Eugene, OR. – Official Release: At its February 10 work session, the Eugene City Council voted 5-3 to adopt a new Fire Service Fee that will generate $10 million annually to stabilize and grow Eugene’s fire and emergency medical services over time. Any revenue collected through the new Fire Service Fee will only be used to fund existing and new fire and emergency medical services, to administer the fee, and to support the fee-related income-based assistance program.
The Fire Service Fee will be tiered based upon building square footage with a rate of $10 per month for the median single-family home and $38 per month for the median commercial customer. The rate proposal assumes about $350,000 annually would be dedicated for a customer care program to provide low-income assistance related to the Fire Service Fee. Read this article to learn more about the new Fire Service Fee.
“The new Fire Service Fee provides an important funding tool to support Fire and emergency medical services ability to meet our community’s needs as it grows. With this fee we will be able to create new fast and nimble 2-person “squads” to improve the City’s response time for medical emergencies, small fires, and wildfires and respond to the increasing demand within the downtown core and during critical fire weather while providing additional fire service growth over time,” said Fire Chief Michael Caven.
Shifting $8 million in Fire and emergency medical service costs to the Fire Service Fee, while adding $2 million in new services, will help to alleviate current impacts on the General Fund and will create a dedicated funding source to support expanded fire and emergency medical services into the future. The Fire Service Fee is one part of the solution to address the City’s structural budget gap. With the addition of the Fire Service Fee, the budget reductions needed for the coming biennium are approximately $3.5 million instead of $11.5 million , which helps mitigate the impact to community programs and services.
Without a Fire Service Fee, the City would have been faced with significant cuts to City services and programs across all City departments. At their budget priorities work session on January 15, City Council directed the City Manager to bring back two budget reduction scenarios to address a forecasted $11.5 million annual budget gap in the absence of a new revenue source.
The scenarios shared by the City Manager were not the proposed budget, but intended to demonstrate potential areas at risk if the Fire Service Fee is had not been enacted. The City Manager’s proposed 2025-2027 budget will be presented to the Budget Committee and City Council this spring.
In Eugene, property taxes make up 71% of General Fund revenues which currently pays for services such as police, fire, library, parks, recreation, planning, community development, municipal court and facility maintenance. However, property tax revenue growth is limited due to the Oregon property tax system .
One of the City’s longstanding priorities, noted within the City’s 2023-2026 Strategic Plan, is to create a sustainable budget with balanced revenues and expenditures that provides funding for necessary services in the community. For ongoing updates and information regarding the City’s efforts to build a sustainable budget, visit the City’s Sustainable Budget webpage.
Additional information about the new Fire Service Fee is available on the Eugene Fire Facts webpage.
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