EAST SPENCER — East Spencer has only one volunteer firefighter helping to keep its fire department running, a fact Town Manager Michael Douglas pointed out in a recent community meeting concerning a potential tax increase to fund a full-time department.

“We have one volunteer. That’s it. We have three part-time employees (chief, deputy chief and assistant chief), we have a few more part-time (firefighters), but three dedicated part-time employees are what we have on our roster. That’s it, that’s all we have. We don’t have the capability, sometimes, to pull the engine out because the personnel just aren’t there, aren’t available to help assist with a fire,” Douglas said.

The meeting, held Monday evening, was the first in a series of discussions that the town is hosting in order to provide accurate information on the implications of the increase to citizens as well as receive as much feedback as possible, Douglas said. The next meetings will be held on April 9, April 25, May 14 and May 23. 

Around a dozen residents and members of the board of aldermen were present at the meeting on Monday, but Douglas said that the town has a back-up location planned at a nearby church if more space is needed. A Spanish translator will be present at every meeting.
During his argument as to why the town needed a full-time fire department, one of the main statistics Douglas pointed out was the amount of calls in the town’s limits that were missed. In 2022 that number was 6 percent, in 2023 that number was 11 percent and the town has missed 21 percent of the calls in 2024 so far. Those missed calls are ones where the town is unable to staff their firetrucks to respond, which Douglas said leads to a longer response time as the Spencer Fire Department responds to the medical emergency or fire from farther away.

“The fire that was on Pinetree was 0.83 miles from the fire station, 0.83 miles from the fire station and we were the fourth truck to get there. Not the first, not the second, not the third but the fourth truck,” Douglas said.

Fire Chief Shawn McBride confirmed to Douglas that the response time from Spencer is around five minutes, while East Spencer’s department would have taken a maximum of a minute. No one was hurt in the Pinetree Drive fire, but five people and multiple dogs were displaced, according to an official with the Red Cross.

“What if it was something major like a child trapped in the house? And it had to wait, because we couldn’t get our truck out,” Douglas said.

Douglas recommended to the board of aldermen a tax increase from $0.66 to $0.86, but he also provided the numbers for increases to $0.815, $0.77 and $0.71. Douglas’ proposal calls for the increase to take place during the 2024 fiscal year and continue at $0.86 through 2028. Beginning in 2029, the tax would decrease by $0.05 every year until ending at $0.71 in 2031.

When asked by a resident how they could be certain that future aldermen would honor that planned decrease, Douglas said that he has asked the aldermen to put it into the town’s ordinances so that any changes would require a public hearing and a vote.

“What is our future? Do we want this (the fire that destroyed the RSS administrative building) to happen in East Spencer over and over and over again? The property across the street was a significant loss to the town. The school across the street, that’s history that’s gone now. And our tank, our fire truck, was sitting on the curb sucking up water,” Douglas said.

Multiple residents brought up the fact that the county’s recent revaluation process had increased the values of their homes, causing them to already have to pay more in property taxes. Douglas said that even with the recent increase in tax revenue and the approximately 80 homes that have come to town in the past year, the increase of $208,000 has already been budgeted elsewhere and is still not enough to pay for a fire department.

“The town, the administration were happy with that because we were able to provide more services. We were able to buy things new as opposed to used. It helped us tremendously. We were able to hire more police officers and increase pay to have people staying that were leaving. The county paid $8,000 more than what we were paying, so it helped us,” said Douglas.

After the community meetings, the East Spencer Board of Aldermen will consider increasing the property taxes. If the tax increase is approved, the amount would be determined at that time.