We're gonna call to order the joint meeting of the Eltsville Town Council and the Richland Township
Advisory Board. We'll start with our own roll call, if that's all right. Dan, we'll start with you.
Just announce who you are and who you're with. Dan Squalford, Town of Eltsville. Trevor Sager, Town
of Eltsville. William Ellis, Town of Eltsville. Scott Oldham, Town of Eltsville. David Welby, Richland
Township Board. Dawn Durnall, Richland Township Board.
Jay Thrasher, Richland Township Board. And I'll just certify that there is a quorum from both councils
present. Ms. Brown, does this go to you or who begins this? I think it should go to Mr. Farmer. Now
this is one of the public hearings for the fire protection territory. Okay. And this is a series of
four. And we have Baker Tilly here this evening to make a presentation with regard to
the impact, the financial impact analysis, if the fire protection territory goes through. Okay. Do you
want me to start it? Good evening. I'm Kevin Patton, Fire Chief of the Ellsville Fire Department. I've
got a short, it's approximately 12, 13 slides, just a brief overview of the Ellsville Fire Department.
Our department's made up of 17 full-time personnel. We have an administration staff, which is fire chief,
deputy chief, fire marshal, and an admin administrator. The deputy fire marshal and fire marshals take
care of fire inspections, things of that nature. Let's see.
We have, sorry, I'm not used to doing this, so. We have 21 firefighters that are part-time. Those personnel
fill in when a full-time firefighter is off duty or when they're sick, something like that, they'll
come in and backfill. We have two fire stations. The one here in Ellisville on the highway. That was
built in 2004. And the station over on Curry Pike is station 81.
If you're old enough to remember where Wetterall was, it's in the trailer court across the street. It
was built in 1971. A map of the township. Currently, the Ellisville Fire Department covers the entire
township through an annual contract with Richland Township, and we've done that since 1947.
just a little on the left side, just gives you a rough breakdown of the types of calls that we respond
to as far as through the 911 center. We do, you know, we'll get occasional calls for people that their
water lines broke in the house, things like that, and they'll call and ask for assistance, and we do
go help them. The top right gives you an idea of how many 911 emergency calls we respond to a year.
And you can see since 2020, we've had 102% increase of those calls. That's just from growth, number
of people traveling through our area. And of those in 2024, we had 265 overlapping calls. That means
we've had both our stations out on multiple calls at a time. When that happens, we rely on aid from
other outside agencies.
I have no idea what that happened. Sorry about that. This just kind of gives you a breakdown. We've
listed every fire station in Monroe County. That includes the city limits of Bloomington, and it's ranked
from number one through the bottom based on how busy a station is.
And you can see we're number two and three of the busiest fire stations in the county. We make a lot
of calls. Uh, just to give you an idea, if you've ever watched the morning news and you see the Indianapolis
fire department on a call for service, it's not uncommon for a residential see 30 or 40 firemen out there.
Minimum staffing, they recommend around 20 firefighters on a call for a structure fire, like a house,
something of that nature. Obviously, if it's a larger structure, you'll have more than that. Where do
we get our funding? Through the town of Ellisville, through your property taxes.
Richland Township through a contract that we renew every year, and we have since, like I said, 1947.
The 2026 budget, that's what we are running right now. That includes the personnel, the equipment. And
then the 27, 28, and 29, that's just an estimate. The state generally allows you a 4% increase a year,
and that's what that reflects.
This just gives you a real quick breakdown on what some of this equipment and basically where your tax
money goes. You can see a fireman's pair of gloves is $100. We're allowed to use those for 10 years.
If they make it 10 years, they generally don't. Firefighters turnout gear, helmet, all of that put together,
you're looking at $7,000. All of that is good for 10 years. After that, it has to be replaced.
A fire engine. A fire engine will last us roughly 20 years. That's based on call volumes, things of
that nature. Obviously, if it's busier, you're going to get less time out of that. A truck is $1.3 million,
and currently it's taken between two and four years to order one of those. If you need an aerial truck,
basically a big ladder with a bucket at the end.
You're looking at three to four years to get one of those, and they're running right around $2.3 million.
What kind of equipment replacement have we done here recently? This year we ordered a new fire engine.
That was paid for through the contract with Richland Township.
We also ordered 50 sets of turnout gear. We do everything we can to try to save the taxpayers' money,
so we do a lot of grants. Half of that was paid for by a grant. The total of it was $101,000. We purchased
a new aerial, the latter with the bucket on the end, almost two years ago. That was paid for by the
TIF district, which is the
Basically the factories on the west side of town, west side of Bloomington in the southeast corner,
Daniels Way, Curry Pike, things like that. They paid for that truck completely. Did not cost the taxpayers
of Richland Township or Belletsville any money. Let's see. The station on Curry Pike, that's the only
thing that we're looking at relatively soon, looking to need to upgrade that.
Like I said, that was built in 1971 when there was one firefighter on duty over there and we made roughly
150 calls a year. Now we're housing three firefighters in there. It gets a little snug besides it's
50 years old. It was also purchased by the West Side Industries, the Wetteralls, Cooks, General Electric.
They paid for the building, paid for the firefighters there for the first five years.
no tax money costing by for that. That was completely paid for by them. Just challenges we have with
the current, not unlike anybody else, overlapped calls just from nature, the volume of them, population
increases, work, driving, so on. Huge decrease in volunteerism.
We're not getting the volunteer firefighters into the department like we used to. When I joined 37 years
ago, there was roughly 40 volunteers. We've got like five now. Everybody's busy. The net assessed value
for Richland and Ellisville is right at $1,800,000. That's what we're protecting currently.
What we're wanting to try to accomplish, basically bring the two governmental entities together into
one. Page from Baker Tilley will cover this in more detail. Just makes things a little smoother. Your
town council still has input into what's going on. The advisory board does. It's they work together
to accomplish this rather than two separate boards.
And that's all I've got. I can turn it over to Page unless the council or anyone has a specific question
for me at this time. Questions from council? And seeing none, any from the public on the chief's
presentation? Seeing none, we'll move on to Page.
Good evening, Paige Sansone with Baker Tilly. So my presentation is a summary of the financial impact
analysis that we prepared for this proposed fire territory.
So you can go ahead to the next slide. So we and by the way we do have handouts up here at the front
desk if you'd like to pick one up after the meeting. So what is a fire territory. It is a legally established
consolidation mechanism for providing fire protection and it is a way really to
bring two adjoining taxing entities together to create a fire territory. So it can be two townships,
it can be a township of municipality, it can be fire districts, but there has to be at least two and
they have to touch boundaries. So why would we form a fire territory? Really, probably the number one
reason is to create a sustainable and dedicated revenue source for fire services.
Also, to spread the cost equally across an entire tax base so that we don't have people out in the township
paying a different rate than those within the municipality.
Improves operational efficiency and response times it can enhance firefighter safety and resources having
additional Revenue can help with that getting additional Staffing etc getting better equipment and it
meets the growing service demands as the chief mentioned. We're seeing this on
all over the state, if not all over the nation, that lack of volunteerism. It's not that people don't
wanna volunteer, they're just too busy to volunteer. It's not like in the past where a lot of employers
would allow people to go out on runs in the middle of their job, in the middle of the day. We see a
lot less of that now. So it is really a lack of having those volunteers.
So the process to establish is at minimum we have to have three public hearings to present this information
and we will present the same exact information at all three public hearings. Tonight is public hearing
number one. February 25th will be public hearing number two.
and March 11th is the final public hearing. On March 25th, the fiscal bodies of the township, so the
township board and the fiscal body of the town of Ellisville, which is the town council, will vote to
either approve or deny the proposed fire territory. If it is approved,
I don't know why this is cutting out. If this is approved, then we will send a petition to the Department
of Local Government Finance asking for permission to levy property taxes beginning in 2027. So once
we send that petition, it will be up to the DLGF, the Department of Local Government Finance to approve
or modify that request. If you go back to the previous slide,
So previous, yep, right there.
So the proposed fire territory obviously will be made up of the town of Ellisville and Richland Township.
One of these units has to be designated the provider unit. And in this case, that would be the town
of Ellisville. And that just simply means that the town will levy the property taxes on behalf of the
fire territory. And the town will be responsible for preparing and approving the annual budget, but
there will be a fire territory executive board that will recommend, will prepare and recommend that
budget to the town council. So that executive board will be comprised of at least one member from each
participating unit. So they will have a voice in this, they will have some authority in preparing that
information and really running the fire services.
So again, the property tax levy, if this is approved by March 31st, will be levied beginning in 2027.
And then after that, starting in 2028, it will grow by the same levy growth factor as all other taxing
units in the state. Now we can move on. So the first thing, and we can move on to the next slide.
The first thing we like to show is just a comparison of the funding as it is now. I know the chief had
already showed a little bit of this but just to show you how much each unit currently generates in revenue
that is specific to fire services. So the town of Ellisville generates about one point five or one point
six million in revenue.
in Richland Township generates about a million dollars in revenue for fire services. So jointly together,
it's about 2.6 million in revenue. The next slide is the tax rates. So right now, an individual or a
taxpayer with property in Richland Township pays about 14 cents for fire services. A property
located within the town of Ellisville pays about 19 cents for fire services. The next two pages
is a detail of the fire territories proposed budget. I'm not gonna go through all the detail again.
We do have handouts up here at the front, but I'll go to the next page that shows kind of the total.
So we have a total operating budget the first year in 2027 of about 3.8 million.
And so that would cover the day-to-day operations, staffing, utility costs, all that kind of day-to-day
recurring costs. The fire territory is also allowed to have what's called an equipment replacement fund.
It's very similar to a township cumulative fire fund or a town cumulative fire fund. That generates
a certain amount based on a maximum rate of 3.33 cents. So 3.33 cents for this fire territory would
generate about $505,000 that can either be accumulated or spent on an annual basis. This slide kind
of puts everything together. So the first thing we do is determine what
needs to be funded. What is the operating budget? What is the capital budget? And then we can determine
the total levy that is needed to fund that budget. And from that, we can go on to calculate the estimated
property tax rate for the fire territory. So as we go down through here, we see that we need net property
tax of almost $4 million. There is some circuit breaker
losses that will be incurred right now. We're estimating somewhere around 179,000. So what that means
is there are some taxpayers that are hitting the tax caps, especially within the town of Ellisville.
So no matter if the property, no matter if this fire territory is approved or not, those types of taxpayers
will not pay any more on their tax bill. So that generates additional credits
that are reducing the overall property tax. So we know going into this that even though the Fire Chief
has proposed a budget of about 3.8 million, it's possible that there will only be about 3.7 for operating
because of those, or 3.6 to 3.7 because of those estimated circuit breaker credits. So we have to keep
that in the back of our minds that we may need to do a budget adjustment.
The capital will have about five hundred and five thousand to operate with so both of those combined
about four point two million So we need a levy of four million one hundred and thirty nine thousand
I'm just rounding up there if we spread that over each $100 of net assess value that is a tax rate of
point two seven four four and
After the first year, it's just going to grow by the normal growth factor, which we're assuming is about
4%, which is very typical. We have the budget growing by the same growth factor, 4%. So really, there's
not going to be much of any changes after the first year. It's just that initial year where we'll see
some impact. We do need to let you know that there is some current.
outstanding debt for an aerial ladder truck. The remaining balance is approximately $1.8 million. The
township has no outstanding debt. Please note that any pre-existing debt like the debt I just mentioned
does not roll into the fire territory. That debt will continue to be paid by the current funding source
that's paying it right now.
The provider and participating units may issue debt after the fire territory is established. There's
no immediate plans to do that, but just to let you know that either one or both of the participating
units can issue debt on behalf of the fire territory if later on down the line there is a big capital
purchase that needs to take place.
Now for the property tax liability impact. So we need to determine how this is going to impact the district
tax rate because that is what your tax bills are based upon. If we can figure out what percentage increase
this will cause to the district tax rate
That will translate to a percentage increase to your tax bill if your property is not hitting the tax
caps. So Richland Township is impacted a little bit more than the town of Ellitsville because the district
tax rate is lower. So the district tax rate for Richland Township is 1.6407.
Right now, the tax rate for fire services is about 14 cents, so we can subtract that out before we add
on the fire territory rate of 27 cents. So the net impact is about 13 cents for this fire territory.
That increases the overall district tax rate by 7.9%. So again, that translates to that's how much your
tax bill could increase. That's the maximum it could increase, 7.9%.
If you're not the tax caps if you're at the tax caps you should not experience any increase in your
tax bill and we are going to show some examples here in a minute. In Ellisville there's two taxing districts
in Ellisville they have about the same tax rate they're a little bit different but it's pretty close.
So we would first take off the .1862 that's currently charged for fire services, mainly out of the general
fund, and then add in the 27 cent rate for the fire territory. So the net impact is about nine cents.
So that's a 4.2% increase to the tax bill for those living in Ellisville, the maximum. So now we are
gonna go on to some illustrative examples.
So we're gonna start with residential homestead property. That's what people are mostly interested in.
We've got three different property values. So we're gonna start with $150,000 residential home value
located in Richland Township. So the 7.9% increase would only be about $7 a month or $80 annually.
If we look at a 293,500 residential home value, which is, by the way, the average home value in this
area, you're looking at a $16 monthly increase or about $193 annually. And then a $350,000 home value,
it's about $20 increase, which is about a $238 increase annually.
Okay, so now we move on to Ellisville. Both taxing districts in Ellisville have the same impact.
So $150,000 home value is not at the tax caps, so it would see an increase of $4 monthly.
or four and a half dollars monthly, and about $55 annually. Now notice the $293,000 and the $350,000
home values. Those values are hitting the tax caps. So if you have that value of residential property,
you would not
see an increase due to this proposed buyer territory. I have listed in the notes down here towards the
bottom when homes hit the tax caps in these three taxing districts. So in Richland Township, you'd have
to have a pretty high home value before you're hitting the caps. It's about 1.1 million. But in Ellitsville,
in both taxing districts,
Your home doesn't hit the tax caps until 228,000. So if you have a home value above 228,000, you should
not see an impact due to this fire territory. That's in Ellitsville. If it's below that, you will see
some impact up to 4.2%. Okay, moving on to other property types. So we have a $100,000 piece of agricultural
land. If it's in Richland Township,
The 7.9% increase equates to about $11 a month or $130 annually. That property value
in Ellitsville is already at the tax caps. In fact, all 2% properties, which would be agricultural land
and residential rental properties are at the 2% caps. So they are not going to be impacted if they're
in the town of Ellitsville. I realize there may not be much ag land in the town of Ellitsville, but
I'm sure there's some residential rental properties in Ellitsville.
Moving on to a $300,000 residential rental property in Richland Township the monthly increase would
be about $32 or $390 for the year and then commercial property of 500,000 would be about $54 monthly
650 a year for up for Richland and then Ellisville $37 monthly and $441 annually. So again, those are just some
some examples, but really all you need to know are those percentages and if you're at the tax caps.
And you can get your tax bill from the county GIS and whatever you're currently paying, you can just
multiply it by either .079 or .042 and that will give you the increase unless you are at the tax caps
at which point you would have no increase. So moving on.
Couple slides here, continue, continue. So we need to talk about, or we are required to talk about the
impact on the overlapping taxing units within this area. So property tax caps, I did mention that. Those
are credits that limit a taxpayer's total property tax liability to a fixed percentage of the gross
assessed value of that property.
So we have three tax caps classifications in the state of Indiana. One is residential homestead, which
is capped at 1% of the gross assess value. So for an example, if you have a $100,000 gross assess value
home, it's capped at $1,000.
Other residential rental and ag land capped at 2% and commercial properties capped at 3%. So it's a
higher cap, so it takes a higher tax rate to get those taxpayers to the cap. There are exceptions, like
if there's a school referendum, you have to pay that in addition to the cap. So there are times you
could go above the 1% or the 2% or 3%, but that's referendum rates would only push you over that.
So how does this proposed fire territory impact the units? On this slide, it shows every unit within
the county and how the units would be impacted. And quite frankly, it's not that much of an impact except
to the fire territory, which makes sense because the fire territory is levying additional taxes and
it's pushing some people to the tax caps. But if you look at the county government, their tax caps may
increase about 21,000.
Richland Townships will actually go down on this schedule. If it's a positive number, it means your
tax caps are going down. And that's because Richland Township will not be levying taxes for fire anymore.
So you could see a benefit for that. The town's property tax caps will go down because a portion of
the town's maximum levy will be reduced because you don't have to cover fire services out of your general
fund anymore.
But then, of course, we know that the fire territory will have a tax cap starting right off the bat,
and they understand that adjustments may need to be made. And you can see the school is affected and
the library. So this is minimal impacts, considering the fact that we do have a lot of taxpayers in
the town of Ellisville that are hitting the tax caps. All right, so the next thing I need to talk about
is local income tax.
So Monroe County has several types of local income tax. Some of these local income taxes are distributed
based on how much each unit levies as a percentage of all the levies in the county. So when we have
a provider unit of a fire territory, levying more property taxes because now they have this new fire
territory, that might mean that
local income tax gets redirected towards the participating units, the town and township, and away from
some of the other units. So we had to analyze that. So that will be in a slide that follows, if you
can go to the next slide, please. Before I get to that slide, I'm getting ahead of myself. I wanna tell
you a couple things about local income taxes. One, that there was,
legislation that was passed, SEA 1, that changes the way local income tax will be distributed. But I
do believe that's going to be delayed. The legislation as it was written in SEA 1 says that we'll have
a new local income tax structure starting in 2028. And the distribution is based on a multitude of different
factors, but not levy.
But here's the deal, the short legislative session, I think they're going to delay that to 2029. So
therefore I am gonna have to show you that at least 2028 will be impacted. There's a year lag time.
So the levies that are based on the distribution formula or the distribution formulas that's based on
the levies is the year previous. So if the fire territory starts levying tax in 2027, it won't affect
local income tax till 2028.
And then if we have a whole new system in 2029, it's not gonna affect that one. So I think at probably
most, this fire territory could impact the 2028 distribution. So let's go to the next slide and see
how that might impact things. So again, 2027 is not impacted because it's based on 2026 levies. So there's
no impact there. Where this could impact if
the legislation delays the new structure is in 2028 only. So the participating units based on the formula
that's in the statute will get a larger share of local income tax because of the way the formula is
written. It basically will look like both
the town and the township is levying tax for the fire territory. Really only the town is levying the
tax. But the statute is constructed in a way to give benefit to both participating units. So that said,
Richland Township could see an additional amount of local income tax of 275,000.
an additional amount on top of what you're already getting. And Ellitsville could see an additional
amount of about 290,000 or 291,000. But where that additional amount comes from is a reduction of all
the other units that have this. So again, going back to we are required to show you an estimate of how
it will impact other units within the county.
Moving on to local income tax, same thing. It's distributed based on levy, at least for the
2028 distribution. So Ellitsville could see an additional 289,000 of local income tax. Richland is not
a part of this one because remember, public safety lit is only distributed to the county unit and the
municipalities. So Ellitsville could see a benefit there.
Economic development, which, yep, on the next page, this one in this county is based on population.
So this is not impacted. So this fire territory will have no impact on the economic development
distributions. Okay, vehicle excise tax is the last piece of overlapping information I need to give
you. Vehicle excise tax is the tax that you pay when you go to the license branch to register or renew
your vehicle.
When you pay that tax, it gets distributed out to all the taxing units in the county based on how much
each taxing unit levies. And there is no lag.
time year. So in 2027, there will be a change in those distributions. You can go on to the next slide.
So it stands to reason that the fire territory will get that additional amount. There's no stipulation
in the statute like there was with the local income tax where the participating units will get additional
shares. It's just since the fire territory now has a property tax levy,
they will get about 207,000, which we've worked in as the revenue for the fire territory, but the other
units will see slight decreases because it comes from the rest of the units. So that completes
my presentation. I think at this time we can accept public comment if there is any. And I wanna make
clear to the public
because we've also, we had a reorganization meeting previous to this, it's either or. This is not in
addition to reorganization. If the reorganization fails at the public ballot, or we don't submit it,
it's not on there, this would be in its place. So you're not gonna get hit with, when we come out the
reorganization numbers, I don't want anybody thinking it's reorganization plus the fire territory, it's
either or.
Other questions? Comments? Seeing none, we'll move to the public. Any more questions or comments?
Seeing none, we'll go to Mr. Farmer and ask where we go now.
and pass a resolution and ordinance to join or to establish a fire protection territory and then approve
a fire protection territory agreement. And just for the record for the public, the additional hearings
are on February the 18th, February the 25th, and March the 11th, all in here, all at seven o'clock,
correct? Correct. Okay. Go around again. So for those that remember, same bat time, same bat station.
I would say if anybody has any questions directly to me or myself, probably through the clerk's office,
and you can utilize the clerk's office to ask questions and we'll get back to you with information.
The town clerk, right, the town clerk, not county clerk, correct?
One more time for the council. Any questions, comments? Anything else you want to discuss? Well, we
haven't mentioned the Monroe County Fire District or Fire Territory. Yes. That has set their sights
on Richland Township. They said in the meeting in January. And you were there. I was there.
December 22nd. 5 p.m. I remember that. I was there.
and they flat out said that they intended to add Richmond Township and Salt Creek and Polk, maybe,
in April. Well, again, that's kind of, I will say, worrisome for the fact that we've held a contract
in force between the two governmental bodies since 1947. There remains a contract in force, and this,
quite frankly, seems like a move with other reasons behind it.
And to be clear, the fire district, do any council members from Alexville to town, have they reached
out to the fire district and said, we want to be part of it? No. Has anybody from the township reached
out to the fire district and said, we want to be part of it? No. And the fire district with Bean Blossom,
the last one that they did, Kevin, what was the, they had remonstrance, didn't they? Which means the people,
either vote wanted or not, and I think was it 80% remonstrated against it? That's what I was told by
the Trustee. Correct. And the commissioners overrode that and said we're doing it anyway. And their
tax impact is on a $300,000 home based on their tax rate, about 1,080 a year. So this would,
both reorganization or this would stop that.
may just be temporary, because this I think is more up in the air based on state guidelines with what
they do in the future. Consolidation would be the best of the two options. Reorganization. Potato potato,
right? Nope. It's not? Reorganization. Okay. So again, any comments, questions? I would like to add
to what William said that Richland Township has always
With that, Scott mentioned the agreement. For 79 years, the township has always used the funds that
we get for fire for Ellitsville. That's why we have the agreement that Ellitsville covers the entire
township. And with that, the fire district, if they were to take over Richland Township, would have
to start from ground zero.
no land, they have no buildings, they have no personnel, they have no equipment. So our taxes are going
to have to be utilized to come up with that money. On just a record, it would only be the taxes from
the township. It would not be taxes from the town because the town is on fire. Correct. That would greatly
impact the township residents. Correct. And in the grand scheme, impact the town residents because of
the lack of funding, but it would grossly
over impact those in the township. Correct. Thank you. We have one gentleman rising for comment. Hi,
Andrew Henry. I just quick one on clarification on the actual process because William had said it's
either reorganization or this. My understanding is there are four required public meetings.
This is the first. There are three more in February and March, at which point the fire territory would
be established by a vote of both the township and the council separately.
it doesn't go on a ballot referendum in the fall. That is correct. But if reorganization were to happen,
it would supersede the territory. But in terms of order of operations, the fire territory would be decided.
Yes. And then if your organization is approved by the public ballot, it would then be dissolved and
superseded by. That's correct. Yes. It just wouldn't take effect, isn't that? I don't know if it would
be dissolved. I don't know if we would have to do anything to dissolve it, or would it just by nature
not exist? Basically, at that point, we wouldn't have two bodies.
Capable of forming the fire territory because it would be one joint government, right? So we wouldn't
even qualify for this to go into effect if reorganization is passed by the voters. But we would know
at the time of the referendum on reorganization that the fire territory definitively had or had not
already been passed. It's been established. That is correct. Thank you. And again, I will speak for
both boards and correct me if I'm wrong. We feel that the public is the better determiner as to who
runs the town and township as opposed to
outside entities that we necessarily didn't elect to tell us who's going to provide fire service. So
with that said, one more time, anyone? The only thing I might throw out, what I heard that the fire
district had planned to take Ellsville in April. It's a municipality, they can't. Oh, it's Richland.
Yeah, well, they advertised Ellsville and Richland. Okay. Yeah, and they have no statutory
ability to do that, but I think that just kind of showed their true intentions that they want, they're
coming after Ellisville too. That's just my opinion, but I think this is one of those cases, and I know
we got sick of hearing it all through COVID, we're all in this together, and I think Richland and the
town really this, because the town doesn't escape from this got free if the district comes in either.
And to be clear, the district, you're not gonna get bad fire service.
those are great guys, they have great leadership, you'd just be paying that much more for equal to what
you got now. And yeah, it's a solution in looking, looking for a problem. All right. If there's no other
comments, we'll stand adjourned for this evening.