By Kelly Doran
Sun staff
While air quality in Pierce Township may be improving following the W.C. Beckjord Station in New Richmond closing, the finances of the township are not.
The board of trustees approved putting the levy on the ballot in November during a special meeting on May 26.
The township needs the levy because with Beckjord’s closure, the township lost $686,000 a year, $229,000 of which went to the fire department and life squad services, said Mark Cann, a member of the levy committee.
The township is putting a 2.1 mill continuous levy on the November ballot, which will provide $691,000 a year for the fire department and life squad services, Cann said.
Last year, the township put a 2.8 mill levy on the ballot, which was defeated by 187 votes, likely due to campaigns against the levy by the Tea Party, said Stan Shadwell, a member of the finance committee.
The department needs more money for a couple of reasons.
One is that Pierce Township pays some of the lowest salaries in the area. So, people will be hired and get trained with the department, which is expensive, and then leave for a better paying job, said Shadwell.
The other reason is that the department has a lot of aging equipment that needs to be fixed or replaced, Cann said. There are two ambulances and a fire truck that need replaced.
One ambulance costs $192,000 and a fire truck is expected to cost $550,000, Shadwell said.
The department has been putting off purchases and upgrades because the township was aware the plant would be closing but was not aware how much it would lose, Cann said.
The fire department has spent exactly what their revenue was for the past three years, Shadwell said.
“But that’s at the expense of not replacing an ambulance and not raising salaries,” Shadwell said.
In order to provide great service to the community, the department needs the levy money, Cann said.
Even with this levy, the department will also be using reserve funds that it has in case of a major disaster, Cann said.
“So in 10 years we’ll have no reserve and we’ll basically be out of money,” Cann said.
The levy committee decided not to ask for more than 2.1 mills, however, because they wanted to be fair to the taxpayers and not ask for more than what the department really needs, Cann said.
On a $100,000 home, a 2.1 mill levy costs $75 a year, Shadwell said.
Citizens have given Cann both positive and negative reactions to the levy, he said. The biggest concern he’s heard is that the levy is continuing.
A continuing levy means it will continue until the trustees change it somehow. Because of Ohio law, entities cannot put more than a five-year levy on the ballot, but the township really needed a 10-year levy, Cann said.
The township currently has four continuing fire levies in place, one that was passed by voters in 1986, one in 1990, one in 2000 and one in 2006, Shadwell said. Originally the levies totaled 7.4 mills, but because the township can only get a certain amount from the levies and house values have changed, now the levies only require 5.74 mills to generate the same amount of tax revenue.
The township is still getting a little money from Duke Energy, the company that owns Beckjord, but it’s about a third of what it used to get and that will end soon, Shadwell said.
For the fire department, that means getting $111,000 instead of $340,000, Shadwell said.
Last year, the township thought it would lose all the money it was getting from Beckjord, which is why Shadwell and others on the committees decided to put a 2.8 mill levy on the ballot.
The township has been blessed with Beckjord for 50 years but now it’s gone, Cann said.