At last night Fire Authority meeting, we received the audited numbers for our last fiscal year. Don’t worry, I’m not going to give a financial analysis on the blog.
But, some people might not know how our fire department works, or how the cost are allocated. Therefore, I will take this opportunity to explain some of this unique partnership.
Our Fire Department currently covers 72 square miles. It is a partnership between the City of Davison, Davison Township and Richfield Township.
Each time the trucks roll out of the station the municipality that the trucks roll to gets an invoice for $1,552. Of that, $60 is allocated to the equipment fund; $387 is allocated to the Vehicle Fund and the $1,105 pays for labor etc…
Mutual Aid (when we help another community out) is billed out equally to all three units.
This is why we emphasize fire prevention and inspections; it helps keep our cost down. About two years ago, we did have one month in the City of Davison where we had no fire runs. That was a first. In 2006/2007, we only had 1 run in November. This is what we aim for and since we pay for our fire runs out of our General Fund Budget, it saves taxpayers dollars. In those months, the city had low runs we were running out to the townships, and we average around 400 runs per year.