Brighton holds talks with, townships, fire dept.

BRIGHTON — Representatives from city government, fire department, and surrounding townships under its fire protection agreement gathered at City Hall Wednesday night to hash out controversies with the city’s fire department funding.

“I’m not saying you’re taking money … the expenses and the capital reserve amount should match the revenues, and in what we were presented, it didn’t,” Fire Department member Mark Cobb said. “We didn’t provide you with a budget, that’s a fair statement, but with what we were provided, it didn’t balance. So I’m trying to just wrap my head around it.”

City officials pledged to produce a paper trail and said the money wasn’t on the books due to “clerk issues,” — the city changed clerks several times since the agreement was signed in 2009 — but Brighton Township Trustee Gordon Shelangoski said things looked suspicious.

“Why didn’t you go to the trustees, send us a letter saying, ‘Hey, we’re having an issue, we need to sit down and talk about this,’” he said. “It looks like our money just went to Brighton city funds … we still put our $57,000 in, why didn’t 2021 have any additional money going into the firetruck fund?”

Mayor Melvin Rich said he would search city documents to answer that question and share them in the coming days.

“The money’s there,” he said. “The city of Brighton has never taken money from the townships and spent it on anything other than the fire department.”

Shelangoski said townships would be unwilling to pay the city until they saw that evidence.

“That it goes from something to nothing leads me to believe that something’s not right,” he said. “Before I would vote to pay any money to this council, I would want to see those numbers and I would want to feel comfortable that those numbers are correct, and that they’re going to be followed through with.”

Rich added that some of the confusion stemmed from a change in the city’s own method of paying for fire protection: up until fiscal year 2020, the city had paid half of its contribution from the general fund and half from the funds of the city-owned gas company, a practice its legal counsel then advised against.

“One of the big red flags to come up was money was taken from the gas fund, which is an enterprise fund, and that’s improper,” Rich said. “There’s certain ways you can do it but you have to make a profit and you have to have so much reserved before you take money out of that.”

The strain is highlighted by the city’s low budget, which Rich said was built to protect residents of the city, 60% of whom are at or below the poverty level according to Council member Paul Shelangoski.

“You’d be surprised how many people are struggling to pay their utility bills,” Rich said. “We put our record through 2010, there’s $25,000 of utility bills that’s owed … we walked into a mess and we’re trying to straighten it out.”

Moving forward, trustees said they needed better communication from the city.

“If you let us know ahead of time there’s an issue, we’re going to work with you, we’re all community people,” Shelangoski said. “But I’ve got to tell you, I feel a little bit cheated here, a little bit taken advantage of … the only way to make this work is so that both sides feel like they’ve been given all the information and feel like they’ve been treated fairly.”

The group planned a few options to follow through on said communication. One of those is a new 28E agreement between the townships and city to pay for the fire department with more specific wording.

“I think everyone in this room agrees we need a new 28E,” Rich said. “It’s not a very well-written agreement.”

That new agreement, after further discussion, would go through the legal advisers of every party involved.

“The Washington County attorney should write the rough draft, it should go to the city attorney, then the Jefferson County attorney,” Shelangoski said. “It should be looked at by the township trustees and the fire department and the city council. We’ve got to think way in the future now, because we certainly didn’t do it back then.”

Rich said the groups should also establish a fire board to ensure communication going forward.

“It would be nice for one person from the city, one person from (each) township and one person from the fire department,” he said. “It would be advisory only, because everything is owned by the city … we’d sit down every year and say, ‘This is what we need.’”

Cobb said that group would have its work cut out for it as the local government, like so many others, stares down the barrel of skyrocketing expenses.

“Thinking for future generations of the fire department, we can’t leave our funding at this level and expect the level and quality of service to remain the same,” he said. “I think that this fire board needs to properly tee up how we’re going to come up with more funding in the future at a reasonable level.”

As for transparency, Rich said the city was expecting additional audit services for its budget, with state auditors on site in April, and a budget exam completed by the end of June.

“After a couple red flags, some phone calls were made and at the state’s request, we asked for an extension, which will be completed by the end of June,” he said. “We don’t qualify for a full audit, they call it an exam. It’s more about lists and policies they look at, unless there’s something that jumps out at them … the council had moved for a full audit going back two years, (the auditors) thought they should just do an exam because it was so expensive.”

Officials left the meeting saying they had made progress.

“I look at tonight, no one walked out, that’s a good thing,” Shelangoski said. “At the end of the day I have to say thank you Melvin and Paul for putting this together and the supervisors for coming in to help straighten it out.”

Comments: Kalen.McCain@southeastiowaunion.com