its peak government.
All paid for by our centrally-planned, socialized financial system: unbacked, fiat money, manipulated interest rates, and unlimited government debt.
Easy to be superficially critical of this trend. In our area, every community had a volunteer fire department. When the alarm rang, you dropped what you were doing to fight the fire. For a whole host of reasons, this model is not workable any longer.
That doesn’t mean as citizens we shouldn’t be keeping track of how our money is spent.
I have no doubt that, like most governmental agencies, the ranks of firefighters are bloated. But many firefighting departments also provide EMT services - this was not true when I was growing up.