For nearly six weeks, Mojave County officials have been debating how they can charge their local fire districts for this year’s county services. The County Board of Trustees is now hearing new proposals on the matter from Mojave County Chief Financial Officer Luke Mounian.
Under Arizona law, the county fire district is obligated to reimburse the county for services including organizing, determining boundary changes, using the Mojave County Attorney’s Office, and other services provided by county officials. Until this year, these costs were paid on an hourly or per-occurrence rate. But Mounian says those fees do little to cover the county’s costs. Mounian proposed a parcel fee structure using a formula based on the number of parcels present in each fire zone.
The Mojave County Board of Supervisors sought additional information on how these fees would affect the county’s fire districts early last month and took no action on the proposal. At the May 1 board meeting in Kingman, the oversight agency asked staff to calculate hourly wages for Mojave County Assessor’s and Treasurer’s services to the fire district, i.e., services not related to collecting property taxes. instructed to do so.
According to Moulnian’s latest proposal, the fire district could be charged a fee of $1.6113 per parcel to pay the office of the assessor and treasurer.
If the Mojave County Board of Supervisors accepts the new proposal on Monday, fees for election, financial and records services may continue to be billed on an hourly rate.
Services by the Mojave County Treasurer’s Office and Assessor’s Office require an hourly rate from the Fire District only if those services are unrelated to the collection of property taxes.
Under the proposed rates, the fire district could pay $84 per hour for mapping and $68 per hour for administrative services at the assessor’s office.
The Fire District election services fee is $3.04 per registered voter for special elections and $1.45 per registered voter for consolidated elections.
For financial services, the Fire District may pay $133.03 per hour, while the services of the Mojave County Registrar’s Office may cost $15 per recording.
Administrative or administrative services from the Mojave County Treasurer may be charged a fee of $107 per hour.
The above hourly rate could be the result of a compromise between county regulators and officials after the county voted 3-2 last week to reject the first per-package fee structure proposed by Mounien. There is
Mojave County Superintendent Gene Bishop said in a statement last month that the rate structure may have unduly impacted fire districts in northwestern Mojave County. The county’s First Superintendent, which stretches from East He Kingman to Lake Mead, has the largest area of land supervised by a local fire district in Mojave County.
The Mojave County Board of Supervisors will vote Monday at its next meeting in Kingman on whether to approve revisions to the new fee schedule for the local fire district.
