In the proposed town of Elon budget for the 2026 fiscal year, Elon University is reportedly increasing its contributions to the fire department from $86,598 to $423,524.
According to Rich Roedner, town manager for the town of Elon, this increase is going toward replacing the fire department’s current ladder truck and adding two new firefighters to the staff.
As detailed in the proposed budget, Twin Lakes, a local retirement community, is also increasing its contributions to the fire department from $56,000 to $60,000. In order to help pay for the cost of the ladder truck, the fire department has also proposed an increase to the fire district tax rate from $0.0865 to $0.10.
The cost of purchasing a new ladder truck is the main reason for this steep increase in contributions, said Patrick Noltemeyer, chief of staff and secretary to the board of trustees and associate vice president at Elon University.
According to Noltemeyer, the cost of replacing the old fire truck is $2 million.
However, this significant increase in contributions from the university will only continue for a short period of time, Roedner said.
According to Roedner, the university has offered to contribute $225,000 a year for the next two years in order to help pay for the ladder truck replacement.
Outside of the costs for buying a new ladder truck, the university is increasing its annual contribution to the fire department by $198,000, which will go toward funding three-quarters of the cost of bringing on two new firefighters, according to Roedner.
“That contribution will continue into the future to support those two positions,” Roedner said.
Additionally, according to Roedner, the university accounts for around 40% of the calls made to the fire department, which presents difficulties for a fire station with only 21 firefighters in total.
According to Roedner, to meet fire industry standards, the fire department is required to have 16 firefighters respond to a call about a fire in a dorm building.
However, according to Roedner, there are only around five to six firefighters active on a shift at any given time and because of this, the town of Elon has made agreements with neighboring fire districts, who aid in responding to dorm fires by sending out their own crews and vehicles.
Roedner said because neighboring fire departments are also small, they often have no coverage during the seven to eight minutes they’re driving to provide aid for a possible dorm fire at the university.
“We’ve explained that issue, and the university has stepped up and said, ‘Alright we want to help you get to that next level of coverage in Elon with in-house staff,’” Roedner said.
Although Elon University is a nonprofit organization and is not required to pay property taxes to the town of Elon, Noltemeyer said Elon chooses to make these contributions to the town annually in order to help support organizations such as the Elon fire department that service the university.
“Having a well trained and well equipped fire department and police department help to keep our students and the surrounding community as a safe place to live,” Noltemeyer said. “So we see that as an important investment by the university.”