By John Howell Sr. and Rupert Howell

Panola County supervisors have offered to pay half of the cost of a new fire truck for the Batesville Fire Department, aldermen have learned.

City officials had requested that the county pay the full cost of purchasing the new truck.

After listening to their fire chief and discussing the matter, aldermen agreed Tuesday to take the proposal under consideration for later decision.

The city will be required by the Mississippi Fire Rating Bureau to purchase one new truck this year to keep its fire insurance rating at Class Six. The rating bureau will require Batesville to replace a second  truck if its fire department continues to respond to fires and other emergencies outside corporate limits, said Batesville Fire Chief Tim Taylor.

The offer to pay $109,500 toward the cost of a $289,000 fire truck, less a rural fire truck grant of $70,000, was submitted by County Administrator Kelley Magee in an e-mail that was distributed to Batesville’s mayor and aldermen during their Tuesday meeting.

“Because we run more than 25 percent of our structure fires outside the city, they’re requiring us to have another engine company,” Taylor told the mayor and aldermen during a January meeting.

He repeated the explanation during Tuesday’s meeting. Other responses outside city limits to fight grass and woods fires and to assist after motor vehicle accidents pushed the Batesville Fire Department’s out-of-town responses to one third of its total last year, Taylor said.

Incident reports compiled by BFD Fire and Life Safety Officer Rip Copeland indicate that the trend continued for the first three months of this year: 24 of 76 responses were outside corporate limits.

Richard Palmer, a field rating representative with the public protection department of the Mississippi Ratings Bureau explained last week that two trucks had reached their life expectancy according to the ratings bureau and are required to be replaced. One is a 1991 model and the other a 1992. He said it just so happened that both need to be replaced at the same time and one pumper is dedicated to the out-of-town structure fires.

The ongoing discussion of who should pay for the purchase of Batesville’s second new fire truck this year has prompted consideration of a policy to limit the city’s fire department to answering calls only in its corporate limits.

“You do have people out there who’re getting the benefit of it (fire protection) without paying for it,” Taylor said.

“You’ve got a lot of them,” Alderman Stan Harrison said.

“We need for people in the county to know what might happen,” Mayor Jerry Autrey said.

The half-hour discussion included insurance company rates for structures located near Batesville but outside municipal limits. Most insurers’ rates are based on distance and not the rural fire district in which the structure is located.

“These people that live five miles out, all of a sudden we don’t do that anymore … their rating’s about to change,” Alderman Teddy Morrow said.

“A lot of insurance companies will just contact us and say, ‘Do you answer calls outside the city limits?’ and that’s all they want to know,” the fire chief said.

In a hypothetical example using a rate table provided by the rating bureau, a masonry home near Batesville corporate limits that currently pays an annual homeowners insurance premium of $1,380 for $150,000 coverage would pay $3,030 for the same coverage if the Batesville Fire Department quits answering calls outside corporate limits.

Batesville’s fire department has answered calls outside corporate limits at least since the 1950s, Taylor told the mayor and aldermen, either as the sole responder or in mutual aid to surrounding municipal departments. As rural fire departments were organized during the latter part of the 20th century and fire districts were created, mutual aid was expanded.

Rural fire districts have increasingly come to depend on the Batesville department because it is staffed with full-time, career firemen, Taylor said during an earlier meeting of the mayor and aldermen.

Fire fighters in volunteer departments serving rural fire districts often work at jobs so distant from their fire station that prompt response is difficult.