The ESD's new director, Joey Reed, attended the meeting to bring the council up to speed on the direction the ESD is heading with current and future projects and to answer question from the council.
The ESD undoubtedly has some grand plans and all likelihood points to them going to the county voters to increase the tax collected to fund them. One of the most costly actions they are working on right now is a new county dispatch center. This will have a tremendous impact on dispatching fire service throughout the county, but the ESD insisted on independently taking this on instead of working with the Johnson County Sheriff's Department on expanding fire dispatch in the county's current dispatch center.
When the elephant in the room subject of fire department funding was finally brought up and the point was made that the Joshua Fire Department spends a majority of it's time responding to calls outside our city limits in our ESD coverage area, but get just one-third of our funding back from the ESD Mr. Reed suggested that we look at our budget to better manage our money. Excuse me? Apparently Mr. Reed is under the impression that we throw handfuls of money into our fire department and spend it on unnecessary things. This city and our fire department run tight budgets so I suggested that the ESD instead be the ones to better manage their own money and get more of it down to the departments who are actually providing the service. Last year only half the tax money collected by the ESD was distributed to the departments.
This discussion is far from over and your city staff is looking into other cities in the county to see if they are in the same budget position that Joshua is. Your city council will be discussing this further when the ESD contract comes up for renewal next fall and as budget preparation begins near summertime.
A.J.
A.J. Mathieu
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