The 2025 Port Washington Fire Department contract for services was unanimously approved by the Baxter Estates Village Board of Trustees.
The Port Washington Fire Department is an independent fire department that serves Baxter Estates, Sands Point, Port Washington North as well as parts of Flower Hill, Plandome Manor, and the Town of North Hempstead, according to its website.
Chris Bollerman, ex-chief and chairman of the Port Washington Fire Department Board of Directors, presented the budget during the Jan. 8 meeting of the Board of Trustees.
Bollerman was supposed to present the budget during last month’s meeting of the board, but he had to reschedule after a two-alarm fire broke out at a home in Port Washington requiring assistance from several Long Island fire departments.
Bollerman began his presentation highlighting the previous year’s statistics. In 2023, the Port Washington Fire Department responded to 3,748 emergency calls in Port Washington; of the responses 2,396 were ambulance calls and 1,352 were fire calls according to Bollerman.
In total, there were 38 fire calls to the Port Washington Fire Department in Baxter Estates, making up 4% of the department’s call volume. In addition, there were 85 ambulance calls placed from Baxter Estates, making up 3% of the department’s call volume.
This contract is negotiated equally among the areas that the Fire Department serves. The county sends the Fire Department a list of every address by municipality that it protects, according to Bollerman.
Afterward, the department adds up all the values, then adds up each municipality, and then divides the value of the municipality into the value of the total. That resulting number equals how much municipalities will have to pay for the department to protect them with fire trucks and ambulances.
Bollerman noted that there are differences between the operating budget and the contractual budget. The 2025 overall operating budget is $5,421,102 while the contractual budget is $4,833,302. The difference of $587,800 between the contractual and overall budgets will be filled by funds from the ambulance cost recovery program, according to Bollerman.
The 2025 apportionment of the budget is utilizing the same figures that were applied when calculating the 2024 budget.
The Village of Baxter Estates is a little under 3% of the department’s budget; their cost for firefighting and ambulance services for this year is $142,099 according to Bollerman.
Bollerman added that Baxter Estates will see an $4,116 increase in contractual money from last year to this year.
The contract was approved unanimously by the Village of Baxter Estates Board of Trustees. After approving, members thanked Bollerman and the department for their service to the community.
