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Battleboro fire district seeks 14.5¢ tax rate; commissioners agree to include increase in budget
Summary
Representatives of the Battleboro Volunteer Fire Department requested raising the fire tax from 12¢ to 14.5¢ per $100 valuation to cover rising vehicle, equipment and staffing costs; the Board voted to include the increase in the FY‑26 budget for final adoption.
Robbie Stokes, president of the Battleboro Community Development Department, told the Edgecombe County Board of Commissioners that the Battleboro Volunteer Fire Department (Harrison Fire District) is asking the board to include a fire tax increase from 12¢ to 14.5¢ per $100 of assessed value in the county budget.
Stokes said the department is facing higher costs across the board since the COVID‑19 pandemic, citing about a 46% increase in the cost of fire and emergency service vehicles and a roughly 30% rise in equipment, personal protective equipment and maintenance costs. He described an expanded duty schedule — daytime staffing from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and additional nighttime coverage on Thursdays through Sundays — and said the department lost two major fundraisers that had been important revenue sources.
"We plan to continue day staffing ... and we've added also now a nighttime shift," Stokes said. He also told commissioners the department held the required public hearing on March 14 but reported no public attendees at that hearing.
Commissioners moved to accept the department's request for consideration and to include the proposed rate increase in the county budget. The board approved the motion by voice vote; members recorded an "aye" and no opposition was raised at the time. Commissioners later reviewed and adopted the county's fiscal‑year budget, which incorporated fire district tax changes approved earlier in the meeting.
Why it matters: Fire districts in Edgecombe County levy and collect district fire taxes on property inside district boundaries; those funds are held by the county in trust and turned over to the individual departments. A higher fire tax would raise revenue from property owners within the Battleboro district to help maintain staffing, equipment and emergency response capacity.
Meeting context and next steps: County staff noted Nash County already approved a comparable increase to 14.5¢ and that the Battleboro request must be approved on both sides of any district that crosses a county line. The board's vote at the special meeting committed the county to include the change in the FY‑26 budget documents; the budget ordinance adoption later in the meeting finalized budget allocations.
No formal dollar amount of additional expected revenue from the rate change was specified in the record, nor did the department provide a separate, line‑by‑line budget showing how the extra revenue would be spent beyond the general categories Stokes cited.
