Firefighters warn Taos County cuts could pull about $800,000 from town response

The president of the Taos Professional Firefighters said the county's recent decision to rescind a distribution model for a voter-approved 0.25% public-safety tax would remove roughly $800,000 from the Town of Taos fire budget and undercut frontline services.

"By rescinding the municipal distribution, the county has effectively removed approximately $800,000 from the Town Of Taos public safety budget," said Gabriel Romero, president of Taos Professional Firefighters IFF Local 5245. Romero told the commission that the tax was adopted by voters for fire protection and that municipal allocations had been relied upon in departmental planning for staffing and retention.

Romero urged the commission to explain why the county was redirecting those dollars while simultaneously expanding its own county-level fire department, and warned that reduced municipal funding could harm staffing, response times and readiness. "Voters will continue to pay for a tax intended for fire protection, yet those dollars will no longer go to support the professional fire service that actually protects them," he said.

The meeting record contains the firefighters' warning and the request for transparency; commissioners did not announce a reversal at the meeting. The commission later approved a separate resolution consolidating several rural districts into a Taos County fire district, a measure staff said will allow unified command and access to EMS funding for some districts. Further discussion or staff reports on the municipal distribution decision were not recorded in the meeting minutes.

Why it matters: The claim that roughly $800,000 in municipal distributions was rescinded is a substantive charge affecting public safety budgets and could trigger follow-up review by the commission, municipalities and the public.