For years the Indiana General Assembly has encouraged neighboring townships to combine fire departments to lower costs. But the property tax cuts the legislature passed this year have done the opposite, likely ending merger talks by at least four Michiana fire departments.
For months Steve Downey and Joshua Schweizer were meeting to talk about combining their fire territories. Downey is chief of the St. Joseph County Fire Territory, which formed last year when Portage and Warren townships joined up. Schweizer heads what’s commonly known as the New Carlisle Fire Department, which legally has been in a fire territory with Olive and Hudson townships since 2020.
Downey says his Warren Township constituents would benefit by expanding the territory but the need is especially critical for New Carlisle, which is just west of where Amazon is developing its massive data center and GM and Samsung are building their electric vehicle battery plant.
“I don’t want to say this at all in a negative way with New Carlisle because I think they’re doing a great job with what they have, but as those Amazon centers and the GM building come fully online, they’re going to see an increased call volume, that I don’t think they have the staffing to handle that," Downey said.
Schweizer says calls are already up during construction of the projects.
“As of last week, from last year to this year, we’ve seen a 24% increase in call volume and we’re seeing a lot of calls to the Amazon sites, we’re seeing a lot of calls to State Road 2 because of accidents caused by the increased traffic," Schweizer said.
Statewide homeowners have seen huge increases in their assessed valuation since property values soared during the pandemic. This past session of the General Assembly saw lawmakers determined to provide some relief. They ended up passing Senate Bill 1, signed into law by Governor Mike Braun. It cuts property taxes by $1.2 billion from next year through 2028. Homesteads will get a 10% credit, saving the average homeowner $300 a year.
But the law has halted fire department merger talks. That’s because it also caps the property tax rate that any newly created fire territories can levy at 40 cents per $100 of assessed value. Schweizer says that’s lower than the 56 cents that New Carlisle is already levying.
“So for us to be able to sustain our current staffing limits, or our current staffing needs, to get to where we need to provide service to these expanding areas, 40 cents per hundred won’t support it, so it pretty much kills that," Schweizer says.
So Schweizer says he doesn’t know how his department will handle the increased calls once the plant and data center are up and running. At their next meeting the Olive Township board will hire a consultant to study how much revenue Senate Bill 1 will cost the fire territory.
The projects lie within tax incremental financing districts, so the county could explore using some of that money for fire protection.
On the other end of the county, leaders from Clay Fire Territory and Penn Township Fire Department also had been meeting to discuss possibly merging. Penn Township Fire Chief Michael Gerndt says consolidating would help his department meet costs that are rising just like they are for households.
“Everything is more expensive," Gerndt says. "You can’t go to the grocery store now without spending just an extremely larger amount of money than we were five years ago. Fuel costs are going up. All of those other expenses that go along with running an organization have grown exponentially. The fire equipment that we need, those costs have skyrocketed.”
Gerndt says it’s also become harder to keep firefighters and emergency medical technicians from being hired away by neighboring city fire departments that can pay higher wages.
He says it doesn’t seem likely that Clay and Penn could operate their same level of services under the 40-cent cap but they aren’t giving up on trying to find ways to work together.
“What can we accomplish at that 40-cent cap?" Gerndt said. "So we’re reconfiguring what budgets might look like and where are we able to cut some of that spending? So when I say we’re still moving forward and looking at options, I don’t know that 40 cents is going to allow that to happen. However I don’t think it would be prudent just to say we’re not going to look to see what’s possible.”
The law allows county income taxes to be used for fire territories but if the county decides to go that route, the new income tax money would need to be shared among all local taxing units in the county, so it’s unclear how much money that could generate for fire territories.
Back in Warren Township, Chief Downey notes that regardless of a merger, his department will continue responding to calls in the New Carlisle territory when they need help.
“We’re not going to not go anywhere we’re requested to go," Downey said. "We would never do that. But getting a firefighter with a fire apparatus and the right crew to a scene, sometimes it’s a little bit more about how soon you get there. If you get there in five minutes or do you get there in 15 minutes and that’s where having additional staffing can improve upon that.”
