“What do they think we all did before they had their “emergency phone system”?”
What happened before is that the town was getting sued by people for not warning them of the snow and making them fall down their porch steps.
This system cost money, and someone (usually the town’s insurance company) required them to buy it or they wouldn’t get insurance. Which the state requires with special kickbacks to politicians and insurance salesmen.
It all comes back to government.
There is always an aging leftist hag behind every nanny state idea.