By Erik German
Newsday (New York)
Copyright 2006 Newsday, Inc.
Gordon Heights Fire District residents, stuck with the highest fire taxes on Long Island, met last night with fire department officers and commissioners, who laid out plans they said would reduce taxes.
Meeting at the firehouse on Hawkins Avenue, commissioners asked residents to consider cost-cutting and fundraising as an alternative to the petition a group of fed-up taxpayers circulated recently in an effort to dissolve the district.
Commissioner Chesley Ruffin suggested raising money by seeking government grants, renting out department space for cell phone towers and saving money by fueling vehicles with biodiesel and natural gas, as well as taxing homeowners on the perimeter of the district, who he says have not been paying.
Ruffin also defended volunteers and warned residents against acting rashly.
“We’re volunteers,” he said. “We put our heart and soul into this place. I don’t think any one of us wants to see it go down.”
Resident and petition signer Joyce Bourne, 61, said the department’s measures would fail to make a dent in district fire taxes that average $1,344.
“I don’t think we should be taxed out of our homes just because the fire department doesn’t want to do what’s right,” she said.
Experts said reducing taxes by dissolving a fire district was unprecedented in New York State and that it would take more to end it than delivering a petition to Brookhaven Town Hall.
Public hearings would be held on the district’s fate, followed by a possible town board vote, said William Young, counsel to the Association of Fire Districts for the State of New York.
Should the council muster the votes to eliminate the district - and at least one council member, fire department liaison Carol Bissonette, said she opposes this - residents will be faced with a couple of possibilities.
A nearby district’s fire commissioners could vote to absorb Gordon Heights, or the town board could take on Gordon Heights as a fire protection district like Moriches, collecting taxes and contracting with a nearby fire department to protect its roughly 800 homes.
Either way, Young said, Gordon Heights taxpayers will be liable for paying off any of their department’s $600,000 debt remaining after its assets are sold.