MOUNT DORA CITY COUNCIL UPDATE: Aug. 3 Budget Workshop

By Marc Crail
District 4 City Council Representative 

This morning (8/3/21) City Council held a Budget Workshop between 9:00-12:00. The single agenda item was the Fire department's budget for FY2021-22. A Work Session or Workshop is a public meeting and it was held at the W.T. Bland Library's meeting room. Work Sessions give council members a chance to hear information, ask questions and discuss things. Today members of the public were invited to provide their opinions as well. What follows come from me not from city council as a whole.

Normally I report to you retrospectively about what has happened at a Council meeting. I might say that we voted to approve this or that and the vote was 5-2. I can tell you who voted yes or no because it's already happened. No votes were taken today so I'll concentrate on letting you know that we reviewed the historical timelines of our plans to build new fire stations and staffing. We discussed our future plans to build 2 new fire stations and a public works facility.

We talked about the fact that Mount Dora's fire department became fully accredited in March of 2020. There are only 88 accredited fire departments in the United States and just 286 in the world. Our fire department is among the very best in the world.

Our fire department has set 4 Key Expectations:

• Adequate Staffing
• Response times benchmarked against national standards
• Well trained & proficient firefighters
• Community outreach & public educations

The major questions at hand involve how much staffing is needed to do the job and how to balance our high service expectations with our City's budget constraints. We talked about The Fire Assessment Fee that has been set at $219 per year for the past few years and our ad valorem taxes that support our fire department. This year we spend $936.63 per household on fire services. That totals $6,796,701.00 for our city of 15,200 residents. We discussed the federal SAFER Grant that allowed us to hire 12 new firefighters three years ago and is sunsetting this December.

We looked at and discussed 3 different proposed staffing models. Each has pros and cons. We've asked our Finance Director to bring us back information on a model for consideration at a future meeting. In the end we are struggling with providing excellent fire services to Mount Dora while at the same time keeping taxes reasonable.

Like every aspect of our City Budget we will need to weigh our options and collectively come up with an option that will likely involve compromises.

Our regular City Council Meeting has been moved to Wednesday 8/4/21 at City Hall. You'll here from me again tomorrow evening.

My quote today is from Marcus Aurelius. "The opinion of 10,000 men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject."

By Marc Crail
District 4 City Council Representative

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