WICOMICO COUNTY, Md. -- The County Council's budget comes up about $400,000 short of what the Salisbury Fire Department asked for. Meanwhile, an additional $75,000 will go towards other volunteer departments throughout the county.
It has stirred up contention among local officials and fire department heads. Council President John Cannon said the move was fiscally responsible. However, County Executive Julie Giordano said the cut of nearly half a million dollars puts public safety on the back-burner.
The Salisbury City Fire Department asked for $2 million, but it's looking like the department will only get $1.6 million of that.
"I felt that the $2 million was very reasonable, I'm just really frustrated by the council's actions," said Giordano.
Cannon told us over the past two years, the county has doubled its financial commitment to the city fire department, so this years move made sense.
"The council gave $600,000 more to the City of Salisbury, that was a 60% increase from the prior year," said Cannon. "That was after a 30% increase from the prior year."
This all boiled down to money getting spread around. When the budget is being looked at, the Salisbury Fire Department and volunteer fire companies throughout Wicomico County are put in as separate line items.
Giordano said it was proposed to give all volunteer companies an additional $75,000. She said her plan was to use capital funds, meaning those companies would have gotten the money now, instead of needing to wait for the new fiscal year to begin on July 1st.
The council decided to go in a different direction.
"They wanted to put it in the budget and the way that they did it was they cut the City of Salisbury and cut some things in corrections and then they gave that money to the volunteer companies," said Giordano.
Giordano said her issue isn't with funding the volunteer fire companies, but with the way it was done.
Salisbury city leaders did not want to comment on this issue on Monday, but Salisbury Career Fire Fighters Local 4246 did release a statement. Union leaders said the decision could mean the end for services in areas outside of city limits and "that means houses, neighborhoods, businesses, streets and sadly even schools."
"The City of Salisbury takes care of 40% of the county calls," said Giordano. "Not mutual aid, not going out into the county, literally the people that they service in their fire district that are county residents."
Cannon told us the council understands the large role played by the city.
"We've looked at their data, we haven't had enough time really to review the particulars of it," said Cannon. "But we'd like to sit down with them and we plan to do that to review what else there might be that we can agree on."
We are told negotiations are ongoing. The council has passed the resolution for this years budget. They have until Friday, June 14th to make any amendments.
Other sectors of public safety that were cut include the following:
- Four Master Corrections Officers were cut, totaling $214,500
- One Correctional Officer was cut, totaling $45,000
- A possible expansion to the Wicomico County Corrections Center was cut, totaling $2.7 million
- Two 911 Specialists were cut, totaling $83,000
Including the Salisbury Fire Company, Wicomico County cut a total of $3,443,000 from the public safety budget.