Terry Burks - Sun City West
Arizona Fire and Medical Authority continues to bleed money and now they want more.
Depending on how many years you have been a resident in Sun City West you have seen the Sun City West Fire Department be absorbed into the Arizona Fire and Medical Authority, which has systematically set their course on absorbing at least 13 other communities, which, other than three that are communities similar to ours and rural areas with little to no fire departments and, most importantly, no fire hydrant system that, along with their rural surrounding, demand on specialized fire equipment and sparce staff. The AFMA told us these acquisitions added more cheeks to the seats, raising funding opportunities and they would reduce staff as they absorbed the staff in these communities and become more efficient.
Nope, didn’t happen. AFMA was required to purchase more specialized equipment and training to battle rural fires in the open areas that exist and train their people to battle these types of fires. You would think their work would be staff reductions as each of these fire departments were absorbed, Nope. To my knowledge and my conversations with the AFMA representatives, no one was let go, just absorbed into the AFMA.
The Public Safety Personnel Retirement System that manages the pension fund for all the fire employees, and some select city employees, over a 20-year period lost $1 billion with very questionable land purchases and investments and guess who must come up with the difference. Sun City West had to come up with $29 million, Peoria more than $30 million and so on for all the communities covered by the PSPRS. Guess how they come up with that money — raised your taxes.
If you look at your tax bill nearly 50% of the funds are dedicated to the fire department and now they want more. So, let’s look at just how well the AFMA is run financially. I ran the numbers on the fire departments in the following cities and communities — Sun City, Peoria, Surprise, Glendale, Tempe and Phoenix. Then I looked at how much money they spent per capita (number of residents) — Sun City, $445.11; AFMA, $407.17; Peoria, $187; Surprise, $204.87; Glendale, $216.71; Tempe, $290.00; and Phoenix, $274. As you can see, other than our neighbors in Sun City, we spend twice as much as all neighboring communities.
When I presented these numbers to the AFMA representatives, they didn’t disagree with the monies spent but opted to offer up an excuse that the other fire departments fold some of their expenses into other departments, consequently it was not an apple-to-apple comparison. So, I moved on to the number of fire stations per capita — AFMA eight, 9,375; Sun City three, 12,500; Peoria eight, 21,024; Surprise seven, 19,350; Glendale nine, 27,534; Tempe seven, 23,102; and Phoenix 59, 28,491. As you can see, even Sun City has a more efficient fire department and when you review the other cities, they are 2-3 times more efficient. Then I asked myself, what does the AFMA do when more than 50% of the Sun City West residents are gone for half the year dramatically increasing the negative gap from Sun City West to the remaining of the studied communities.
Now the AFMA wants to raise your real-estate taxes substantially for the next and following tax years. Why did they absorb these rural communities that ended up costing the established communities huge money and not follow through on the staff reductions as they promised? Why do we have so many fire houses per capita? The pension fund disaster is a black eye on the state of Arizona. Note: No one was prosecuted for the mismanagement of the pension fund.
I am sure the wheels of the supervisory board have already been greased for the rate increase so get ready Sun City West, your tax bill is going up and there is nothing we can do about it but complain and hope someone listens.
We’d like to invite our readers to submit their civil comments, pro or con, on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org.
