Service charges free up firefighters for emergencies: Newmarket and Aurora fire chief

'Do you have to have your credit card handy?' insurance bureau official asks

Yorkregion.com
Oct. 13, 2020
Lisa Queen

Starting this month, Central York Fire Services expanded its list of service charges.

In addition to fees already in place for infractions such as nuisance alarms, inspections and unlawful outdoor burning and a policy launched in January to charge insurance companies of drivers involved in at-fault collisions, the new list includes charging residents and contractors who hit a natural gas line because they failed to check before digging, sending bills to hydro companies when firefighters secure areas of downed hydro lines before crews arrive, charging property owners of drug labs and grow ops, charging for post-fire investigations and billing for “extraordinary expenses” such as the cost of renting heavy equipment.

The fees are the going rate in Ontario of $480 per hour per fire truck.

Newmarket and Aurora residents will not be charged when the department responds to fires and people should call for help immediately in an emergency, Fire Chief Ian Laing stressed.

He said the charges aren’t a cash grab, although he acknowledges it’s expensive to run the department, with a proposed 2021 operating budget of $29 million.

Instead, he said, the fees are a way to educate Newmarket and Aurora residents about steps they can take to avoid tying up firefighters so they are free to respond to emergencies.

“The vast majority of our budget is wages and benefits so there’s no way to save money on that. That’s a hard cost,” he said.

“But there are things that we can do to make the fire service more effective, more able to respond to other emergencies. It’s about managing the costs associated with providing the emergency response rather than a source of income. It’s not like we’re going to generate this huge income. That’s not how it’s going to work.”

But Pete Karageorgos, the Insurance Bureau of Canada’s director of consumer and industry relations for Ontario, has reservations about the growing number of fire departments billing for services.

“If you have to call the fire department, do you have to have your credit card handy?” he mused.
“I just question what is the value then of paying your property taxes in a municipality if everything you’re doing that might potentially involve having the fire department attend is going to result in either a charge for you as a homeowner directly or an attempt to make a claim on your insurance policy.”

Many charges are added to insurance company claims, which are inevitably passed on to consumers, but Laing acknowledged the department will bill people directly if insurance companies don’t cover the fees.

When it comes to charging for car collisions, it’s not only at-fault drivers who face higher insurance premiums, Karageorgos said.

Rates are also based on the extent of claims in geographic areas, affecting all drivers in those communities.

“It’s concerning because from an insurance perspective, claims costs are the largest driver of our premiums,” Karageorgos said.

“If decisions such as these drive up claims costs, for residents in a specific area like Central York’s Aurora and Newmarket, it’s an academic exercise that the more insurance companies are going to be paying for claims in that area, that will see an effect on people’s insurance premiums.”

But Laing said adding a couple of thousand dollars in fire department fees to an insurance claim should make little difference to insurance premiums, adding the department hasn’t received any complaints about the car collision fees.

Aurora Mayor Tom Mrakas and Newmarket Mayor John Taylor say the charges are reasonable.

“By expanding the program that launched in January 2020, we are continuing to secure departmental resources to ensure efficiency at the scene of an incident and proper resource allocation,” Mrakas said in an email, adding the practice is standard among Greater Toronto Area fire departments.

The fees are intended to ensure anyone causing the fire service to incur costs due to a lack of due diligence will pay a fee, Taylor said.

“This new fee structure will ensure that the general taxpayer does not have to pay more through their taxes for someone else’s lack of oversight,” he said in an email.

While many fire departments use a third-party company to collect fees, with the company taking a substantial cut, Central York is doing the work in-house using a part-time employee, Laing said.