The Athens Fire Department is getting new headquarters, but the department is still dealing with internal issues like understaffing and lack of funds from the university.
Student Senate fire fee was supposed to help combat these issues, but a range of setbacks has kept the policy from going into effect.
Chief of AFD Bob Rymer said the idea was brought up for alternative funding via university students who do not pay property tax or whose taxes do not go into the fire department’s funding.
Senate President Dan Gordillo was interested in the idea and was able to use his resources to get it into motion.
One of the concerns Rymer brought to Gordillo was the current number of firefighters on duty, which is less than the recommended number. A study by the Ohio Fire Chiefs suggested they should have 13 firefighters on duty per day, and currently, the department has four.
Rymer said AFD relies on property taxes; however, 50.6% of the city's commercial property, including the university, is tax-exempt.
Additionally, Rymer said most students do not earn enough money in a year to pay income taxes to the city, meaning they don’t receive funding from Athens's largest population.
Rymer said the department averaged around 40% of calls to university-owned buildings in the last five years, not including off-campus housing.
Rymer said the number of calls the department gets yearly has been increasing, but the number of firefighters has not.
“The last two years have been record years,” Rymer said. “When I started, there were about 350-360 calls a year. We will break 1,300 (calls) this year.”
Gordillo said Rymer contacted him in Spring 2023 about the fire department's underfunding. At the time, Gordillo was the Senate's Governmental Affairs Commissioner.
Gordillo surveyed students in April 2023 and concluded that 75% would support an optional fee to support the Athens Fire Department, and 90% of those who felt they couldn’t pay the fee would support having the choice available to students who could.
Another important aspect of the fire fee is that money wouldn’t just go to staff but also to educate the public on fire safety.
Gordillo's study also found that 50% of students did not receive formalized fire education before college. With the money from the fee, Rymer believes the department could have more firefighters teaching students fire education.
“I’d be able to provide fire education to at least all the freshman students that come in,” Rymer said. “Two to four hours of education on how to get out of the building, how to use a fire extinguisher, how to put out cooking fires and prevent them.”
Senate fire fee passed on April 26, 2023, but Gordillo said he ran into issues at the end of the year and could not work on it further.
The following school year, Gordillo went back and tried to open discussions about his plan with the university and the state representative for Athens.
Gordillo said the university felt the fee would interfere with its affordability statistic and goal to be the most affordable in the state, even if the fees were optional.
“It would appear to me, through being an Ohioan and an OU student, that if you can opt out of a fee, it should not affect an affordability statistic,” Gordillo said.
Rymer said the university cannot implement the fee due to state legislation prohibiting an increase in tuition unless it meets specific parameters.
The university still maintains a strong alliance with the fire department, which is mutually beneficial to one another.
“The university and the Athens Fire Department have a good working relationship,” Jill Harris, director of emergency management, said in an email.
Harris also said in an email that the university and fire department have collaborated on providing fire safety tips for students, and the university provided training locations for the department on many occasions.
Gordillo is still working to bring the issue to Columbus to work on legislation surrounding it and plans to continue spreading awareness about it by fighting for its funding.
