By ROBERTA HEIMAN
Evansville Courier & Press staff
Township assessors, township firefighters and county officeholders had one question Tuesday night for the Evansville-Vanderburgh Unification Study Committee.
"If it isn't broke, why try to fix it?" they asked, contending the local government structure is working just fine.
The rural contingent was a big part of the crowd of about 180 people who packed an auditorium at the University of Evansville for the committee's second and last public input hearing on the consolidation issue.
Opposition to the merger has been expected, although so far it has been much quieter than it was in the early 1970s when voters soundly rejected the proposed VandiGov consolidation. But while no group has organized a campaign to try to defeat consolidation this time, the opponents made their voices heard Tuesday night.
Among them was Perry Township Trustee Norman "Red" Mosby, who led the fight against VandiGov. He spoke out Tuesday against any effort to do away with township trustees or township assessors.
The study committee has said one alternative would be to eliminate township assessors and have a single county assessor or hire a professional assessor to do the job countywide. That concept went over like a lead balloon with the township officeholders at the hearing.
Mosby said the township assessors have many duties, but one of them is to serve as a necessary watchdog over the county assessor. The question of whether to merge township volunteer fire departments with the city fire department drew lengthy discussion. "I'm a county resident. Our county tax rates are lower and we have excellent (township volunteer) fire services," one man said. "So why mess with it? It's a fantastic system, so leave it alone."
Ron Hornbrook, assistant chief of the McCutchanville Fire Department, said its 60 volunteer members made 935 runs last year with an average of nine volunteers on each run, spending an average of two hours per run.
"Try to put a dollar figure on that (if the city took over the township fire services)," Hornbrook said. "You're talking about some big bucks. The cost is going to be astronomical."
Fred Padget, chairman of a study subcommittee on taxation, said there is no proposal for the city to take over the township fire departments. But one alternative would be to create a "fire protection board" that would be a new taxing entity for all the fire departments (city and township) and would take over the fire-service responsibilities of the township trustees. A resident of Armstrong Township, noting that most local growth is occurring in the county outside the city limits, said he thinks city residents "would not be thrilled about building a new fire station" in his township.
Sheriff Brad Ellsworth asked what would happen to the various independent taxing entities - such as the public library and the levee authority - under a consolidated government. Padget said the study committee didn't study that issue, but Ellsworth said he thinks all the taxing entities should be under one umbrella.
Many questions went unanswered.
Phil Fisher, coordinator of the study, said the committee "will take this information" from the hearings Monday and Tuesday night and "make some decisions," then present a consolidation plan to the public in about a month.
Fisher said the committee still hopes to go to the state Legislature in January to seek approval for a local referendum vote on consolidation in November 2005.
"It may be that we won't get everything done this year to present to the Legislature," he added. "But if we don't do it this year, the project is not dead. We still have the option of next year."
© 2004 The E.W. Scripps Co.