This might be the last year Harvard residents can burn their brush piles free of charge. Fire Chief Bob Mignard isn’t happy about the idea of charging a fee for a burning permit, but he understands that it could be a much-needed revenue source for his cash-strapped department, he told the Finance Committee last week. He said it’s too late to institute the change this year—open-burning season started in January—but Mignard conceded that he might have no choice but to start charging next year.
The burning-fee question surfaced during a Finance Committee budget review meeting last Saturday as the board was looking for ways to help restore funds for firefighter training. As requested, Mignard had submitted a proposed fiscal year 2010 budget that was level-funded from fiscal 2009 and then cut further to prepare for predicted additional reductions in state aid and local receipts next year. Part of those cuts was a $6,900 reduction in the Fire Department’s training budget, which means that Mignard will not have the money to pay firefighters $35 for every three hours of professional development classes, as he does now. After hearing Mignard’s assertion that those classes provide firefighters with “a common knowledge base, which results in a faster, safer, and higher quality of service to the community,” board members agreed that funding for training is a modest price to pay for the enormous benefit of a well-trained volunteer department. That’s when board member Marie Fagan suggested that townspeople might be more than willing to accept a brush-burning fee if they knew the money would go for training.
Mignard resisted the idea at first on the grounds that a burning permit is the only free permit left. And he pointed out that collecting the fee would mean additional administrative work at a time when he had just cut his administrative assistant’s hours in half, from eight to four per week, and clerical help at Town Hall and the Public Safety Building had been cut as well. “I’m trying to lighten the load for dispatchers,” he said. But he reported that some surrounding towns have begun charging for burning permits—Littleton charges $10 and Lancaster $15 per season—and said that $10 for a season “seems like a reasonable fee.”
Asked how many Harvard households obtain a burning permit each year, Mignard estimated 200, but said it could be many more than that. So far this year, 170 burning permits have been issued, although some households account for more than one permit, he said. The total for last year was about 1,700 permits, with many households burning brush more than once. Mignard predicted an even greater brush-burning effort this year “when people see what’s under all that snow.”
This is the first year that townspeople must go to the Public Safety Building to obtain their first open-burning permit of the season; after that, they can simply call in for a permit as they have in the past. The fine for burning without a permit is $100 per fire, Mignard said.
