St Tammany FPD 3 - Lacombe - 27 January 2000
From the Times Picayunne at www.nolalive.com
Fire tax put on ballot for Lacombe area - Extra millage, new hires sought - By Paul Bartels - St. Tammany bureau/The Times-Picayune
Lacombe area fire commissioners and firefighters are hoping the voters will be in a good mood this spring.
The Fire Protection District 3 board is asking voters on April 15 to renew for 10 years a 5.14-mill property tax expiring this year and give the district an additional 4.86 mills for 10 years.
The St. Tammany Parish Council last week approved a resolution authorizing the special election. A new resolution may have to be adopted because the current one speaks of "an additional 10 mills" when a little more than half the amount is a renewal.
The district has three full-time firefighters, a dispatcher, one part-timer and about 40 volunteers. It has a main station on South Eighth Street off U.S. 190 West and a substation at South Mill Road and U.S. 190, two pumper trucks, three tankers and a rescue-extricator unit.
Every full-time firefighter must be a certified emergency medical technician or become one within a year of hiring, Commissioner James Smith said Wednesday. Several of the volunteers also are EMT-certified.
The money from the extra millage would be used to hire two more full-time paid firefighters and a few part-time ones and to replace aging equipment in an effort to improve the area's fire protection rating to a 4, Smith said.
If successful, that will translate into insurance-cost savings for residents and businesses. The rating for a particular area is established by the Property Insurance Association of Louisiana and the Department of Insurance after inspectors make their recommendations.
The scale is 10 to 1, with 1 being the best. Last March, District 3 improved from a 7 to a 5 because of firefighting-capability upgrades. The average savings on property insurance for the owner of a $125,000 home was $278 a year, Smith said.
If the renewal and new tax are approved and the number 4 rating is forthcoming, Smith said, that same homeowner would pay $24 more a year in taxes but save an additional $202 in insurance.
The district, which has an annual budget of about $210,000, covers all of the 7th Ward in south St. Tammany. The rectangular ward runs just below the community of St. Tammany, across Interstate 12, through the Lacombe community and to Lake Pontchartrain.
The current millage is 20.77, including the 5.14 mills for which renewal is sought. The budget is supplemented by fund-raisers put on by active volunteers and others in the Lacombe area.
01/27/00
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