Receiver Richard Land announces the results of Tuesday night’s vote. Photo by Jim Hummel, WPRO.
By Jim Hummel, WPRO Investigative Reporter
By a 3-1 margin, voters in Central Coventry told the leaders of their financially-beleaguered fire district they’d had enough, rejecting a budget that called for a tax increase of more than 35 percent.
Within minutes of last night’s vote, a court-appointed special receiver said the next step would likely be liquidation of the fire district’s assets to pay off millions of dollars in debt that have accumulated over the past several years.
“We’re in a crisis stage at this point,” said Receiver Richard Land, who has overseen the district since last fall. “I believe liquidation in some form is likely.”
Last night’s vote was the culmination of what started out as a promising idea in 2006 to merge four fire districts. It was sold to voters at the time as a way to pool assets and save money. Instead union contracts that guaranteed increasing number of firefighters with generous benefits – coupled with an initial $700,000 accounting error that was repeated three years in a row – put the fire district on fragile financial ground.
A Hummel Report investigation showed last summer that the district’s spending had increased more than 60 percent in just five years. Federal money that paid for additional firefighters helped keep down tax increases, but the model proved to be unsustainable.
And voters, angry that their tax bills had climbed steadily over the years, began to show up to district meetings that had previously been sparsely attended. But information was hard to come by. The voters narrowly rejected a budget in February that called for a nearly 50 percent tax increase. After that vote, the union gave up some concessions, but not enough to win over a skeptical electorate, which began lining up outside Coventry High School Tuesday night before voting began at 6 pm. For hours a steady stream of people – at one point snaking around the building as far as the eye could see – waited to cast votes in two machines that had been set up in the hallway just outside the auditorium.
At 10:15 p.m., shortly after the polls closed, Land announced the results: 1357 – or 74 percent – voted against the budget, 484 supported it.
Union President Dave Gorman said he was disappointed but not surprised on the outcome, blaming “misinformation and politics” for the budget’s defeat. He told Land that firefighters would report for work on Wednesday, but the district is weeks away from not being able to pay them.
Land said the parties will likely be in court later this week to seek guidance from Superior Court Judge Brian Stern.
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Jim Hummel
