Wise County supervisors have agreed not to cut funding for fire and rescue services as they search for ways to slash millions of dollars from the county budget.
Meeting Wednesday, supervisors also voted 6-1, with a member absent, to change the county’s group health insurance plan in the next fiscal year — saving the county an estimated $89,000 annually, but still raising costs for individual workers.
The meeting was dominated by a roughly three-hour closed session focused on possible job cuts. Returning to open session, Karen Mullins, the interim county administrator and county attorney, said the board discussed specific employees and jobs that might be eliminated.
The board will convene again April 9 for its regular monthly meeting, with plans to recess it for another budget discussion.
Fire, rescue cuts off the table
Wise County does not provide in-house fire and rescue services, depending instead on a network of volunteer departments and squads. Most of them primarily serve specific towns and outlying areas.
Several recent county board meetings have been attended by dozens of volunteer first responders who were concerned about possible funding cuts. During a March 12 meeting, former Appalachia fire and rescue volunteer Travis Anderson told supervisors that cutting those dollars would be short-sighted because the volunteer units use equipment mostly funded by the towns and through grants, saving the county millions of dollars.
The county’s fiscal 2026-27 budget includes about $1.43 million for fire and rescue costs.
The current budget includes nearly $865,000 for fire services, an increase of $227,500 over the previous fiscal year. The county provides $75,000 each to fire departments based in the towns of Appalachia, Big Stone Gap, Coeburn, Pound, St. Paul and Wise, along with the Valley fire department serving Powell Valley and the city of Norton fire department, which helps respond within the county. The county gives $30,800 to the Sandy Ridge Fire Department, which also serves Dickenson County.
The fire budget includes nearly $119,400 in state fire program pass-through funds. It provides $7,800 for fighting fires in the county that are not in a volunteer department’s typical jurisdiction, $35,400 for hazardous materials incident responses, $10,000 to help send firefighters to training school and $14,000 for dues and association memberships.
The county budgeted more than $562,300 for rescue services, an increase of nearly $119,900 over the previous fiscal year. The county provides $75,000 each to the Appalachia, Big Stone Gap, Pound, Wise, Norton and Valley rescue squads. It provides $30,800 each to the Castlewood and Sandy Ridge squads and $15,950 to the Dante squad, each of which also gets funding from other counties. The rescue budget includes nearly $31,700 in state pass-through funding.
Health insurance switch
Mullins said she and Finance Director Andre Villiard examined the county’s health insurance options and learned that staying with the current Anthem Local Choice coverage in the next fiscal year would raise costs by about $400,000.
They recommended switching from Anthem’s Key Advantage 250 plan to the Key Advantage 500 plan, which would save the county about $89,000, and returning to a setup in which the county pays 80% of the monthly premium while employees pay 20%.
Six board members agreed.
Monthly premiums will be higher than in the current fiscal year, but the increase won’t be as much as if the county stayed with the current plan.
According to county officials, under the current health plan, employees pay 11% of the premium for single-person coverage, 13% for an employee and one other person, and 14% for family coverage.
Budget struggles
County residents have given supervisors an earful over several recent meetings, angry over the double whammy of facing higher property taxes even as county officials struggle to slash spending by millions of dollars.
On March 5, supervisors voted 6-1 to keep the real estate tax rate at 69 cents per $100 of value, which will boost income by about $5.4 million thanks to a property reassessment. The board majority said it was necessary to help dig the county out of a multimillion-dollar gap between income and spending. County Treasurer Delores Smith said supervisors still needed to slash about $446,000 between then and June 30 to get through the current fiscal year — and must cut upwards of $5 million to have a realistic budget in fiscal 2026-27.
The reassessment that took effect in January raised real estate values to the point that supervisors would have had to lower the tax rate to 55 cents for tax bills to stay roughly the same. The average countywide value increase for residential properties was 35%. This was the first reassessment since 2022.
Smith has said repeatedly that in recent years, supervisors and former county administrator Mike Hatfield depended on reserve funds and American Rescue Plan Act special funding to make ends meet instead of cutting spending as she advised. According to Smith, her warnings went unheeded for several years.