Carefree adopts final budget
Council keeps meeting times, approves fire station equipment
by Brian DiTullio

CAREFREE – Town council formally adopted the 2007‑08 fiscal year budget and will continue to hold its monthly meetings at 5 p.m.

At a special meeting Aug. 7, council members reviewed the budget numbers one last time. Having no further questions, the budget–totaling $9.2 million–was adopted by a unanimous vote.

During the regular meeting that followed, a discussion about whether to move council meetings back two hours, to 7 p.m., resulted in no motion.                  

Councilman Bob Coady said several residents asked him to request a later start time, but no one came forward during call to the public in support of such a change. Former councilman Gary Hayward and former mayor Hugh Stevens both advocated 5 p.m. meetings, noting people come for issues they want to hear, no matter the start time, and leave as soon as the relevant discussion ends.

Councilman Greg Gardner pointed out that if the July meeting had started at 7 p.m., it would have lasted past 10 p.m. “That’s too late,” he said. “You can’t concentrate that late (in the evening).”

Councilman David Schwan brought up an opportunity exists for broadcasting the meetings on Channel 11 and asked Town Manager Jon Pierson to look into the costs.

In response to Coady’s earlier statement, Mayor Wayne Fulcher said he’s never been approached by one person about moving council meetings to a later start time, but pointed out call to the public was moved from the end of meetings to the beginning in response to requests by residents who said they didn’t want to have to sit through ane entire meeting just to say a few words.

In other business, the council approved the purchase of equipment for the new fire station at a cost of $50,101. Coady expressed misgivings over some of the items purchased and the cost, and questioned why the town was paying for exercise equipment, but voted in favor of the measure.

Rural/Metro Battalion Chief John Kraetz explained that some costs which appeared to be high were due to the industrial nature of those items; i.e., a $300 ashtray actually is a concrete ashtray about waist high, the kind commonly seen outside public buildings.

Fulcher pointed out some of the items, which could be purchased for less if for personal use, are heavy‑duty commercial equipment. “It has to be durable,” he said. “It has to put up with wear and tear. We want to pay for these things once and get a long life out of them.”

The town agreed to pay for equipping the new fire station as part of the Rural/Metro contract signed last year, noted Kraetz, budgeting $55,000 for this part of the contract.