The last in a series of three public hearings was held Tuesday night at the Nancy J. Dembowski Community Center in Knox concerning the potential formation of a Fire Protection Territory.
The formation of a Fire Protection Territory would involve a property tax increase to City of Knox and Center Township taxpayers in order to gather more funds to operate the fire department, including the salary of a full-time fire chief and three part-time firefighters who will be stationed at the fire department during the day, operating costs, maintenance, testing, and minor equipment purchases.
Tippecanoe Township Trustee Bill Jones from Tippecanoe County explained that a tax rate of .1728 would be proposed for the Fire Protection Territory. Previously he said the current tax rate for fire for Knox is 7 cents and the tax rate for Center Township is 4 cents. In order to achieve the same tax rate for both entities, taxes for residents inside the City Limits of Knox would raise 3 percent while taxes for residents in Center Township would increase 7.3 percent.
Several residents continued to question the need to increase property taxes. Specific questions were geared toward the number of fire calls, medical calls, and accident calls to justify the need to increase taxes.
Everyone agreed that the fire department is valuable to the community, but they question the need to increase property taxes to fund the department. There was a question of whether or not other avenues have been researched in order to gather the revenue needed to be able to fulfill the needs of the department.
Now that the public hearings have concluded, the Knox City Council and Center Township Advisory Board members will need to vote on the formation of the Territory. It has to be a majority vote by the council in order for the Territory to pass and it has to be unanimous by the two Center Township Advisory Board members eligible to vote.
The Knox City Council will vote during their next regular meeting Tuesday, March 22 at 6 p.m. CT at the Nancy J. Dembowski Community Center, and the Center Township Advisory Board will vote Wednesday, March 23 at 6 p.m. CT at the Southside Fire Station.
