Some Vermont fire and rescue budgets, for your reading pleasure

By Guy Page on January 27, 2022

Chea Waters Evans

(In case you missed it: The reason this came up in the first place is that Charlotte Volunteer Fire and Rescue requested $1,069,586 for their budget for FY 22/23. This year, the budget was $933,246.)

There’s disparity in local fire and rescue department budgets, which makes sense. Not only are no two towns alike, the people who live in those towns make choices when they vote and pay their taxes about what they want to spend their money on, and when. Comparing the budgets of various fire and rescue organizations, then, is especially tricky. How many full-time employees are there? How much do they rely on volunteers? What’s the town’s population? Do they service other towns, or contract with other towns to provide service to them? Do the residents of a particular town want control of their own fire and rescue services, or do they want to rely on other area departments?

The following list doesn’t get into those specifics, nor does it clarify which town pays for its fire hydrants out of a separate town department’s budget, or which town doesn’t have fire hydrants at all, or which fire and rescue departments provide 24/7 service, or which ones are regularly out of service, or which provides full ambulance service or contracts with another town.

This is simply a list of town populations and their fire and rescue budgets. If you click on the name of the town, it will take you directly to the town report where I got the numbers for FY 2020-2021. No need to keep you in suspense any longer…here are the figures from 2021. The population figures are from the Vermont Department of Health’s 2019 estimates.

Charlotte

Population: 3,785

Fire and rescue budget: $876,3433

Bristol

Population: 3,842

Fire and rescue budget: $336,295

Ferrisburgh

Population: 2,690

Fire and rescue budget: $228,461

Hinesburg

Population: 4,525

Fire and rescue budget: $529,373