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Delray commissioners kill fire service fee once more

City Manager David Harden, left, proposes using reserves to fill a $3.2 million hole in the budget created when Delray commissioners decided not to go forward with a fire service fee. Also shown, commissioners Jay Alperin and Tom Carney and Mayor Woodie McDuffie.

By David Sedore, Palm Beach Business.com

DELRAY BEACH — Delray’s proposed fire service fee is dead. Again. For now, anyway.

Delray Beach city commissioners, who killed the proposed fee on Jan. 17 only to revive it last Thursday, killed it again Monday night. The move leaves the city with a $3.2 million hole in the budget. Exactly how commissioners will fill it won’t be known until February 21, but it will likely include tapping into reserves, the delay of some or all capital improvement projects until the next budget year and other cuts.

“I think we made a mistake going forward thinking we could use the fire service fee to balance the budget,” Commissioner Tom Carney said. “That was a rookie mistake on my part.”

Said Commissioner Jay Alperin, “We made a mistake and I think we should bite the bullet because of it.”

The “mistake” began last summer when commissioners agreed to adopt the fire service fee as a means of balancing the 2011-12 municipal budget. Commissioners held numerous public hearings of the budget without hearing so much as a single word in opposition to the fee. However, they delayed actually passing the fee until January, when the proverbial you-know-what hit the fan.

As proposed, city homeowners would have been charged a fee ranging from $52 to as much as $283 depending on the square footage of the their home. Commercial property owners would owe a fee also based on square footage.

George Debate attended Monday's meeting to show support for keeping Delray's Veterans Park shuffleboard courts in the city budget.