Bel Air Volunteer Fire Company asks commissioners for phased budget increases as new $2.4M ladder truck enters service

Todd McKinney, vice president of the Bel Air Volunteer Fire Company, and Chief Scott Panowitz told the Board of Town Commissioners on April 30 that the company has put a new ladder truck — which McKinney described as “that beautiful piece of equipment” — into service and is seeking a phased increase in town support to meet rising equipment and operating needs.

McKinney said the ladder replaced a roughly 20‑year‑old truck and that the organization tried to sell the old apparatus before donating it to a Sioux tribe in North Dakota. He asked the commissioners to continue the multi‑year, incremental increase the company requested in prior years and cited the costs of modern apparatus as a driver of the ask. “We were discussing that that beautiful piece of equipment was $2,400,000… it is in service,” McKinney said.

Chief Scott Panowitz described rising in‑town demand tied to new construction and larger structures, and said the department believes it needs two ladder trucks to meet those demands. Panowitz also gave operational figures to illustrate the workload: the department averages about 15 calls a day and reported roughly 2,675 calls last year, with about 22% occurring inside Bel Air.

Fire‑company leaders and commissioners also discussed frequent false alarms, which the presenters and several commissioners said divert resources and blunt volunteer responsiveness. Panowitz and McKinney urged examining the county’s fine structure — currently cited in the discussion as a $100 third‑offense charge — and exploring higher penalties or local billing mechanisms to deter repeat false alarms and capture revenue that could offset service costs.

Town staff later summarized the organization’s written request: an incremental buildup that, if approved as presented over several years, would add roughly $300,000 on top of earlier increases and bring the company’s requested contribution toward $464,000 through 2029; administrators said they reduced an originally larger proposed increase because of sharp health‑insurance and other cost increases elsewhere in the budget.

No formal vote on the fire‑company request occurred at the session; staff told commissioners they will continue to review the request as part of FY27 budget deliberations and will assess whether a local false‑alarm billing mechanism is feasible.