The county government should collect taxes from people outside the city and provide fire services itself, or subcontracting the city to do so.
Yes, it's all about individual responsibility, except 30% of the people who don't pay their fee but still expect the fire dept to do something if their house is on fire. The government should not make essential services discretionary.
It's basically a way to cut taxes and replace them with regressive fees and reduce services, consequences be damned, basically a conservative wet dream.
People who CHOOSE to live outside the city limits do so knowing that there are both benefits and drawbacks. If they don't want the drawbacks to living outside city limits, they can move back to the cities.
You do know that car insurance is required to drive a car on public roads right? So yea that persons former insurance company will not pay, his current one will.
AGAIN read some history and learn something.
Except that most democracies have taxpayer funded universal fire protection.
I am fine if rednecks would rather burn than pay taxes for fire protection.
Just don't whine when free market fire department works like a free market enterprise and only services customers who can pay.
The county government should collect taxes from people outside the city and provide fire services itself, or subcontracting the city to do so.
Yeah, except those same firefighters will make sure it doesn't hurt others or spread. That's why they're there.
A passerby and several neighbors helped put out the fire with a water hose, but Cranick said South Fulton firefighters didn't respond until the blaze spread to her neighbor's yard. Her neighbors had paid the annual fire protection fee.
Democracies start their own fire departments when it makes sense. When you reach a certain population density it only makes sense to build it right into the property tax and maintain a full time fire department. Do you think every county in the midwest with a population density of one person per square mile should maintain their own fire department at a cost of tens of thousands per inhabitant?
And I don't see any libertarians whining, they understand how the system works and applaud it. It's the liberal bleeding hearts that are whining because this cheapass didn't pay the measly $75 and lost his home.
More of the usual out of their anti-tax minds libertopian disease.
While it really doesn't make sense for people in extremely remote locations to pay for fire protection that won't do them any good, fee based systems aren't the answer, either.
The answer is to create a fire protection district within the county, one where people who live in that district can reasonably expect fire protection services, tax only those people to create it, one way or another. Those outside the district don't have to pay, because doing so won't benefit them.
Too easy? right? Doesn't fit into that ideological Me! it's all about Me! headset, either...
The town not having its own fire department and fire protection being optional are two separate things. Making the fee optional is just plain stupid, as we have seen.
It's basically a way to cut taxes and replace them with regressive fees and reduce services, consequences be damned, basically a conservative wet dream.
Town? What town. This is a rural area. There is no town. Population density doesn't support a full time fire department. The voters chose not to make the fee mandatory.
Do you understand English? How many times does this have to be repeated. The voters in this county chose not to make paying for fire service mandatory.
He's not going to bother reading it. He's too busy spouting off typical talking points. Just like Lebowski above who couldn't be bothered to read and understand that had a life been threatened they would have been fighting the fire, payment or not.
yeah damn them farmers. fuck em right?
i pay $3500 a year in property taxes. people who live in town pay about the same (for equal size houses).
they get fire protection, sewer,sidewalks, snow removal, leaf clean up etc etc.
i have to pay for my sidewalk, i have to pay for my sewer, snow removal happens MAYBE ONCE a year, no leaf clean up.
IF a house out here catches on fire we all know its a loss.
so if we know what we are getting then we shouldn't pay as much in tax's right?
Yes, God save us all. Once a fire spreads to a few houses without protection the fire department may not be able to save the town.
Gotta love the "free market" and low tax zealots.
So you're saying that a 100% of the time, you can know if a life is being threatened?
What if no one knows there's someone in a burning house or not? Do you put it out anyway?
Would it be possible that the scofflaw non payers, when their house starts burning down, simply report to the fire department that someone is inside, thus getting the fire put out free?
What happens if a billing error causes the department to mistakenly assume you didn't pay?
Why can't we make the same argument to deny the 50% of people who don't pay federal taxes any federal services?
I'm all for personal responsibility, but geez, this is a fire. a house is burning down. You don't have to be a bleeding heart liberal to understand that there's something very wrong in letting a house burn down. Isn't home ownership a part of the grand "American Dream"?
This also isn't about living in a city with a paid fire department versus living in a rural county with an all or part volunteer fire department. Rural counties are also usually partly funded by the state and county anyhow, and you can't just pick and choose the fires you want to respond to. That's leaving themselves open to liability and lawsuits for not performing up to federal or state fire department standards and could also result in punitive actions like them getting any future funds denied that are county, state or federal funded and also probably lead to them be decertified to fight fires at all, period.
Anyone working for a fire department that endorses a reckless policy of inaction and endangerment to life and property like this should do the morally right thing and immediately quit in protest.
I'm interested to know the answer to this as well. If a human life is at risk do they still have the right to let it burn? regardless of payment?
If the city wanted they bill after the fact, like the $500, and if not paid then put a lein on the house and add legal fees. Problem is many are to lazy and let things like this happen and try to play the "but we had no choice..."
The International Association of Fire Fighters has condemned the South Fulton Fire Department's inaction as "incredibly irresponsible."
"It's not the right thing to do," said Stan Mitchell, a volunteer firefighter with the Rives Fire Department. "But I've been doing this too long to quit."
"This ain't the way to fix it," Reavis concluded. "God save us all."