Committee asks county to move fire-company grant line to public safety budget, weighs new impact-fee options

A New Castle County fire-services advisory committee voted to ask the county budget director to change how fire-company grant aid is labeled and placed in the budget, and spent much of the meeting debating short- and long-term ways to stabilize funding for 21 volunteer and career fire companies.

Co-chair Zodak told the group the committee will request FY27 grant-and-aid funds and a short-term stabilization payment calculated as a percentage of the total salaries and benefits paid by all 21 companies. "We are going to request the grant and aid funds and ... a percentage of the total amount of salaries," Zodak said during the packet review, framing the committee’s near-term ask to the county executive.

Dennis, who has been compiling payroll figures, said preliminary calculations place the combined salary-and-benefits base between $35 million and $40 million, pending verification. "I have preliminary figures here ... it is between 35 and 40 million," Dennis said, noting staff will verify calendar-year 2025 totals before any allocation.

On a separate motion the committee approved a request that the budget director seek authority to change the funding terminology and place the county grant in the public-safety administration contractual-services line. The motion, seconded by Gordon Edwards, passed after one member said, "I oppose." The committee recorded no roll-call vote in the transcript.

Why it matters: moving the line into public safety would make the funding visibly part of the public-safety budget while leaving contract conditions intact, county staff said. Committee members said that placement could improve transparency without changing how the funds are administered.

Impact-fee review and grants: Joe Day, the committee’s land-use representative, presented a multi-decade history of New Castle County impact fees and the methodology behind them. He summarized major changes: the 1999 ordinance that created a broad set of impact fees; a 2006 update that differentiated residential and nonresidential fees; a 2024 redevelopment ordinance change that charges impact fees for gross floor area that exceeds legally established floor area on redevelopment sites; and a 2025 review that updated fee amounts and required a report to county council by Feb. 1 each year.

Day said impact fees are governed by case law that limits permissible uses to new, growth-related capital and equipment needs and that a third-party study sets fee methodology and the periodic update schedule.

Collections and caps: Committee members heard that in the last five years the county collected about $3.8 million in impact fees and distributed $3.4 million, leaving roughly $745,000 undistributed. The group discussed legislative options to change the nonresidential cap on the volunteer-fire-service assistance fee (the current law caps the fee base for each nonresidential permit at the first $1 million of valuation). Staff presented estimates showing that raising the cap to $5 million would have generated about $750,000 more in 2025, while removing the cap entirely would have yielded roughly $1.2 million more.

Governance and exemptions: Several members asked why fire companies must apply for distributions while other departments (parks, sewers) do not. Staff explained the fire companies are separate legal entities that must file annual financial statements and whose projects are approved by the Fire and EMS advisory board before county disbursement. Some members asked whether fire companies could be treated as components of county government to streamline distributions; staff said that change would require state or local statutory amendments and could have unintended governance and compliance consequences.

Volunteer Fire Service Assistance Fund: Day reviewed the fund’s history (established 2010, revised 2014) and mechanics: it is collected as a percentage of permit valuation on residential permits and on the first $1 million of nonresidential valuation, with statutory exemptions for specified low-income housing projects and certain nonprofit activity. Committee representatives noted the current formula distributes funds equally across 21 companies and discussed whether distributing by need, assessed value, or call volume would be fairer.

Next steps: Staff pledged to return with refined exemption counts, clarified GIS-derived district figures (square mileage, assessed value and structure counts), and the verification method for 2025 salary and benefit totals. The committee set its next meeting for Wednesday, Jan. 28 at 2 p.m.

Actions recorded: the committee (1) approved a request to the county executive to move the strategic-plan date to Jan. 31, 2027, and (2) approved a motion asking the budget director to explore moving the fire-company grant aid into public-safety contractual services; both motions were recorded as passed in the transcript. The transcript does not include a full roll-call vote for either motion.

What remains unresolved: The committee did not finalize the percentage that would be requested for FY27, the precise distribution formula across companies (salary share vs. equal distribution vs. assessed-value weighting), or whether to pursue legislative changes that would alter fire-company legal status. Staff warned any change that would require excluding households or exempt classes from a tax bill would need accurate billing-system coding before implementation.

Speakers quoted in this article are those who were explicitly named or identified in the transcript. Unless otherwise attributed, descriptions of committee discussion reflect the committee record and staff presentations.