Sometimes even the most seemingly simple situations can be more complicated than they appear. That, apparently, is the case with a proposed agreement between the city and county to provide aid to each other in the case of fire emergencies.

    The county approved a mutual fire fighting assistance agreement with the city at a board of supervisors meeting Monday, saying that the document would simply make official what already exists — an agreement between the city fire department and county volunteer fire departments to help each other when it’s needed.

    But county officials also mentioned that a similar agreement had been made years before, but the previous city administration under former Mayor John Robert Smith had dissolved it.

    At a city council meeting the next day, a member of that administration showed up to explain exactly why the agreement was dissolved. Ken Storms, the city’s former Chief Administrative Officer, said the good thing about the agreement is that it improves insurance rates for people who live outside but near the city limits — but the bad thing about it, he said, is that it can increase insurance rates for people who live inside the city limits.

    Current Mayor Cheri Barry told the Meridian Star on Wednesday that she wants to reinstate that agreement in order to bring those improved insurance rates to citizens who live in the part of town that was annexed in 2009. She said many residents in the annexed area are not near enough to a city fire station to benefit from the city’s better fire insurance rating.

    Storms said a mutual fire agreement can damage insurance rates in the city because, once the agreement is put down on paper, insurance companies will apply the city’s class 4 fire rating to homes within five miles of the city’s fire stations, whether they are covered by the MFD or a county volunteer fire department. When a fire happens in the county, he said, if it is a total loss, that loss will count against class 4 insurance rates, even though the class 4 fire department was not a first responder to the fire.

    According to a letter sent to the board of supervisors by the city in 2002, “As adjustments in homeowner’s insurance premiums are based on losses in these less protected areas, Meridian residents are…subsidizing these areas outside Meridian through increased insurance rates.”

    The agreement was originally made in 1986 under Mayor Jimmy Kemp, and cancelled in 2002 under Smith.

    But Barry says that this time the agreement will help with insurance rates for Meridianites as well as county residents. Barry said that the annexed area — which she points out was annexed during the Smith administration with the promise of immediately building a temporary fire station to serve the area — is being taxed as part of the city but is not receiving all the benefits of being in the city, including the insurance benefits from the better fire rating.

    Barry said many of the annexed residents are still more than five miles from a city fire station. This agreement, she said, will help lower their insurance costs until a new fire station is built.

    “All I’m trying to do is make sure that all of these people out there are covered,” she said. “We want to make sure everyone gets the rating that they need.”

    Barry also said she’s working to get that new fire station built, and is hoping for an announcement about a groundbreaking within a couple of weeks. She said the city has already acquired the property.

    Approval of the mutual fire aid agreement was on the city council’s agenda for their Tuesday meeting, but was taken off the agenda because council members wanted to discuss it in a work session. The item was removed from the agenda before the council heard from Storms.