Man chooses not to pay fire protection fee, house allowed to burn down

Yea, and it also means no one ever pays the fee because they don't have to. And until there is a price on the cost of putting out a fire, good luck figurign out the bill an dnot having people bitch about that too.

 

You take his land.

Trust me, that is a big incentive.

 

He said that on MSNBC.

 

OK, so because of that, I feel even more sorry for the guy. I really do, but it doesn't change anything.

 

The guy could bitch about it all he wants, but the reality is that the fire department could bill him. That is what the $75 insurance fee is for. You pay less knowing that you may not have to use the service. However, should that service ever be needed, you know that the firemen will be there and you won't end up with a bill of $10k.

If you were that guy's neighbor and heard him complain about a $10k bill from the fire department, I'm pretty sure you'd make certain that you paid your $75 bill. I know I would.

 

Divide active fire calls by the fire budget, and I think some of you might have a story.

Not car crashes, people with chest pains, cat in a tree, yada, yada, yada...

Those are all important in their own way, but you do not need a huge tanker truck to deal with them. I think TEA baggers would choke at the ratio.

 

It doesn't change anything? Sure it does. Again, there's a difference between blatanly not paying and thinking you'll get hooked regardless and just forgetting.

 

Personal responsibility takes another blow. Don't follow the rules? Its someone else's fault. In this case, the fire department. Or the tax collector. Or someone. But god forbid, the guy who didn't pay the $75 is responsible.

Crash your car, walk into Allstate and tell them you meant to pay your auto insurance, but forgot to. See how that goes over.

 

But we should not have a pick and choose tax rate or tax base.

This opens the door for people saying they do not want to pay their share of school taxes.

To have services like this EVERYBODY needs to pay their fair share.

 

This is just an example of a local government reigning in spending. We should be proud that government is getting smaller, right? Now if we could only get those damn emergency rooms to screen for health insurance and immigration status.

 

If I crash my car and it has no insurance then I have to pay the bill. If the car is totaled then I'll have lost the value of the car and will need to purchase a new one.

If I make a phone call to the fire department to provide me a service, when I didn't purchase their insurance, they can can certainly send me a bill for that service later.

Think of it like the warranty on your car running out and something goes wrong. The Ford mechanic isn't going to tell you "tough luck, you have no warranty." He's going to say, "Yes, I can fix it. It's going to cost X dollars. If you had purchase the extended warranty then this would have been free."

 

Our firefighters work just as hard not putting out fires as the heroic firefighters always getting their stupid names in the paper!