Bean Blossom on path to change in fire protection
It looks likely that Bean Blossom Township will be changing its approach to fire protection, one way or another.
One of the options was made available by Monroe County commissioners their regular Wednesday morning meeting. They passed a resolution approving a procedure by which Bean Blossom could join the Monroe Fire Protection District (MFPD), instead of using an all-volunteer department.
Bean Blossom is the township in the northwest corner of Monroe County, just north of Richland Township, which is home to the town of Ellettsville.
Joining the MFPD is one of three options that were presented to the Bean Blossom Township board at a May 11 meeting, and the one that Bean Blossom Township trustee Ron Hutson asked county commissioners to provide.
In a mid-July phone interview, Hutson told The B Square that three options were presented to the board at the May 11 meeting—to get fire service under a contract with MFPD, or under a contract with Ellettsville Fire Department (EFD), or as a member township of MFPD. In the long run, Hutson said, joining the MFPD appeared to be the more cost-effective option.
But it’s not clear if a couple of key features of EFD’s proposal were clearly understood.
According to EFD chief Kevin Patton, responding to an emailed question from The B Square, EFD is proposing to cover calls in Bean Blossom under a five-year contract.
For the first three years, EFD would simply cover the calls from inside Bean Blossom at no cost to the township, Patton wrote. For the fourth and fifth years of the contract, Bean Blossom would pay Ellettsville just what the township is currently paying for fire protection, from its existing fire protection levy.
At the Wednesday meeting of the county commissioners meeting, when The B Square asked Hutson about the specifics of the EFD proposal, he indicated that he had not understood those specific features of the package—described by Patton to the B Square—as being offered by EFD, based on the May 11 presentation.
One source of possible confusion is the way that Ellettsville is proposing to include into its operations the fire trucks and equipment currently used by Bean Blossom’s fire department. Ellettsville is proposing that Bean Blossom Township would sign over all the fire trucks and equipment to EFD. That means Ellettsville would cover all maintenance, testing, and insurance for the trucks and equipment.
This is supposed to be an “in kind” payment by Bean Blossom, in lieu of additional cash payment, for the first three years of the contract. But if the contract is canceled, then according to Patton, “The apparatus and equipment would revert back to Bean Blossom…”
The resolution approved by the county commissioners on Wednesday requires three public meetings to be held. The notices for the public meeting have to indicate where residents can find out about the financial impact of joining the MFPD.
If at least 50 residents object, then the resolution says that the county commissioners will hold a separate public hearing on the question.
In the mid-July interview with The B Square, Hutson talked about the reason why the township is mulling the idea of changing its approach to fire protection. Hutson said Bean Blossom needs to somehow address the challenges it faces trying to staff the all-volunteer department, which is housed at a station in Stinesville.
Hutson said, “We’ve got a problem—we don’t have enough firefighters to run it. They’re all working three jobs.”
EFD chief Patton indicated to The B Square that there would be an immediate improvement to Bean Blossom’s fire protection, even if there were no changes at all to staffing or deployment of equipment. The improvement would come from making EFD the primary responding department for calls to Bean Blossom.
If EFD were the primary department for Bean Blossom calls, that would eliminate what is currently a 6-minute delay for EFD to respond to Bean Blossom calls, when the first alarm is sent to Bean Blossom’s all-volunteer firefighters. After the first alarm, if there’s no response by Bean Blossom after 3 minutes, then the alarm is sent again. Only after another 3 minutes is Ellettsville sent the alarm, Patton indicated.
In 2023, according to Patton, EFD responded to 23 such calls with such a 6-minute delay, stemming from a non-response by Bean Blossom. Overall, EFD responded to 62 calls in Bean Blossom. That’s out of 176 total calls to Bean Blossom.
So far in 2024, according to Patton, EFD has responded to 20 calls where Bean Blossom had no response, out of a total of 86 calls to Bean Blossom. Of the 86 calls to Bean Blossom so far this year, to EFD has responded to 41 of them.
At Wednesday’s meeting of the county commissioners, Hutson told them that he has not yet signed a contract with Baker Tilly, the auditing firm that Bean Blossom Township will be asking to analyze the fiscal impact of joining the MFPD. That’s because the price he was quoted by the firm was $15,000, Hutson said, and he’s not sure how Bean Blossom Township would pay for it.
According to Indiana’s DLGF (Department of Local Government Finance), Bean Blossom’s 2024 general fund budget is just $65,189.
MFPD already serves most of Monroe County’s geographic area outside of the city of Bloomington, including all or parts seven member townships: Bloomington, Perry, Van Buren, Indian Creek, Clear Creek, Benton, and Washington. MFPD also serves Polk and Salt Creek townships on a contractual basis.
The MFPD is a local unit of government with its own property tax rate. If Bean Blossom township becomes an MFPD member, then township property owners would pay the same fire protection rate as other property owners in the MFPD area—it’s higher than the current fire protection levy for the township.
Currently, the township pays about $80,000 a year for fire protection, Hutson told The B Square.
To get a ballpark idea of how much more Bean Blossom property owners would pay as members of the MFPD, the Monroe County 2024 budget order is a place to start. The budget order for Bean Blossom shows a property tax rate for fire protection of $0.0715 on an assessed value of $178,013,979—for a total fire levy of $127,280. That includes the cumulative capital fund.
The Monroe Fire Protection District’s property tax rate has to be applied uniformly across all property in the district. The total Monroe Fire Protection District rate, including the cumulative capital fund, stands at $0.2802, about four times the rate for Bean Blossom Township, which would generate $498,795 when applied to the Bean Blossom Township total assessed value of $178,013,979.
If Bean Blossom Township winds up joining the MFPD, that would have implications for potential future annexations by Ellettsville of any Bean Blossom territory.
Under a 2022 revision to state annexation law, if an area is part of a fire protection district, even after the area is annexed into a municipality, the area has to remain a part of the fire protection district. That means the area is taxed by the district, and is provided fire protection services by the district. The municipality can’t tax that annexed area for fire protection services.
Some future planning work for Ellettsville calls for expansion to the northwest, which would encompass parts of Bean Blossom Township.
The procedure that the county commissioners are following with Bean Blossom Township is familiar to them. In 2020, commissioners kicked off the process for Washington Township and Benton Township by passing a resolution that outlined the procedure for the townships to join the district.
Both of those resolutions eventually led to Washington and Benton Township joining the MFPD.
If the current process with Bean Blossom Township produces a similar result, the township could become a member of the MFPD in 2026.
