Residents of the Mescal and J-6 Ranch area southeast of Tucson will soon pay for fire protection as part of their property taxes after years of getting the same service whether they chose to pay for it or not.
The Cochise County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to approve formation of the Mescal-J6 Fire District, which next month will officially take over the area that the Mescal Volunteer Fire Department had covered since 1981.
The fire district will still be staffed by volunteers, said Terri Jo Neff, a member of the three-member organizing committee, which also will serve as the district's inaugural Governing Board.
The only change residents should see, Neff said, is in how the district's efforts are funded.
Or, rather, in who funds them.
"We're going to be funded by everyone who lives here, rather than by the one-third of the people who have voluntarily paid their dues," said Neff, whose husband, Warren Neff, is Mescal-J6's fire chief. "With the area growing so much, we needed to be able to have that set amount of income coming in."
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About 4,000 people live in Mescal and J-6 Ranch, a pair of unincorporated communities that straddle Interstate 10 just west of Benson. The area is in both Cochise and Pima counties, with the majority falling within Cochise.
With not everyone in the area opting to pay the $50 due each year, the Fire Department has had to make do with a 2008-09 fiscal year budget of $78,000, Terri Jo Neff said.
As a full-fledged taxing district, Mescal-J6's 2009-2010 budget is projected to be $140,000.
"As the equipment and the facilities age, it takes more and more to keep them up," said Sue Dupee, chairman of the board of directors that has governed the Fire Department since it attained non-profit status in 1982. "It's not just the vehicles but the hoses and all that."
Without a way to get additional revenue, Dupee said, the Fire Department probably would have been able to operate for another year before needing to cut services, such as medical response.
"People who are the most vulnerable would be left to wait for (firefighters from) Benson . . . or Tucson or Vail," Dupee said.
The fire district's tax rate will be $0.07 per $100 of assessed value, Terri Jo Neff said, adding that the 14-square-mile area's total valuation in 2009-10 is expected to be about $20 million.
The drive to become a district began in 2006, two years after previous organizers failed for a second time to collect enough signatures to get Cochise County to consider the district's formation.
The area's growth has been fueled by homeowners who have moved from more populated areas where tax-funded fire service was standard, Terri Jo Neff said.
"We have so many people who have moved into the area who expect fire service," she said. "Becoming a district and having that revenue, and becoming more of a quasi-government entity instead of a non-profit, makes a huge difference."
The fire district will be responsible for all emergency calls on I-10 between Milepost 295 and Milepost 302, but it will respond to ones as far west as Marsh Station Road, which is about 10 miles southeast of Vail.
