The Sycamore City Council may soon impose a fee on those who need the city’s fire department to respond to certain car crashes, city documents show.

While Sycamore bills for ambulance transportation, the city does not currently recover the costs associated with other fire department services. That may soon change.

In a letter to the Sycamore mayor and City Council, Hall wrote that the Sycamore Fire Department had requested they consider “a cost recovery program for certain motor vehicle crash responses.”

“These incidents often require ambulances, engines, specialized rescue equipment, absorbent materials, vehicle stabilization equipment, and personnel from multiple stations,” Hall wrote. “While these resources are committed to a crash scene, they remain unavailable for other emergencies until released from the incident.”

Hall estimated that in 2025, 111 crashes required resources from the city’s two fire stations. Another emergency was called in while 25 of those crash scenes were still active, Hall wrote.

On Monday, Sycamore alderpersons will consider a resolution that would allow a fee to be imposed when the Sycamore Fire Department responds to a motor vehicle crash and must mitigate a hazard, suppress a fire, extricate a victim, or establish a landing zone for a medical helicopter.

Taxpayers currently bear the responsibility for the cost of those actions, Hall wrote.

Sycamore wouldn’t be the first city in DeKalb County to operate a cost recovery program for its fire department. Documents show that DeKalb has charged fees for similar fire department activity since at least 2011.

If approved by the Sycamore City Council,s crash responses would result in a $250 per hour fee for responding vehicles that don’t transport a civilian from the scene, and a $70 per hour fee for a non-transport first responder, according to city documents.

Those charges, which would be added to the city’s consolidated fee, bond and penalty schedule, may not always be tendered, however. The Sycamore fire chief, or a designee, would have the ability to reduce or waive those fees at their discretion.

DeKalb currently charges the same rate per hour for a non-transport vehicle responding to a crash as Sycamore is proposing. However, under some circumstances, DeKalb charges per hour for each fire engine, truck company, command vehicle, ambulance and administrative vehicle that responds.

After analyzing crash scene data between 2022 and 2025, city officials estimated that the Sycamore Fire Department’s four-year average time spent at an individual crash scene is just over 40 minutes.

However, crashes requiring specialized fire department services that are finished in less than an hour won’t be prorated. A minimum of one hour will be charged for all crashes.

If the scene requires first responders to remain on the scene for longer than one hour, the fee will be billed in additional 15-minute increments.