OWENSVILLE — Registered voters in Owensville and the surrounding 200 square miles will have an opportunity April 8 to support their community volunteer fire service by creating a tax-supported fire protection district.

Volunteer firemen walked door-to-door in Owensville with family members Saturday hanging door-tag reminders about the Tuesday, April 8, Municipal Election which carries Proposition Fire and asks: “Shall there be incorporated a fire protection district to be known as the Owensville Fire Protection District with an authorized initial levy of not more than thirty cents per one hundred dollars assessed valuation?”

Voters in the proposed fire protection district — which stretches from the county’s southern corner below Tea, diagonally from Drake, then northwesterly to the Gasconade River community at Held’s Island — include all Owensville city residents and those  more than 2,500 residents in what is currently the Owensville Rural Fire Protective Association’s (ORFPA) boundaries. Those boundaries extend into a portion of Osage County surrounding the Cooper Hill community.

That group has been responsible for collecting annual dues of $58 per addressed property for rural residents not inside the city limits of Owensville. With approval of the fire district, no more dues will be paid.

Instead, rural residents would begin paying for fire service through the tax levy.

City of Owensville residents will begin paying the tax levy if voters approve the district’s formation. City residents currently have a portion of their personal property and real estate taxes which go into the city’s General Revenue fund allocated to fire protection as city residents.

This Prop Fire levy authorization would generate nearly $350,000 annually for the fire district starting in January 2026.

Gasconade County Assessor Paul Schulte said the way to figure out what your expected tax increase could mean was to take the total assessed valuation from your 2024 bill and multiply that by .30 (the 30 cents), then divide that figure by 100.

For some rural association dues-payers, their answer could be a decrease in what they are currently paying. Currently, 77 percent of the members pay their yearly dues, according to figures provided by the Owensville Volunteer Firemen’s Association.

OVFD has a current annual operating budget of $225,000. This total is comprised of $120,000 from the city of Owensville’s General Revenue and a contribution of $105,000 from ORFPA, which is paid to the city of Owensville annually.

With the passage of Prop Fire, OVFD would become the Owensville Fire Protection District. A five-person board of directors would be elected on April 8 to run the district.

Eight residents of the proposed fire district have signed up as candidates for the new board being created through voter approval. Candidates include (in ballot order) James Diestelkamp, Melvin Arnold, Cheryl Schlottach, Glen Henneke, Bobbi Limberg, Christopher Shoffner, and Michael Nolting.

Voting precincts open at 6 a.m. April 8 and close at 7 p.m.