Public Safety Tax Information & Data

The Public Safety Local Income Tax (LIT) rate was adopted in 2019, and residents began paying this tax in January 2020. The rate, which was adopted at 0.18%, has brought in average of over $10 million per year since 2020. This year, the Public Safety Tax has brought in over $13 million. This tax is explicitly set aside for public safety purposes. This includes the following:

• Fire protection

• Emergency medical services (EMS)

• Ambulance service

• Policing

• Prosecutor's office

• County courts

Established under IC 6-3.6-6, the County government & the incorporated municipalities within the county are automatic recipients of Public Safety Tax revenues. Other units that provide fire protection services within the county are not automatic recipients of the Public Safety Tax, but may apply to the LIT Council (which is composed of the units that are automatic recipients, with votes being allocated based on population) for an allocation of the revenues collected countywide from all residents of the county.

In Tippecanoe County, that means that the following units are both automatic recipients of the Public Safety Tax, and gatekeepers of what other units may access these funds. The first three units are major units, with voting power to make decisions. The remaining "Minor Members" receive Public Safety Tax revenues, but are not mathematically able to affect the votes of the LIT Council

• Tippecanoe County

• City of Lafayette

• City of West Lafayette

• Minor Members

  • • Town of Battle Ground

    • Town of Clarks Hill

    • Town of Dayton

    • Town of Otterbein

    • Town of Shadeland

The following units (ranked by the 2020 Census population of their service areas) provide fire protection, EMS, and ambulance services but are not automatic recipients of the Public Safety Tax. To date, none of them have been able to access the revenues collected in part from their tax-paying residents.

• Wabash Township (21,774 residents)

  • • Wabash Township Fire Department

• Wea Township (12,583 residents)

  • • Wea Township Fire Department

• Tippecanoe Township Fire Protection Territory (7,561)

  • • Tippecanoe Township Volunteer Fire Department

• Washington Township (5,040 residents)

  • • Buck Creek Volunteer Fire Department

• Sheffield Township (4,883 residents)

  • • Sheffield Township Volunteer Fire Department

• Lauramie Township (2,544 residents)

  • • Clarks Hill - Lauramie Volunteer Fire Department

• Otterbein Fire Protection Territory (2,198 residents)

  • • Otterbein Area Fire & Rescue

• Wayne Township (2,020 residents)

  • • West Point Volunteer Fire Department

• Randolph Township (991 residents)

  • • Randolph Township Volunteer Fire Department

Taken together, that means that 32% of Tippecanoe County residents are served by local government units/fire departments that are unable to access the Public Safety Tax revenues that their residents are already paying. To make matters worse, these residents are not seeing Public Safety Tax revenues go to their service providers while the units that do receive it have continued to save those taxpayer dollars without leveraging them in favor of their residents. In unincorporated Wabash Township alone, residents have paid over $7.2 million towards the Public Safety Tax, while their fire department remains unable to access the revenue that is being kept in other units' savings accounts.

Public Safety Tax Cash Balances

This year, units are expected to end the year with nearly $20 million of the Public Safety Tax (or over one-and-a-half years' worth of residents taxes) sitting in reserves, while the needs of fire departments in the unincorporated areas of Tippecanoe County continue to grow.

Table 1: Public Safety Tax Receipts, Disbursements, and Balances

Wabash Township's Previous Requests