Kirksville’s under-funded emergency services will have to go without

Kirksville emergency services said the city is in a dire need of the Kirksville police and fire department renovation. Kirksville Mayor Zac Burden said he doesn’t know what to do after the less than half a cent police and fire facilities sales tax failed to pass in the municipal vote.

The city of Kirksville has one centralized fire station that has recurring floods and has grown mold. Burden said a central location of the fire station makes sense when there is only one station, but it also means that the fire department is currently physically unable to meet industry standards when it comes to the fires on the far northern and southern parts of time.

Kirksville Fire Chief Jon Cook, who has 27 years of experience as a firefighter,  advised the city council about the needs of the fire department. Cook said response times are a huge part of not only fighting fires, but also for insurance rates for people living in the outer parts of the city. 

Cook said every five years the insurance industry evaluates the response time from the fire department and rates the districts of the city. Insurance agencies also can use these ratings to increase fire insurance rates, costing the resident.

“We knew it would be a challenge and it was a big ask for the community, but my job here is to make the fire department as effective as it can be,” Cook said. “Deployment is the big barrier that requires investment to fix”

Deployment for the fire department starts about ten seconds after a call is being made to 911 that relates to what the fire station handles. The more time it takes for firefighters to get to the scene the more damage is done to property.

Cook said that the fire department would keep working to the best of their ability with what they have after the failed sales tax vote despite the struggles they currently face.

“We’ll just keep doing what we’re doing,” Cook said. “We show up to work every day. We respond to the best of our ability. The folks that work here do everything. And so we’ll just keep doing the best we can do.”

Burden said another key part of the tax was to improve the safety of the police station for the police and those in custody. During the state of the city address Burden gave in Feb., the mayor said that he would not wait for something tragic to happen to a law enforcement officer and urged the residents of Kirksville to support the tax.

Burden said he was not unsympathetic to the two-thirds majority opposed to the bill. Burden said that the people have to make decisions when it comes to the economic times residents are facing, people really have to make decisions on if they can afford to fix these issues and if the value of the proposals is worthwhile.

“This community has for a long time under-invested in itself.” Burden said. “As a politician, it’s pretty easy to say we’re fine with what we’ve got and we don’t need anything else from you. It’s not easy to say, ‘I really think [we] need to pay more in order to take care of all of us’.”

Burden said residents may view Kirksville as a high tax environment, but the concern is Kirksville being left behind in a nation with a struggling economy.  Burden said national issues like inflation, high tariffs and the war in Iran have really impacted how families think financially. 

Burden said that he thinks the sales tax would have been worth it, but the decision was ultimately up to Kirksville residents as a whole. Burden said that people have speculated that the sales tax wouldn’t even have been necessary if the city’s budget was better, but said the city has already been working on making the budget work with the limited funds they have.

“The challenge is that we are already stretching the tax dollars in amazing ways just in order to cover what it is that everybody expects today in a modern city.” Burden said.