EAST SIDE FIRE DEPARTMENT
Users' Fee Information
[Updated August 9, 2004]
I pay my taxes, why do I have to pay this fee also?
From the late 1970s and early 1990s, funding provided to the parish departments was inadequate and had to be supplemented by fund drives. Large amounts of time and effort were being spent begging for money from the public. Funding through property taxes was utilized to provide some revenue but was not fair as those who were homestead exempt or who lived in apartments and house trailers were our biggest customers and the most frequent users of our services.
In 1991, every parish fire department in the parish went to the public to ask for passage of a per-occupancy users' fee. This mandatory fee would more fairly spread the burden of fire and first aid protection. In exchange for passage of this fee, East Side agreed to never again solicit money from our users via annual fund drives or requests for donations.
Our total budget now amounts to about $58 per capita per year for all of our revenue sources, including the Users' Fees. The current funding level for the Baton Rouge Fire Dept. is about $230 per capita per year; the income generated from our Users' Fee collections is vital to our operations.
What do I get in return?
East Side provides paid 24-hour coverage by having at least one trained firefighter at the station to respond immediately in the event of a fire or emergency medical call (during the nights and weekends). During the times when volunteer turnout is small (during the work day, for example), two additional trained firefighters are also on duty. Because we now rely, in part, upon paid career firefighters (we have two full-time employees), we are no longer a volunteer fire department, but rather a combination fire department.
East Side also provides to its community a state-of-the-art fire station which is utilized by over 300 non-fire department individuals for training and community or civic association meetings every month.
East Side regularly provides fire-safety classes to every school and nursing home in our fire district. We attend and observe fire drills at schools and other facilities and advise these facilities on how to be as safe as possible in the event of an emergency. We also provide fire-safety classes to other organizations such as Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts at our facility.
East Side requires all of its fire fighting personnel to be NFPA Firefighter-I and First Responder certified prior to being promoted from the rank of recruit to the rank of firefighter. Keep in mind, this is the minimum required training. Most of our firefighters are at least Firefighter-II certified. By using our newly constructed training facility, we can practice search and rescue of fire victims, confined space and special situation rescue as well as fire suppression and other aspects of fire ground operations right here at our facility. We currently have 13 emergency medical technicians (EMT) and 4 EMT-Paramedics on staff. All are trained in the use of Automatic External Defibrillators (AED). Note that Louisiana law does not even require that we provide emergency first aid services - and not all fire departments do!
East Side a new Smeal fire engine in 1999, known as E920, and a new Ferrara fire engine in 2001, E930. Both engines compliment our other apparatus and serve as first-out apparatus on all calls. They are both outfitted with the latest in fire fighting equipment (including class A foam), Hurst "Jaws-Of-Life" extrication equipment and a compliment of first aid equipment including a pulse oximeter and AED.
What does this mean to me?
In 2002, East Side was re-rated by the Property Insurance Association of Louisiana (PIAL) to be an ISO Class 2 Fire Department. This translates into lower insurance premiums (approximately $800 less per year than in a Class 10 fire district). There are approximately 750 fire departments in Louisiana and only two have a better rating and both are full time municipal departments. But these Class 1 fire departments cost much more to operate - generally at least 3 times more! Our total cost per capita is less than $60!
In the event of a medical or fire emergency, we provide immediate response with highly trained personnel using up-to-date equipment. This translates into lives saved and property protected.
We have committed to provide and EMT on at least 90% of all emergency medical calls and a minimum First Responder on ALL emergency calls. Please keep in mind that there is no requirement for fire departments to even respond to first aid calls. In 2003, with our level of training, our first aid patients were treated by more highly trained firefighters than any other fire district in the parish. Only 1.5% of our medical calls in 2003 were attended to by First Responders; 73% were attended to by Nationally Registered EMTs and 25% by Nationally Registered EMT-Paramedics.
Our facility is available for civic and club meetings. This is provided to our community at no charge.