Posted on 12/07/2011 7:30:34 AM PST by SeekAndFind
The last time this happened, our thread ran for more than 1,100 comments. To refresh your memory: The city charges a $75 fee up front for firefighter services throughout the year. Pay the fee and the F.D. will show up and douse the flames that are consuming your home. Don’t pay and the F.D. will show up and … watch it burn. I can understand a policy in which paying the fee gives you priority over a non-payer if your house and their house are on fire simultaneously and the department has to choose which to respond to. And I can understand a policy where paying a small flat fee discharges you from further responsibility for the cost of fighting the fire whereas a non-payer is forced to reimburse the department for all of their expenses afterward. In that case, the fee operates as de facto fire insurance. What I don’t understand is a policy where the F.D. will show up to a blaze but give the non-paying owner no option to get them to fight it. If the owner’s middle class, he’ll likely have some savings with which to reimburse the department for the cost; if the owner’s poor, he could agree to have his wages garnished going forward to partially reimburse them. Either way, the resulting hardship should be enough of a deterrent to encourage people to pay the fee ahead of time.
If you disagree, then should the fee simply be mandated as a tax? All this is, really, is an analogue for the health-care debate. We don’t let doctors opt to let poor people suffer in an emergency just because they don’t have insurance. Why let a family go homeless?
This community doesn’t pay taxes for fire service. They could if they formed their own fire company OR voted in a tax to pay for fire service and dedicated that money to hire a private fire service company.
Right now they have the very reasonable option of paying another communities fire service to offer protection for $75.00 a year.
If the fire department cannot be sustained on a fee-for-service model where it can bring in sufficient revenues to offset its operating expenses, then they, as any other business, should compensate by reducing their operating expenses. I have no idea what you’re advocating for but I have to say it sounds completely incomprehensible.
Let me ask you this.
How are you going to support a doctor’s office when they only get paid to provide medical care when it’s needed?
Most likely, your property taxes ( like mine), pay for fire service.
Some communties do not have fire departments that are paid out of their property taxes, and they have to pay an additional fee for fire protection from the community next door.The community next door with fire protection is paying for it via property taxes.Therefore, one community is trying to sponge off another community for services.
That is just the same welfare mentality that is sinking our country.
I would be furious that my property taxes were helping another community freeload .
What do they do when they show up at a non-payer’s house and there are people trapped in the burning building? Watch them die?
Ignore personal responsibility and let the gubmint provide you services. While NOT paying for those services.
How are you going to support a doctor’s office when they only get paid to provide medical care when it’s needed?
That is such an easy answer.
Take a community of 1000 people.
In regards to fires- they may have 3 a year.
In regards to health care- at least 100 will have high blood pressure, another 100 will be pregnant, another 100 will need immunizations, etc.
There is a higher need for health care than for fire protection. The numbers will sustain health care.
However, to have a fire department you need the equipment, and employees available 24/7 even if there is no fire.
Someone has to pay, and the moochers deserve to have their house burned down.
Voluntary contributions, primarily, although we did receive a grant to buy a fire truck (used) several years ago from the Feds. It only took 17 years to get it! Most of us buy our own turn out gear and pay for our own first responder training from the Chattanooga Fireman’s Academy. Since I’m an RF Engineer I do all the stuff necessary to keep our radios working. Virtually everyone who is a Fireman in our hall donates their various expertise to the cause on top of showing up to squirt water or pull people out of fires. Self reliance. This is how it’s done in most of rural America.
Better question why show up at all?
Saw it on the local news. The owners were well aware of the fee yet chose not to pay it.
I would say that yours is a pretty fair example of a knee jerk reaction.
“I’ll bet their mailbox was full of checks for $75 this week!”
We used to get reminders mailed out by our FD. I don’t think my dad ever forgot to pay for his fire tag. He had worked too hard for what he had.
Buying a tag wasn’t a guarantee that they would make it to your house on time, but it was better than nothing at all.
There should be competition for these non required matters.
I am wondering about the insurance claims...don’t pay the fee and insurance buys you a new house.
And? So now the taxpayer will have to pay food stamps, welfare, etc which will cost far more than $75.
This is pure idiocy once again.
If I was a firefighter and stood by to watch someones HOME burn to the ground, I would not be able to look myself in the mirror. Ever.
If I was a firefighter, and someone did not bother to help pay for my departments expenses, yet wanted a free ride, I would happily watch their house burn down.
there are volunteer fire departments in towns that are not in rural areas. They do not have a pay up or no protection racket.
Why do the insurance companies allow this?
The more I read this the more it seems there is something very very very fishy about this.
If this is a rural area where the firefighters are useless anyways, then what is the point? Witnesses for the insurance claims?
Ah so true.
Well, someone said they show up to make sure the fire doesn’t spread to the paying neighbors.
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