Carbondale’s fire district will spend time talking with voters before a funding measure this fall. In November, the Carbondale and Rural Fire District will ask taxpayers for about $600,000 in property taxes. That’s after an outside review by two consulting firms, which found the District is doing a good job overall, but running out of money.
“A small increase with a short, two year sunset,” is how Mike Kennedy describes the proposal. He’s Vice President of the Board of Directors for the District. The “sunset” provision means the tax would automatically finish after two years. “Something that will keep us afloat and will keep us from going any further in the hole.”
Kennedy says the District learned its lesson after a funding measure failed two years ago, largely because the price tag was too big for voters to stomach, and there wasn’t an end-date attached. If approved, the current measure would mean District would start receiving more tax dollars next summer. The District provides firefighting and ambulance service for more than three hundred square miles, an area much larger than other fire and medical districts in the Roaring Fork Valley.
