Welcome to the Brazoria County Emergency Service District #4 website. ESD#4 was formed on November 6th 2018 by a vote of those citizens who live in portions of the Extra Territorial Jurisdiction Pearland Texas. The ESD #4 covers a large part of the Pearland ETJ. On this website we hope to provide information to the public about how and why they are being taxed to provide Emergency Service to their properties. Emergency Service Districts are common throughout Texas in rural areas that are outside of a city. There are various types of ESD services, ESD #4 is for Fire and Emergency Medical only. Some ESD’s cover Law Enforcement, Hospital Districts and other public services. We are happy to announce that on May 20th 2019, we entered into a three-year contract with the City of Pearland to provide Emergency Services of Ambulance and Fire Protection to our District. We will update you with how they’re doing with the taxes that you are providing to secure their services as reports are provided to us. If you have questions you can always contact us using the contact link provided. On our website you can find minutes from our meetings, agendas, when and where we meet. We are proud to serve our community.
Why am I paying taxes to ESD#4
You probably have seen the new line item on your County tax statement and want to know, what is this? Here is the short answer. For decades the City of Pearland has been providing FREE Fire and EMS services to the Pearland ETJ (Extra Territorial Jurisdiction). The thinking was that one day they would probably annex you into the City of Pearland. The laws covering annexation changed in 2017 making the potential of us being annexed unlikely. The Pearland City Council decided with the prospect of annexation being gone, so is the FREE Fire and Ambulance Services. This was a reasonable response! Concerned citizens in the ETJ that realized that we needed to something reached out to Commissioners Adams and Linder for direction. They educated us about forming an Emergency Service District (EDS) under the State guidelines. We had many of your neighbors sign petitions to get the ESD#4 on the Ballot in November of 2018. Only those in the ETJ were allowed to vote on the issue and it passed. The maximum amount of taxes that can be levied via the ESD is 10 cents per $100 taxable value. We believe this is a very fair cost for continued Fire and EMS services from Pearland FD. If you are in a $150,000 house you are being taxed $150 for Fire and Ambulance Service. If you are in a $350,000 house it’s only $350.