As the Gainesville City Commission seeks to fill a roughly $10 million hole in its budget, Commissioner James Ingle has proposed eliminating the fire assessment exemption for charitable and religious institutions.  

Ingle called the current system broken and said it rewards organizations based solely on square footage, with larger buildings earning larger exemptions.  

In the current fiscal year, around 247 organizations met the qualifications to not pay fire assessments on their property. If they had paid, the city would have collected an extra $525,000 toward its current budget.  

IIngle first introduced the possibility of ending the exemption in May, when the commission voted on the maximum fire assessment rate. At the time, Commissioner Cynthia Chestnut was skeptical.  

“Well, Commissioner Ingle, I would enjoy seeing you take on the churches, and I’m going to let you take that one alone,” Chestnut said. 

Ingle again raised the idea in more depth at last week’s special meeting, and this time it gained more traction. Commissioners Bryan Eastman, Casey Willits and Ed Book voiced support, but the commission leaned toward saving the issue for the 2026-2027 budget instead of changing the system within the next two months.  

In an interview with Mainstreet, Ingle said the fire assessment exemption amounts to a subsidy—a city cutting a check based solely on square footage and not actual merits. 

“I see why these institutions don’t need to pay all the same tax burden that a for profit company would pay, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask them to pay a little bit and that’s how it was originally,” Ingle said. 

The fire assessment is applied against all physical properties in Gainesville’s city limits. Homeowners, businesses and apartment complexes pay the assessment on their property taxes. For the upcoming fiscal year, the city of Gainesville estimates collecting $12.6 million for the fire assessment, not including the exempt organizations. 

Both cities and counties can levy the assessment to pay for fire services, and the state of Florida has certain requirements for the assessment. But Florida doesn’t require exemptions for charitable and religious organizations, Ingle noted. He said these assessments aren’t in the same category as property taxes, which state law mandates these organizations don’t pay. 

He said a fire assessment is apolitical and should be a shared cost. But he understands the arguments for keeping the exemption. 

One argument is that these organizations provide community support, and through the exemption, the city can further the impact of their programs, which in turn reduces the burden on the city’s community support programs.     

However, Ingle said the fire assessment is the wrong way to benefit these organizations and further their impact. 

The fire assessment was designed to measure the risk and cost that would happen if a certain property were to catch fire, with different fire assessment rates for single-family residential, multi-family, industrial and business zoning.  

Ingle said the fire assessment fails to measure an organization’s effectiveness or efficiency in benefiting the community—or whether the organization actually provides services Gainesville residents consider helpful.  

“Not always but typically, I think, the size of your building is a pretty good proxy for the amount of resources you have, which means we’re just giving the most resource-rich people, the biggest subsidies, and I don’t think that’s a good way to target things,” Ingle said in the interview.   

At last week’s meeting, Ingle listed a series of examples.  

Bread of the Mighty, Peaceful Paths and St. Francis House each benefit from the fire assessment exemption. Combined, they’re exempted around $10,000 for the 2024-2025 fiscal year.  

Meanwhile, Ingle said that UF Health Shands, with $2.3 billion in annual revenue, received an exemption of $50,000. The current methodology gives larger breaks to entities that can afford to pay more, he said. 

He also pointed to organizations that touch on larger political issues versus programs like helping those needing food, housing, employment, counseling and other areas a city assists with.  

Dove World Outreach was a controversial organization in Gainesville that burned Qurans and drew national attention for its views. They would be exempt from the fire assessment, which Ingle said amounts to getting a check from the city of Gainesville’s general fund.  

Ingle also cited Crisis Pregnancy Center of Gainesville, a 50-year-old organization that aims to “support women with unplanned pregnancy.” Ingle said it is anti-abortion activists who get a larger exemption than Planned Parenthood—$343 in exemptions versus $273.  

“I don’t know that that necessarily reflects the values of Gainesville or how we would distribute money if we were looking at trying to help those in need, do good works or be equitable,” Ingle said at the meeting.  

Ingle said he’s open to how the city moves forward. The city could reduce the exemption to only half of the fire assessment or knock $1,000 off the top of each assessment. He said the city could eliminate the exemption and use half the money to fill the budget gap while the other half goes to strengthen city support for homelessness, abuse survivors or low-income families—perhaps through a grant system. 

Ingle said it’s not about funneling money to political causes but furthering work the city already supports. He said the city wouldn’t, for instance, provide funds for minor conversion therapy.  

“I don’t want [fire exemption] money used, and I feel like now we’re just cutting kind of a blank check for it, for anything an organization wants to do as long as they have a large building,” Ingle said. 

Willits supported Ingle’s perspective. He said it’s nonsensical to think the exemption is based on good work or scaled based on good work. It’s just a square footage formula, which is a bad way to help community organizations. 

Willits said 90% of the churches in Gainesville would say they support helping homeless services. By paying the fire assessment, he said Gainesville could then support GRACE Marketplace at a higher level or other programs that churches and the community support.  

He said as long as the city avoids any First Amendment implications, he thinks Gainesville should move ahead with the plan.  

“Thank you for bringing it up,” Willits told Ingle at the meeting. “We’ve all thought about it, but you’re brave enough to really kick the wheels on it.”     

Eastman agreed. He said the city should start the discussion in the next few months, even if the city waits on implementation until the next budget cycle. He noted that by exempting any groups, taxes on everyone else go up. 

The fire assessment itself doesn’t increase or lower because of exemptions. State law prevents a larger fire assessment for everyone else because of exemptions for religious and charitable organizations.  

But the city must then cover the fire budget through general funds, giving fewer dollars to the other departments and perhaps resulting in a millage increase or other ripple effects.  

Mayor Harvey Ward was the only member of the City Commission to voice opposition last week—with commissioners Desmon Duncan Walker and Cynthia Chestnut silent on the topic. He said he thinks cutting the exemptions would run afoul of the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which prevents governments from favoring one religious group over another. 

Ward added that Gainesville has a large nonprofit community that would be affected.  

Dr. Theresa Beachy headed Peaceful Paths for 24 years before recently stepping into a new role as CEO of the Center for Nonprofit Excellence, housed within the Community Foundation of North Central Florida. 

She said the biggest issue on the nonprofit side is unexpected expenses. Once a budget is set, a nonprofit struggles to get additional funding to cover new expenses. Then, nonprofit leaders must look for cuts. 

However, if given enough notice, she said the nonprofit community will be able to pay the fire assessment without severe consequences. She said some grants and monetary awards might cover the assessment, but those grants can’t be amended once in place. 

“For a lot of organizations, it will be a very minor, symbolic kind of assessment that they’re going to be paying,” Beachy said. 

For other organizations, though, a several-thousand-dollar expense could directly impact services. Beachy said $4,000 at Peaceful Paths is a month’s worth of meals for the women they help.  

Of the $525,000 in fire assessment exemptions, Beachy said the majority likely belongs to religious organizations, leaving less than $200,000 of new expenses split among all the charitable organizations.    

If the city funds a grant program or increases support to nonprofits, she said it should be careful about the administrative burden for small organizations. Grants can come with a lot of strings and reporting requirements that can tangle nonprofits and sidetrack them from actual work. 

Ingle said he imagines the conversations will turn into community workshops or a town hall in the near future. He said they could be hard conversations, but having a plan that shows how the city is still supporting charitable organizations will help.  

He said he didn’t imagine getting into the weeds of fire assessment details when he joined the commission in January, but he’s found there are lots of corners that you begin to learn about after sitting behind the dais. Now seemed like the right time to bring the issue forward, he said.  

“I think having a good plan put together on that and how that would work makes those easier conversations, and bringing people in on the front end of that, to figure out what that formula needs to be and how it is, we need to take that into consideration,” Ingle said. 

10 charitable or religious organizations with largest fire assessment exemption: 

• UF Health Shands: $51,687.70 

• Trinity United Methodist Church: $20,065.03 

• Holy Faith Catholic Church: $11,170.53 

• Ingnite Life Center: $10,888.38 

• YMCA of North Central Florida: $10,810.71 

• First United Methodist Church: $10,443.55 

• LifeSouth Community Blood Centers: $10,305.62 

• First Presbyterian Church: $8,455.97 

• Mt. Carmel Baptist Church: $8,404.89 

• Holy Trinity Episcopal Church: $7,690.52