Pflugerville Fire Department
Do it yourself

How to read an ESD budget, and catch a misleading claim

You don’t need an accounting degree to judge an ESD 2 decision. You need a handful of terms and a feel for the common tricks. Think of this as a toolkit you can bring to any future budget, tax vote, or contract.

Step 1: Find the real documents

Where the actual numbers live

Skip the mailers and press releases. Emergency Services Districts in Texas have to publish real financial documents. For ESD 2, look for these on its official site and in Travis County records:

  • Audited financial statements (the annual audit, sometimes called the ACFR). This is the most reliable source, because an independent auditor signs it. Look for the Statement of Net Position and the Statement of Activities.
  • Adopted and proposed budgets. These show what the district plans to collect and spend. Compare the proposed budget to what actually happened in prior audited years.
  • Response-time reports, usually published as dashboards. Check the percentile (see Step 4).

When a claim and an audited statement disagree, believe the audit. A press release is marketing. An audit is signed under professional and legal obligation.

Step 2: Learn six terms

The vocabulary that unlocks a budget

Net position / net assets

Roughly, everything the district owns minus what it owes, its accumulated wealth. Net position that rises year after year is the opposite of “running out of money.” ESD 2’s went from about $18M in 2017 to about $57M in 2023.

Unrestricted reserves

Money not committed to any specific purpose, the truest measure of a rainy-day cushion. A healthy government reserve is about three months of operating costs (25 to 30%). A lot more than that is a sign of over-taxation.

Operating vs. capital spending

Operating is day-to-day (salaries, fuel). Capital is big one-time buys (stations, trucks), often paid with loans. Watch for capital spending getting blended into totals to make a budget look tighter than the operating picture really is.

Depreciation

A big truck or station isn’t counted as one year’s expense. Its cost is spread over its useful life. So a district can buy expensive things and still post large surpluses. Don’t let “we bought a fire station” explain away a surplus.

Escalator

A built-in yearly increase in a contract, say 2.5% a year. It sounds small but it compounds. A 2.5% escalator raises a cost by about 16% over six years. Always ask what a multi-year deal costs in its final year, not its first.

Per-capita revenue

Total revenue divided by residents served. It strips out the “we’re growing” excuse: if per-capita revenue is climbing fast, the district is taking more from each person, not just serving more of them. ESD 2’s went from about $175 to about $450 (2017 to 2024).

Step 3: Test a “we’re broke” claim

Four questions that deflate a poverty story

  1. What’s the unrestricted reserve? If it’s well above three months of operating costs, the district isn’t broke. It’s stockpiling.
  2. What was the surplus last year? A district posting multi-million-dollar surpluses is not in crisis. Look at several years, not one.
  3. Are the scary numbers documented? “We’d cut 80 firefighters” should come with a budget line. If there’s no math, treat it as a slogan.
  4. Are the jobs at risk even filled? Budgeted positions are often vacant, and you can’t lay off a job nobody holds. ESD 2 had about 92 funded-but-vacant positions in 2024.

Step 4: Read response times honestly

Percentiles, not averages

Response-time claims turn on one word: percentile. An “average” response time can look great while a real chunk of calls take much longer. The professional standard is written at the 90th percentile, meaning 90% of calls have to beat the target, precisely so the slow tail can’t hide.

  • The career-department standard is an ALS ambulance on scene within 8 minutes, 90% of the time.
  • If someone quotes an “average” instead of a 90th-percentile figure, ask why. Averages flatter slow systems.
  • Compare like with like. One provider’s 90th-percentile number against another’s average isn’t a fair comparison.

The short version: ask for the number, check it against the audit, and be wary of any argument that skips both in favor of how you feel about firefighters. For the specific claims ESD 2 has made, and where each one falls apart, see Claims vs. facts.