On December 3, the Hernando County Board of Commissioners held a regular meeting discuss and ratify various agenda items. Towards the end of the nearly 11-hour forum, Public Safety Director and Fire Chief Paul Hasenmeier came before the board to talk about funding and the potential building of a pair of fire stations in the county.
The fire chief lobbied that the two proposed stations would be best served in the northwestern regions of Hernando. Heat maps displaying fire engine response times were brought before the commissioners, and the data presented suggested that one of the hot spots for slower response times was in northern Hernando, just east of Commercial Way.
Chief Hasenmeier reasoned that the best way to alleviate this is to build fire stations flanking this region on its eastern and western edges. With average response times climbing to their highest levels since 2017 (9.02 minutes) and the population continuing to boom, new stations could theoretically help.
Also, with stations 11 (by Barclay) and 12 (near Nightwalker and 50) “busy non-stop,” they are looking for ways to alleviate the stress on them.
Since 2016, the amount of runs the department has done per year has increased by “about 8 or 9 thousand,” Hasenmeier added. The numbers had been trending downwards following an uptick in 2020, but it suddenly spiked between 2022 and 2023.
The number of fires (479) and total fire loss value ($2,405,203) have also peaked at their highest levels over the last eight years. The fluctuation in the number of fires roughly echoes that of runs fire stations have made over this time while the sum value has been steadily increasing each year.
Though the department does reach the NFPA’s (National Fire Protection Association) standards “overall,” the county’s fire stations are currently unable to meet the desired times set at 60-80 seconds for turnout and 4 minutes for travel.
House fires are not the only aspect causing the numbers to ascend, though. Fire services have increasingly become “all-hazards,” Hasenmeier noted. “A lot of EMS calls.”
With the fentanyl crisis sweeping the nation, not to mention the upward-ticking age of Hernando’s population, engines and ambulances are stretched thin. Why are so many engines, which are worth a million dollars, being used for medical emergencies when they might be better served elsewhere, Commissioner Champion asked.
“I get this question all the time,” said Chief Hasenmeir. “Every presentation I do, people ask […] They carry a lot of equipment. On those apparatuses in Hernando County, there are paramedics. They are ALS trained, they are ALS equipped. They have cardiac monitors, drugs, medications, all the equipment, everything on that fire engine.”
His department does what it can to coordinate the various vehicles and will send the engines when ambulances are not available or farther away. There are some hiccups and times when fire trucks are sent when they are not needed, but they do make efforts to screen those out upon receiving the calls.
Commissioner Champion also noted that the fire fees have more than doubled for the citizens from $158 to $360 over the last 8 years and that “it should be enough to cover” the costs needed by the fire station. “If not, you shouldn’t be expanding,” he said.
Fire Chief Hasenmeier responded that the $202 growth in the fee was “not enough. That growth is not paying for growth of the number of runs that we’re seeing.” The chief added that it would take 10 years to build a firehouse using impact fees alone.
The whole cent tax, which was not approved by the public in the recent elections, would have provided more funding for the fire department.
So, how do they find the money for such an endeavor? Though there was a consultant budgeted for such occasions, the board decided it would be better to perform an in-house study to determine the funding.
The county leaders made a decision following deliberation for County Administrator Jeff Rogers and his team to start on a plan early next year. To find funding, the board decided that fire charges on the industrial sector would be split from government and educational rates, funding would be based on calls for service over a three-year period, and they would simply update a prior study from 2023 instead of commissioning a new one.
