Politics

County, Mills River at standoff in fight over fees

Mills River Town Councilman Shanon Gonce and Mayor Larry Freeman, shown in a file photo, say Mills River won't pay for fire inspections of businesses..

By Bill Moss, Published: May 10, 2015

The high stakes game of chicken over who pays for fire safety inspections in Mills River escalated when the Mills River Town Council said it won’t pay for them and Henderson County said, fine, we’ll stop doing them.

The inspections, which state law requires for commercial buildings, have become a source of friction between Mills River and the county and a proxy for the view of some commissioners that towns ought to pay more for services in city boundaries such as sheriff’s calls.
When the county fire marshal discovered last year that Mills River was not paying for the fire inspections, the county approached the town about an agreement to pay for them. Laurel Park, Flat Rock and Fletcher all pay the county fire marshal for the fire safety inspections, although the agreements are not standard in terms of the cost and whether the town absorbs it or passes it on.
A meeting on April 20 at the Mills River Town Hall failed to resolve the issue. In fact, when it was over, it appeared both sides had stiffened in their refusal to back down.
Attending the meeting were Board of Commissioners Chairman Tommy Thompson County Manager Steve Wyatt and County Attorney Russ Burrell and Mills River representatives.
Mills River Town Councilman Shanon Gonce described an agreement he said the county and town had reached in 2007 when Henderson County changed the formula used to distribute state sales tax revenue. The change based the formula on each municipality’s property tax rate instead of its population. The new formula, town council members said, cost the town $750,000 a year. Until then, the town in an interlocal agreement had paid the county $34,000 a year to cover fire inspections and other services, Gonce said.
“… It was the council’s very clear understanding that the forfeiture of roughly three-quarters of a million dollars in sales tax revenue annually, by the town and to the county, would be Mills River’s payment for county services going forward,” Mills River Mayor Larry Freeman said in a letter delivered to the county on Friday. The interlocal agreement was not renewed and the matter has not been broached until now. “This also explains why no payment has been sought from the town by the county for services during this period of time.”
Since state law does not require cities to make fire safety inspections, the inspections are “a service the county has chosen to provide and any fees charged for that service are county fees,” Freeman continued. “If the county wishes to be paid for the inspections, whether in incorporated or unincorporated areas of the county, it is our council’s suggestion that the county set up a mechanism for charging and billing an appropriate amount for each individual property inspected. Town Council believes this should be done directly — from the county to the property owner — no ‘middle man.’”
That’s not going to happen, Wyatt said Monday night when asked about the Mills River letter. Instead, he said that he planned to write a letter on Tuesday to the state commissioner of insurance “telling him that as of June 30 we will no longer be providing that service” in Mills River.
Thompson, who was standing beside Wyatt at the time, confirmed the county’s position.
“As far as the letter is concerned, I’ve read the letter, I understand their position but I don’t think they totally understand our position,” Thompson said. “I was crystal clear in telling them that everything that we do helps them.”
Gonce said he was not aware of the county’s response to Friday’s letter from the town until a Hendersonville Lightning reporter relayed it.
“I’ll just have to wait until I get that formally from them,” Gonce said. “I’d just have to look at my options. To be honest, I don’t know really what my options are at this point. I just know we have until July 1 to come up with something.”
Gonce repeated his recollection of the 2007 agreement that cost the town sales tax revenue. The annual payment “was all waived by the commissioners at that point in time and the county manager and whoever was in power,” he said. “They agreed on it at the time.”
Town Manager Jeff Wells also said he had not been notified of Wyatt’s proposed letter to the state insurance commissioner.
“We’ll have to continue to look at our options,” he said. “I’ll take that back to the council if we get something official from them.”