Oswego Fire District officials say growing local population driving need to pass referendum

The Oswego Fire Protection District covers more than 53 square miles and serves about 70,000 residents from four stations manned by 66 firefighter-paramedics as well as the command staff.

The district’s apparatus and each firefighter’s turnout gear are extremely expensive. The estimated replacement cost for the district’s aging ladder truck, for example, is about $1.4 million.

That’s why the district’s Board of Trustees is a making a second attempt to sell voters on a rescue tax to help fund its operations. The referendum will appear on the June 28 primary election ballot.

Currently, the owner of a home valued at $300,000 pays about $600 per year in property taxes. The proposed rescue tax would increase the tax rate by 0.10%, resulting in a $99 yearly increase for the owner of that same home.

Voters narrowly rejected the same referendum question in April of 2021.

Fire Chief John Cornish said the fire district needs to do a better job of telling its story to the public.

“We are not good about educating the public about the things we do,” Cornish said.

The driving force behind the need for the tax increase is the district’s dramatic rise in population, from just 27,000 residents just two decades ago to the current 70,000.

The population bump has tripled the number of calls to which the district’s firefighter-paramedics respond each year.

Last year, the department went on 6,346 calls for service, a record, compared with about 2,000 calls in 2002.

“The growth continues significantly in our community and the cost of apparatus and equipment continue to rise,” Cornish said.

Cornish and other fire district officials said that without the additional revenue, the district’s ability to maintain the current level of service will be jeopardized, with a decrease in ambulance availability and an increase in response times.

The district maintains two stations in Oswego, one in Montgomery and one in Plainfield. There are more than 20,000 residential homes, 1,100 commercial properties and 25 school buildings in the district.

The Montgomery station property, located just east of Orchard Road at Galena Road, includes a training facility where firefighters simulate structure fires and practice their skills.

The district has a minimum of 19 firefighter-paramedics on duty 24-hours-a-day, said fire district Lt. Joe Johnson.

The district operates under a $12.8 million budget. Personnel costs, at $11.4 million, take the lion’s share.

The current tax rate, at 0.70147, is the lowest among its peer fire districts, including Plainfield, Minooka, Troy and Bristol-Kendall.

Johnson said that the district’s personnel are responding to increasingly complex calls with about 65% dominated by medical emergencies, which is why fire engines and not just ambulances are outfitted with medical equipment.

The district’s response time to a call is 6 minutes 19 seconds, Johnson said.

Response time is critical, Johnson said, because a fire can double in size every 60 seconds, while the survival rate for persons suffering from cardiac arrest decreases 15% every minute without medical care.

The cost of emergency vehicles and equipment is rising. A new engine is $650,000, while an ambulance is $320,000, Johnson said.

The high-tech stretchers used to transport ambulance patients costs $40,000, Johnson said, while a firefighter’s breathing apparatus comes in at $7,000.