By Logan Neill
The St. Petersburg Times
SPRING HILL, Fla. — The two men agree more than they disagree.
Both say they want to provide their neighbors with the best fire protection possible. Both are well aware that money is tight and not likely to get better anytime soon.
Where Mike Rampino and Rob Giammarco differ, however, is in emphasis.
Rampino, the new fire chief of Spring Hill Fire Rescue, makes no apologies for looking after the firefighters first. “My responsibility,” he said, “is to make sure that everyone who comes to work in the morning goes home at night.”
Giammarco, in his second year as one of five members of the district’s fire board, is emerging as a fiscal watchdog for taxpayers on a board that includes two former firefighters and a retired fire equipment salesman.
“I’m just one commissioner, but I don’t think that the public wants to hear about having their taxes raised,” he said. “Not in this economy.”
The $15 million budget approved for next year does not call for any salary cuts for any of the department’s 112 employees. Nor does it call for trimming staff at any of the four fire stations.
Rampino said doing so would harm the district’s ability to adequately serve its citizens. That stance does not sit well with Giammarco.
“I look at (Rampino’s) budget and I ask myself: What did he cut?” he said.
On Wednesday, Giammarco was the lone vote against approving the budget, saying not enough was done for taxpayers.
“Every county department has made cuts,” he said. “Even the School Board was able to lower its millage rate. We should be able to do the same.”
Giammarco and Rampino are emerging as the dominant voices in the debate over the current and future Spring Hill fire district. They have often faced off when it comes to the district’s finances, and they are on course to do so more frequently as the newly independent district figures out how to do more with less.
Both say they have the same core interests at heart. They work the same street, they say, just different sides of it.
Grim report
The day before his fire district’s independent status took effect July 1, Rampino got the bad news.
Estimates from the property appraiser’s office revealed a $1.4 million shortfall in projected property tax revenue for the coming year, creating a sizable gap in Spring Hill’s proposed budget for the coming year.
It was a grim report in a district where citizens voted overwhelmingly in November to cut themselves loose from Hernando County’s control.
For Rampino, keeping essential services intact for the district’s 92,000 residents while trying to dip as little as possible in the district’s $3.3 million reserve fund has been a daunting task.
“We’ll get through it in okay shape,” he said, “but there’s no denying we’re having to do without certain things that I feel are important. That’s the way it is right now.”
Rampino, 45, a former firefighter/paramedic with 25 years with the department, and who once served as the district’s union representative, was appointed interim chief in January. He took over in February 2008, following Chief J.J. Morrison, who had held the position for 22 years.
Though he considers himself a fiscal conservative, he said his priority is making sure that his employees are properly trained and equipped to give district citizens the best service possible. And that costs money.
Giammarco, 59, spent 25 years in law enforcement and served for a while as volunteer firefighter in a small community outside Philadelphia before moving to Spring Hill in 2003.
Appointed to the board by the County Commission in 2007, he has frequently butted heads with fellow board members over the department’s spending habits.
“I told them when I came on that I wasn’t a rubber-stamper,” he said. “I know it irritates the others on the board, but I’m not here because of them. They didn’t elect me.”
In one memorable clash with fellow board members in 2007, Giammarco was blasted at a meeting for having a permit that allowed him to buy a flashing red light for his vehicle that he could then use to go around traffic at the scene of an emergency.
The blowup came during a tense meeting where Giammarco had questioned more than $100,000 in bills before being abruptly cut off by then-board Chairman Charles Raborn.
Giammarco said he couldn’t believe his fellow commissioners were more concerned about a red light than the list of bills on the agenda that he was trying to bring to their attention.
At the next meeting, Giammarco left his seat at the fire board meeting and handed the red-light permit to Morrison. “We have more important things to attend to,” he said. “Let’s move on.”
Giammarco has won support among the voters of Spring Hill, who gave him the third-highest vote total in the November elections to retain his seat on the board.
Giammarco, who didn’t support the district’s bid for independence in last year’s election, said that years of financial good times have made the department fat and happy, and have done little to instill a sense of frugality in those who oversee it.
“It was spend, spend, spend,” he said. “No one thought about the future. That’s where we are now.”
Cutbacks not enough
A merger of the department’s 911 communications with the county’s operation, along with cutbacks in training programs, vehicle purchases and other cost-saving measures, enabled Rampino to come up with a proposed 2010 budget that is $1.8 million smaller than this year’s. Still, it will take about $1.1 million from reserves to keep the district operational.
Worse yet, Rampino expects he may again have to go back into the district’s savings if things don’t improve next year.
According to its finance director, employee salaries and benefits make up 81 percent of Spring Hill fire’s annual budget.
Though the district got something of a break this year when the union agreed not to seek salary increases, its contract, which runs through 2011, requires it to shoulder the entire cost of its employees’ health insurance premiums, which are projected to increase 8 percent in coming year.
Giammarco believes that the district’s uncertain financial future will likely force a harder look at reducing staffing, something it has never done.
Department policy requires fire trucks to carry a minimum of three firefighters, which Rampino notes is one fewer than what national safety standards recommend. Going with fewer, he said, would jeopardize the safety of his personnel.
“It’s simply not safe to go with less than what we have now,” he said.
Both men acknowledge that the unprecedented housing slump, coupled with last year’s Amendment 1 voter-mandated property tax decrease, combined to create a governmental financial crisis no one expected.
Giammarco believes the union could do more to help the district out during the lean times. “It’s a little tough to be sympathetic when you know that a lot of people in the community are going without health insurance,” he said.
Though the district faces some tough choices next year if property values don’t bounce back, going into its reserve again would leave the district hard-pressed to handle any catastrophic emergency that may come about.
One option would be to raise its current tax rate of $2.27 per thousand dollars of taxable assessed property value - something Giammarco is against.
A recent controversial resolution passed by the fire board requesting the County Commission allow it to collect a tangible tax on Spring Hill businesses seems to bear out Giammarco’s reluctance to raise tax rates of any kind.
Public outcry, coupled with the county’s decision to block the district’s taxing effort, killed the tangible tax.
A year from now, in a special election, the district will ask voters to grant it its own taxing powers. Giammarco believes the public’s response will likely determine the district’s future.
“If we’re not financially responsible it’s not going to look good,” he said. “No one in their right mind would vote to give taxing power to a board that doesn’t listen to their wishes.”
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