Correction: The Cicero Town Board will hold a special meeting to vote on the budget Friday, Nov. 18, not Nov. 17 as originally reported. We regret the error.
By Ashley M. Casey
Staff Writer
Members of the Cicero Fire Department showed up to the Nov. 9 Cicero Town Board meeting in full turnout gear, holding signs protesting the town board’s cuts to the fire protection budget for 2017. The town board’s most recent revision of the 2017 budget reduces the CFD’s fire protection funding to $438,989, which is 9 percent less than the $482,500 the department has requested.
While the town board has set a special meeting for Friday, Nov. 18, to re-negotiate the CFD’s share of fire protection money and vote on the budget, emotions ran high at the meeting, which ran about three and a half hours.
Councilor Dick Cushman said the budget information provided by the CFD raised red flags, and CFD officials said Town Supervisor Mark Venesky overstepped his authority by advising M&T Bank that the CFD might not be able to make the loan payments on the fire station that began construction just weeks ago.
Prior to the meeting, Venesky and CFD leaders exchanged words about the firefighters’ protest.
“If you’re going to do this to my meeting, we’re going to go through the whole thing and tell people why [we made these budget decisions],” Venesky said.
“Is this where you want this to go?” CFD Chief Jon Barrett asked.
“It’s my meeting. You’re setting the tone,” Venesky said.
CFD volunteers spent most of the nearly four-hour meeting standing in the back of the town hall auditorium holding signs that read:
- “I do this for free on top of my job, on top of my family. Don’t cut funding that helps keep me safe and helps me help you.”
- “We support you … please support us.”
- “Cutting funding puts my safety and your safety on the line.”
Jim Perrin, chairman of the Cicero Fire District’s Board of Commissioners, read a statement at Wednesday’s public hearing urging the town board to provide $482,500 in fire protection money for the CFD.
“As the taxpayers have expressed over the last four years, the expenses for equipment should be spread over all taxpayers and not just the fire district taxpayers,” Perrin said, “as both the fire protection taxpayers and fire district taxpayers receive the same service but continue to pay different tax rates.”
CFD Commissioner Steve Perperian claimed that Venesky used the “F-bomb” at least four times during a budget meeting with the CFD. Venesky said he did not recall doing so and told Perperian to sit down if he was going to resort to personal attacks.
“The only ‘F’ word you should say is ‘first’: The taxpayers’ safety comes first. The first responders who answer the call for help come first,” Perperian said. “I don’t expect you to know what it takes to run a firehouse … so here is your [volunteer] application. I look forward to serving with you.”
Red flags
While numerous residents and CFD personnel spoke in support of the department, others said the community has not heard the town board’s side of the story.
“There’s definitely too much emotion on both sides,” said resident Chris Andrews. “To me, it seems like [Venesky] is asking for accountability that’s not there, and I respect that.”
“It sounds like there’s some information that needs to come out that shows where you guys are really coming from,” resident Don Snyder said. “Right now, it looks like you’re the bad guys and they’re the good guys. I kind of don’t think that’s the way it is, so we may have to have some of those explanations be put out.”
Snyder also shared some numbers from his own 2016 tax bill to put the fire budget debacle in perspective. He said of the $2,596 in county and town taxes he paid this year, only $387 goes to the town of Cicero. Snyder said he paid $13.84 per month for fire protection.
“That’s not a lot of money,” Snyder said. “This is not necessarily a ‘raise-or-lower-taxes’ [issue] for the people … but I think that’s why we need to have some more detail of what’s really going on with the numbers and why you are saying what you’re saying.”
Councilor Dick Cushman explained the town board’s position later in the public hearing. He said the CFD provided him with a spreadsheet that laid out the next eight years of budgets.
“It shows $845,075 as income and $692,100 as expenses for seven years in a row. Anybody that’s ever made a budget, if that don’t show you a red flag — I mean, gas went up 10 cents last month,” Cushman said. “You have to anticipate cost of living increases, gas increases, expenses. This budget does not show anything.”
Cushman said he asked the CFD to reconcile the $152,975 difference and he received a list of possible expenses such as roof repairs, a new rescue tool and a squad car, which were not listed in the original information the CFD provided to the town.
“Every time I look at a number in this budget, red flags come up,” Cushman said.
Cushman concluded that the CFD would not be able to make payments on the new fire station after the second year.
Venesky said he called and met with M&T Bank out of “moral responsibility” and an obligation to protect the taxpayers.
“We said the numbers don’t make sense for us,” Venesky said. “The fire department is committing the town of Cicero for seven years … but the fire protection contract is negotiated on an annual basis, so that number can change.”
Venesky said the town has butted heads with the fire department for two years in a row. He said at a budget hearing in 2015, Perrin “waved some papers in my face … and said, ‘We need more money, you’re not giving us enough and we need it, and if you want to be supervisor, you better fix it.’”
Venesky said the CFD did not provide adequate information to the town about its budget needs and would not provide justification for a funding increase in 2015.
“I just had a feeling that the Cicero Fire Department wasn’t dealing honestly with their numbers with the town of Cicero,” he said.
The town asked Onondaga County Comptroller Robert Antonacci to perform an audit of the Cicero Fire District. Antonacci said the department is in “significant fiscal stress,” noting that the CFD had depleted its fund balance.
Venesky said the CFD did not account for $152,975 for a reserve fund in its budget presentation.
“It’s not this town board that reduced the budget by $152,975, it was the … commissioner who told us that he didn’t need the $152,975 because he could run his firehouse for $692,100. Fact,” Venesky said.
Venesky said the CFD should have an accountant prepare an itemized budget to present next year. He said the fire departments in the town will work together in 2017 on preparing a “master operating plan” defining the relationship between the town board and the fire departments.
Perrin accused Venesky of “misleading the community.”
“You want to keep going back two years, bringing up dirt,” Perrin said. “I’m not going to continue to fight over this. He has flat-out lied to you on what these numbers mean.”
“Mr. Perrin, you’re out of order,” Venesky said, telling Perrin to calm down and sit down.
‘We support you’
CFD personnel and their supporters said Venesky is out of line for contacting M&T Bank about the fire district’s finances.
“Your actions, and I do not know that the other board members are even aware of these actions appear to be retaliatory,” said resident Sarah Pufky. “You appear to be trying to defund this [fire station] and suggesting to the bank that they were incorrect or inaccurate information, which is extremely inflammatory.”
Joan Kesel, former town supervisor and former Cicero Fire District secretary, said the fire district is a separate entity with elected officials who do not have to answer to the town.
“You have no business being involved in what the fire district taxes me for,” Kesel said. “The only business you have is what they contract with you for the fire protection.”
Assistant Fire Chief George Barrett said Venesky went over CFD officials’ heads.
“You bypassed the most realistic and the most front-line notification, which would be if you found a problem with the numbers from an agency, call that agency to get clarification,” George Barrett said.
George Barrett acknowledged that the town has a responsibility to its taxpayers, but Venesky’s actions made the fire department feel “threatened” and “bullied.”
Fire Chief Jon Barrett said he was “frustrated” with the budget conflict, calling the arguing “unacceptable.”
“I wasn’t going to bring my 5-year-old and make him sit in the back of the room listening to grown men bicker,” Jon Barrett said.
Jon Barrett said the fire department has made mistakes, but CFD leaders are working to fix the problem.
“Let’s put the checks and balances in place that we talked about last Tuesday in that office as a group and as you guys talked about as a board,” Jon Barrett said. “Let’s move forward.”
Firefighter Caleb Frey said the firefighters’ protest “was not to make [the town board] mad.”
“It was to prove a point that the younger guys here are the future of your town and we care very, very much about this town,” Frey said. “We support you. Please, make every effort when you meet with our chiefs and our higher-ups … to support us as well, because we’re the ones jumping on the trucks at one, two o’clock in the morning to save lives.”
Town officials are down to the wire when it comes to approving the 2017 budget, which must be done by Sunday, Nov. 20. After agreeing to re-negotiate the Cicero Fire Department’s fire protection budget, the town board voted to hold a special town board meeting to vote on the budget at 3 p.m. Friday, Nov. 18, at the town hall.