ANDERSON, Ind. — The Anderson Fire Department will give up part of its ambulance user fee collections, set aside to maintain equipment and fire stations, to help pay for its salaries in the midst of a city budget crisis.

The City Council on Thursday approved an ordinance that allows the fire department to contribute $890,000 of its user fee money to the general fund, which can pay for firefighters’ salaries. Coupled with its $1.2 million in budget cuts for 2010, the fire department will reduce its budget by almost $2.1 million.

AFD Deputy Chief Jerry Burmeister said without the user fee contribution to the general fund, the department likely would have had to lay off 17 firefighters.

User fees are projected to bring in about $1,046,000 in 2010, Deputy Chief Dave Cravens said, but all money generated through user fees pays for the equipment, trucks and medicine needed so AFD can have its own ambulance service.

“It sounds like a lot, but we turn around and put that money back into the fire department,” Burmeister said.

With much of the money for new equipment and building maintenance going toward personnel, the department will have to get by with older equipment until Cravens and Burmeister ask for the user fee money to revert back to its original usage in two years.

“We’re trying to step up and help the city out in a time of financial crisis,” Cravens said. “This is a big sacrifice the department’s making. We can’t afford for it to be a permanent thing. We’ll have to get by with what we have.”

The department makes about 9,000 ambulance runs a year, a number that is increasing as Anderson’s population ages, Cravens said. Ambulances last three years each at the most, he said.

“I can’t have somebody going on a run on a cardiac arrest and the ambulance breaks down,” he said.

Local firefighters’ union Vice President John Smith said before the user fee was implemented in 1996, the fire department often had to make do with rundown equipment.

“There is, across the board, a real sense of dread as we part with this money,” he said. “There were literally times when we held pieces of equipment together with duct tape.”

Despite losing the possibility for some new equipment, Cravens said it was important to maintain staffing levels at the fire department.

“If you lay off firefighters and you close fire houses, it’s going to take longer for trucks to get there, and insurance companies look at that,” Burmeister said.

Cravens said after 32 firefighters were laid off in Muncie, homeowner insurance in that area went up by $200-500.

Higher insurance rates also could keep businesses from locating in Anderson, Cravens said, noting it was one of the important things Nestlé looked at before deciding to build its plant in Anderson.