By JOAN McCOY
Leader staff writer
When the Cabot City Council voted earlier this week to rescind the impact fee on new construction it took away the only revenue source in place — more than $1,000 per home — to build the fire station needed to keep insurance premiums down in some of the newest subdivisions on Hwy. 5.
Now, Mayor Eddie Joe Williams says reinstating the impact fee for the fire department only is one solution to the problem that will be discussed when the council’s fire and police committee meets May 1.
Alderman Eddie Cook suggested during the Mon-day night council meeting that it would be prudent to keep that one part of the fee, which collected $75,000 of the total of $208,000 in the year it was in place. The balance of the fee went to the library, parks, streets and wastewater.
But Cook was among the seven council members who voted to rescind the 2006 ordinance that established the impact fee on both commercial and residential construction.
Only Alderman Teri Miessner voted against rescinding the impact fee.
City officials learned in 2006 that the city had outgrown its fire protection and that the insurance premiums for several hundred residents in Greystone and Magness Creek could double or triple as a result.
Former Alderman Odis Waymack learned from talking to the Insurance Service Office (ISO), which rates cities’ fire protection for insurance purposes, that simply parking an un-staffed fire engine within five highway- miles of the affected area would be a temporary fix for the problem.
So the city rented a bay at the Mountain Springs Volunteer Fire Department for $200 a month and then early in 2007 paid $259,600 for three acres and buildings on the corner of Hwy. 5 and Mountain Springs and moved an un-staffed engine to that location.
The plan was never actually to build a permanent station there. The council said the city could get its money back by selling the property for commercial use.
But eventually, the city will have to build another fire station. And that, the mayor says, will cost $1.5 million for the building, $1 million for equipment and $500,000 a year for the firefighters who will staff it.
Because the city council acted quickly with its Band-aid fix for the fire department problem, the city’s fire rating is currently a Class 3. But after the ISO inspection of the city’s fire suppression system in the summer of 2006, the rating was set to drop to Class 3 / 9. With ISO ratings, the lower the number, the higher the rating and the less insurance is likely to cost.
A letter from ISO to Mayor Stubby Stumbaugh dated Sept. 27, 2006, told the mayor that the rating had dropped for property more than five road-miles from the nearest responding fire station or within five road-miles of the nearest responding fire station but more than 1,000 feet from a fire hydrant. The former is now a Class 10, the lowest possible, and the latter is a Class 9.
Fire Chief Phil Robinson said after the city received the letter from ISO that all houses beyond 903 Greystone Blvd. would be Class 10. That included the subdivisions of Mystery Lake, Southern Hills, Georgetown, Signature and Kensington.
In Magness Creek North subdivision, the 11 streets beyond 61 Lakeland would have been downgraded to Class 10 if the council had not taken action.
When the council Monday night passed the ordinance repealing the impact fee, the mayor said there was nothing in the new ordinance that would prevent the council from imposing the fee again at a later date if necessary.
He said the city’s finances have improved since the council passed the impact fee. Voters passed a one-cent sales tax that built a much-needed wastewater treatment plant, helped pay for the animal shelter, the community center and the railroad overpass now under construction.
Layoffs last year in all city departments have kept salaries down.
He said in a later interview that the city is now requiring developers to improve existing streets where they build. The city also has successfully partnered with the county and state to make needed street improvements, so the impact fee for streets is not needed as much as it once was.
But even though the city is saving $5,000 a month to buy firefighting equipment, there is no money for another fire station that must be built in the near future, he said.
