It may seem generous or even magnanimous that Anderson firefighters are willing to give up $890,000 in ambulance user fees (the city projects $1.05 million will be collected in 2010) to help balance the city’s budget.
But the question persists: Why is it the firefighters’ money in the first place?
Wouldn’t it make more sense for the money always to go into the city’s general fund, so that council could decide to use it as needed?
The practice of various city departments having their own little (or big) pot of self-generated money to be used within that department is a bad one. Such arrangements force city council to forfeit control of revenue that could be used for other purposes.
In this particular case, the user fees had been funneled into a fund to be used to upgrade fire equipment, purchase new trucks and maintain fire stations. Such a fund is important, since municipalities often find themselves in dire need of new fire trucks and police cars but haven’t set aside the money to buy them.
The firefighters’ offer to forfeit the money into the general fund, in this case, seems a bit less altruistic when you know that they wanted something specific out of the offer — the agreement that no firefighters be laid off.
City council approved the agreement last week, effectively tying its own hands. It should have sought to access the money for whatever council members felt was the most pressing need in the general fund. Instead, in two years, the money will begin feeding back into the fire equipment fund.
Council’s decision seemed dictated by the root problem — that user fees were going straight into the fire equipment fund. Council must fix that problem first by seeing that such user fees go into the general fund, out of which certain needs — such as saving money for new fire trucks — would be assigned.
The current arrangement gives the impression that city government isn’t one complete functioning entity, as much as it is a conglomeration of entities that compete against one another for resources and jealously guard their own pots of gold.
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Editorial: Why does fire department keep ambulance user fees?
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