Curtiss may seek more money for fire hall use
Village officials in Curtiss are hoping to negotiate a better rental agreement with the Owen-Withee-Curtiss Fire District for use of the village’s fire hall, which represents a huge annual expense for village taxpayers.
The fire district currently deducts $16,000 from the village’s annual payment for fire protection services, bringing the annual assessment down from $26,000 to $10,000 in 2020. The village pays for all of the building’s utilities, which amounted to about $9,800 last year.
However, the village also pays $55,000 per year on a 20-year loan that was taken out after the station was built in 2015.
Trustee John Unruh noted that the loan payment represents half of all the tax dollars collected by the village every year. Since the village also pays nearly $10,000 per year in utilities, he said the district is essentially only paying a total of $6,000 a year to use the entire building.
“Half of our levy goes to paying on that building and they’re only paying $6,000,” he said at a board meeting on June 15.
In 2015, the village received a $500,000 Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) to help defray the cost of the $1.3 million building, and it also used some TIF money, but it still needed to issue a 10-year, $800,000 bond.
The 10,560-square-foot station features four truck bays, a meeting room, men’s and women’s restrooms, storage rooms (including a hose storage room), radio room, kitchen, utility room, laundry room, gear room, shop area and an office for the chief.
Unruh has pointed out that village offi cials do not use any of the rooms at the station even though the village owns the building. He and other village officials said that might change in the future.
At their June 15 meeting, village officials talked about the best way to calculate a more “equitable” rent for the OWC district to pay. Unruh suggested that perhaps asking the district to pay half the village’s annual cost — $32,500 when adding together the loan payment and utilities — would be fair.
DPW Larry Swarr, however, said it might be better to charge the district based on the depreciated value of the building. Village clerk Carol Devine said the village’s auditors could provide that number for future discussions.
“I think that’s a good way to do it,” Unruh said.
Jason Thornton, district chief of the OWC, was contacted for a comment, but did not want to say anything at this point.
“This matter will need to be discussed and/or decided on by the fire district board at their next meeting,” he wrote in an email.
