every year, you’re faced with trying to compete with external agencies and other agencies that can pay significant wages, which is constantly driving up the cost,” Williams said. “If you were to kind of just take a look at our public safety costs as a whole, combining both police and fire versus our ad-valorem tax collection, you’re probably looking at about a $12 million deficit, so we’re going to have to do something.”

The city will host community engagement meetings on Tuesday, July 22, and Tuesday, July 29.