ST. GEORGE — Following discussions that have been ongoing since April 19, the Ivins City Council was about to go through the formality of approving its 2022-23 fiscal year budget last Thursday when council member Mike Scott said there was something missing: staffing the vacant Center Street fire station.
“If we pass a budget that doesn’t get Center Street up and running, that’s wrong,” Scott said. “I just can’t imagine that a city council would adopt a budget that Center Street isn’t functional right away.”
While the proceeding started out as just a formality to sign on the dotted line, some last-minute negotiation during the meeting resulted in some federal COVID-19 aid funds being diverted to ensure the funding of the Center Street Fire Station in a unanimously-passed budget.
By state law, the budget had to be passed in the last council meeting of June, and City Manager Dale Coulam prefaced passing the budget as a time discussion has passed and was now a time to just sign on the dotted line.
“This is a fairly routine process,” Coulam told the council. “There’s always some little adjustments to get us to the end of the year.”
Coulam also noted that Santa Clara, which handles the management of the joining Santa Clara-Ivins Fire Department, had already finalized its budget with additional funding for the Fire Department and was negotiating with Washington County for additional funds through a grant to cover county areas near the Arizona border the department covers.
But even after other council members suggested waiting for a future meeting to amend the Ivins budget to help speed up the re-manning of Center Street, Scott said he didn’t want to wait.
“I’m just not prepared to kick this down the road. We spend a lot of time on land use and new development. That’s not our primary job – safety is,” Scott said. “We’re admitting in the current budget we don’t care. We need to make the commitment now.”
While Santa Clara committed more funds to the Fire Department in its final budget, Scott said Santa Clara needs to have its “feet put to the fire” to ensure Center Street is restaffed. He also expressed consternation at the decision late last year to consolidate all Fire Department operations at the Rachel Drive Station in Santa Clara, leaving parts of Ivins with more than five minutes of time it would take for a fire department response.
“They need to pony up right away,” Scott said. “It’s not acceptable that close to half of the homes in this city are outside five-minute response time and 100% of Santa Clara homes are inside of five minutes.”
While the last council meeting was a “cum-ba-ya” of sorts with the two cities making peace on the Fire Department situation, divorce discussion flared up again Thursday after it was noted that Ivins was already budgeting more for the joint Fire Department than it did when Ivins just ran its own fire department.
“We ran our own fire department for a while. I thought we made it clear that one of the options was divorce and go it ourselves,” Ivins Mayor Chris Hart said. “It strikes me that we spent a third of this for that (solo department). I don’t throw this out as a threat to Santa Clara. We’ve had a wonderful partnership.”
Scott suggested pulling out a little over $410,000 from the city’s reserves to add additional funding for the Fire Department to restaff Center Street as soon as possible.
“I know this dips into reserves but this is an emergency situation and that’s what reserves are for,” Scott said.
At that moment, Coulam suggested an alternative: using the approximately $500,000 in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds the city received from the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill passed by the U.S. Congress last March.
It was an alternative that won the support of council member Jenny Johnson, especially how the city would not have to dip into its reserves.
“Even if we put that in the budget, it doesn’t guarantee Santa Clara will put it,” Johnson said. “Yes, it puts their feet to the fire. But I don’t know if this funding is going to fix the problem. I’m in favor of ARPA funds.”
Ultimately, in a 4-0 vote with member Adel Murphy absent, the council approved a final budget with the amendment to use ARPA funds toward remanning Center Street, whether Santa Clara pays a share or not. With Santa Clara already finalizing its budget, its council would have to pass additional funding as a budget amendment.
And that additional funding may be on its way. At its meeting this Wednesday, the Santa Clara Council will be considering a budget amendment to add $333,863 to the Fire Department budget.
Cade Visser, city director of finance, said before the fire discussion that the city had already found more ways to avoid dipping into its reserve funds in this year’s budget after discovering a line item in the Fire Department budget that was an expenditure for Santa Clara but not Ivins.
“Six-hundred-thousand dollars whittles down to $112,000. It’s still not great but a lot better than where we were at,” said Visser, who also toned down some of his talk in the council’s previous meeting that the city was just two to three years from having to operate in the red. “It’s not as much gloom and doom.”
The final Ivins budget – with $25.3 million in expenditures and $23.3 million in revenues for a $1.8 million deficit – includes more than $3.4 million toward the widening and improvement of both Old Dixie Highway 91 and nearby trails and $150,000 toward an expansion of the city’s cemetery as well as $335,000 for a new street sweeper and a new $300,000 public works yard.
Absent from the budget is additional funding for pickleball courts, which had been lobbied by several residents. With funding for four courts exceeding a half-million not including land acquisition and with the Fire Department’s needs, Hart urged patience.
“For our pickleball fans, if it comes down to a discussion between upgrading fire and pickleball, there’s no question where that goes,” the mayor said. “Our first and foremost job is safety.”
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