17 Percent of NSFD Budget Comes From Shorewood

Shorewood will pay 17.45 percent of the North Shore Fire Department's budget for the next three years.

NSFD is a shared service among seven communities: Bayside, Brown Deer, Fox Point, Glendale, River Hills, Shorewood and Whitefish Bay. The fire department doesn't have any taxing or borrowing authority, so each of the villages it serves contributes a percentage of funds for the fire department's operating and capital budgets.

Five years ago, NSFD moved to a fixed fee formula so municipalities would know what to budget for every year. The freeze ended this year, and NSFD proposed a permanent fee schedule.

While the officials approved the fixed percentage proposal in July, village officials in Fox Point and River Hills voiced numerous concerns with the fairness of the funding formula and formally requested a three-year sunset clause, eliminating the permanency of the funding formula.

The NSFD Board of Directors agreed to the three-year sunset clause, expiring the agreement at the end of the 2015 budget year.

Shorewood trustees were receptive to the three-year sunset provision at Tuesday night's Village Board meeting, voting once again to approve the NSFD funding formula resolution.

Fox Point and Whitefish Bay have also approved the agreement and other North Shore communities are expected to follow suit.

Here's a breakdown of what each municipality will be contributing:

Municipality

Proposed Percentage

Bayside

6.2

Brown Deer

17.69

Fox Point

10.31

Glendale

28.16

River Hills

2.94

Shorewood

17.45

Whitefish Bay

17.25

The percentages are based on three main components:

• Population of each municipality;
• Equalized Valuation based on improvements, excluding land, which is determined by the Wisconsin Department of Revenue for the previous year;
• Usage of the fire department for emergency incidents averaged over three years.