Here's another story of a homeowner who didn't pay the subscription fee for fire protection, believing that, if he had a fire, the fire department would come anyway.

He was wrong.

This follows the same line of thinking of districts who shut down their departments, believing that, if they needed fire protection, they could rely on mutual aid.

What is wrong with that thinking?

Read the story from Tennessee: http://www.wpsdlocal6.com/news/local/Firefighters-watch-as-home-bur...

 

TCSS.

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There is no fire department in the unincorporated county in question.

 

You are apparently demanding that a neighboring jurisdiction give away free fire services outside their jurisdiction. 

 

Fire departments ALWAYS have to worry about where the money is coming from, especially in this economy.

That's what the owner should have thought.

 

You guys are missing the point. This isn't mutual aid. This is another jurisdiction deciding to charge a fee for services, instead of forcing everyone to pay without choice.  You don't pay your car insurance, you don't get a free car after a wreck. You get a bill from the other guys insurance company plus your out a car. You don't pay for trash pickup, the trash piles up. Christ, they are asking for 20 cents a day. Everybody in that district should happily pay, it is far less than funding from a district property tax. And really, 20 cents a day doesn't even come close to buying out dated and poorly maintained equipment, but hey keep doing it for free and then the other paying residents will stop paying too. 

 

Maybe we can go back to just having bake sales at the church...

 

 

why do you assume that someone with a mortgage has extra money?

 

lots of peoples mortgages are upside down right now and they owe more than their house is worth.

 

i know lots of people right now that are squatting in their own houses and have not paid their mortgages in more than a year, let alone any type of insurance in that long.

 

my tax comment was about our country as a whole taking collective care of our citizens, not about if his area pays fire protection taxes.

 

i did not miss the point - i just view it differently than you do.

 

p.s.  just in case I did not make it clear - i think the man is a dumbass for not obtaining all necessary protection for his home - if he could... since it is expensive to run a fire department... SO maybe the home owners insurance should be paying (i said that already, but i digress)

Here are some demographics for the area...

 

City of South Fulton - approximately 2,500 residents.

Obion County - approximately 30,000 residents in the unincorporated area outside of South Fulton.

 

Assuming 3 people per household, that is about 10,000 homes in the county and fewer than 1,000 in the city.

 

That "$75" actually equals 3/4 million dollars of free fire protection that the city would be expected to subsidize for the county each year - because NO ONE will pay the fee if they can get free fire protection without it.

 

TJ, what you are asking is for less than 10% of the county residents to pay for the fire protection for 100% of the residents.  That's neither fair nor economically sustainable.

 

Do you really expect 2,500 people to pay for fire protection for 30,000 people?

We get money from our township trustee every year and then the rest of our money comes from fundraisers

Short career then.... are you gong to self dispatch to every call in the surrounding communities? They didn't respond on the initial call, not until the neighbor's house (who had paid the fee) was threatened.  

 

So you basically, you do what you want everyday?

Come on, Heather, stop with the straw man argument.

 

No on said anything about "extra" money.

 

Fire insurance is a condition of buying a mortgage. 


The reason that so many people's mortgages are upside down right now is that they made a bad business decision based upon a dream that their mortgage would continue to increase exponentially in value for at least 30 years.  They simply made a bad bet and lost the bet.

 

The country can't afford to take collective care of its citizens.

In case you hadn't noticed, the country is broke, too. 

 

What you are asking is for the people who made good business decisions to be punished for it and the ones who made bad business decisions to be rewarded for it.  Frankly, that's a bass-ackwards policy.

 

It certainly isn't fair for me to pay for my fire protection and someone else's because they were stupid, greedy, or ignorant of how the housing market works.

 

Regardless, your comments are not pertinent to what is being discussed, which is subscription fire services in places that otherwise would have NO fire protection.

Absolutely 100% correct.

The Mayor is in charge of the city - a nieghboring jurisdiction.  The county in question has NO fire protection of its own.

 

Do you really expect your jurisdiction to provide fire protection to a neighboring jurisdiction for free, especially when the neighboring jurisdiction has 10 or 11 times the population of your jurisdiction???

 

The homeowner intentionally refused fire protection when he didn't pay the subscription fee.

By that action, the homeowner chose to have the firefighters not protect his property.

If there's a black eye, it's on the homeowner, not on the firefighters, the fire department, or the city.

Greenman - it goes back to the days of Ben Franklin in Philidelphia when the fire department was your insurance policy. 

 

http://www.ushistory.org/franklin/philadelphia/fire.htm

Fire protection is provided by 2 state-wide organisations: The New South Wales Fire Brigade (urban and large towns) and the Rural Fire Service (bush and small towns).  These are paid for by your state and federal taxes.

 

Of course we have a choice:  We elect our government! 

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