The county’s volunteer fire departments stand to gain an additional $30,000 annually as commissioners and County Manager C. Renee Perry hammer out details of the FY 2024-25 budget.
Commissioners held a budget work session last week, with sights set on June 24 as a possible date to adopt the $57 million budget.
Each department, as well as the rescue squad and the Vance County Fire Department, would see $130,000 in county funding and the new hourly pay rate for part-time firefighters would increase to $17 an hour, up from $15 an hour.
To achieve these goals, the county’s fire tax would be bumped from a revenue-neutral rate of 5.9 cents per $100 valuation to 7 cents per hundred, as recommended by Perry.
This increase will generate and additional $300,000 in revenues.
That amount, matched with a one-time disbursement of about $300,000 from the fire tax general fund, would provide for the additional funding. The current total fire tax fund balance is about $625,000.
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