Here's Where We Are Headed!

[Palehorse]

http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/firefighters-let-home-burn-after-finding-owner-didnt-pay-annual-fee/19662595

"(Oct. 6) -- A small rural community in western Tennessee is outraged and the fire chief is nursing a black eye after firefighters stood by and watched a mobile home burn to the ground because the homeowner hadn't paid a $75 municipal fee.

South Fulton city firefighters -- equipped with trucks, hoses and other firefighting equipment -- didn't intervene to save Gene Cranick's doublewide trailer home when it caught fire last week. But they did arrive on the scene to protect the house of a neighbor, who had paid his fire subscription fee.

"I just forgot to pay my $75," Cranick told ABC News. "I did it last year, the year before. ... It slipped my mind."

Later that day, Cranick's son Timothy went to the fire station to complain, and punched the fire chief in the face. . ."

So now municipalities are starting to impose "fee's" for services historically paid for via real estate taxation. (Think trash fee, sound familiar?) Clearly this is their way of getting around the real estate tax caps, and another means of taxing the shit out of everyone. . . And now you'll either pay up or have your home burn down around you and lose everything. Next, insurance rates will go up to pay for the wienie roasts the fire departments are holding. . .

[Sandy Eggo]

I had a telemarketer, calling on the behalf of volunteer fire departments tell me that "They's hate it if something happened to my house and the FD couldn't respond b/c I hadn't contributed". This was a voluntary donation though. Truthfully, I don't know that he was authorized to represent the voluntary fire departments, but it sounded like a threat to me.

That's the first thing that I thought of when I read this story.

[Palehorse]

I find it ludicrous to realize that there are cities within this country that would have their public services personnel stand by and watch a home and all its contents burn over a questionable municipal practice like a "fee", putting peoples lives and livelihoods into dire jeopardy!

Tax payers have been paying their salaries for decades! If I ever were subjected to such treatment, or witnessed my neighbors being subjected to such treatment, I'd sue the pants off everyone involved, including the damned city! There is NO reason in the world to stand by and watch anyone's life burn to the ground. NONE!

If the cities want to charge user fees for services that have been provided and paid for historically through real estate taxation, then they need to eliminate the real estate tax all together and let the users pay! You cannot have it both ways! (And that includes schools!) Either public safety is a concern or it isn't. Clearly public safety is not the concern it was a hundred years ago to the police, fire, and refuse portions of our city systems. They, like everything else, have become for profit entities that are only concerned with the bottom line and nothing else.

I am not saying that all police, fire, and refuse personnel are money grubbing jackasses; although I am sure some are, most of these folks get into their careers out of a sense of service to the public and a strong desire to be the individual who provides a vital service when it is needed most. (And at the same time provide a source of income with which to provide for their own families).

The operations of such "public services" has become a business enterprise with which to generate revenues, instead of a self supporting public service entity that exists out of a need to protect and serve the public safety of a given community.

75 bucks or 126 bucks, is not going to break the average family that have adults working within them, but to me it is more about the "double taxation" that such fees represent! It's underhanded and stealing!

[The Troll]

  I have mixed emotions.  If the man had forgot to pay his insurance of his house by one day, the insurance company would not payed off.  Everybody knows that.  We have seen it over and over with car and all other insurance.  No pay, no insurance.

  If you're living in an area where they pay for the fire department with tax money they have to put out  your fire.  All back through history in this country you paid for fire protection, that where the fire badge came from.  Buy a badge and put it on the front of your house.  All of the big cities in the East had them.  If you didn't have a badge, they would let your house burn down.

  But we have some people who think they don't have to pay for anything.  In our small town we have a library and if you want to be in the system you had to pay a library tax.  Stony Creek paid, but in Jackson township it was turned down, the library tax.  People from Jackson would get real mad when they came to the library  and they wouldn't let them take out books.  They could come in and read, but nothing more.

  Small voluntary fire departments don't have to put out your fire if you are not contributing.   There are a few things you don't get if you're a dead beat.  Every year our fire department comes around for extra money to keep it going and I pay.  It's called peace of mind.

[Palehorse]

On researching this county the information I have found does indeed appear to support the statement that it is a user pays type county, wherein you are required to pay a 75 dollar fee in order to receive fire protection within the county. This being the case, I do not see why it would have been a situation wherein the fire department refuses to respond to a call of a structure fire with entrapment of animals!

In such instances it is not uncommon for fire departments to submit billing to the owner(s) and insurance company for services rendered. To quibble over 75 bucks when animals and property are burning seems to be an extreme and not an acceptable one. And since they subsequently responded to his next door neighbor's home as a result of the fire, (who had paid his 75 bucks), it is surreal to me that the firefighters would have stood by watching it burn while spraying down the neighbor's yard to make sure it didn't spread. . .

The intention of a fire protection service is to secure public safety and well being, and allowing another's property to burn to the ground, and animals trapped inside to roast alive over 75 dollars is unacceptable. You are not paying for insurance here. . .  Insurance would indemnify you against a loss of property or life, and compensate you for the loss of same.

[LOsborne]

It seems to me it is one short step from this pay-for-service fire fighting team, to a full-blown protection racket, where the shake-down goons come by your place once a week to collect, and are ostentatiously careless with matches if you have trouble finding the cash.

[The Troll]

  I hear all this stuff of you have to do something.

  In other words, if your owned a big fancy fire truck and you paid to buy it.   You paid for the insurance for it.  You paid to house it and maintain it and paid for all the cost to own it.

  A guy who live down the street from you calls you in the middle of the night and tells you to get  your ass down to his house and put out his burning house.  The same guy who doesn't speak to you and never gave a minute of work to keep up your fire truck or gave you one dime to help pay for it or man it.  you don't show up and you're the asshole.  Give me a break.

  You guys surly heard the story about the little hen who baked a loaf of bread and couldn't get any help.  They all wanted to eat.  Well, she did it once, but never baked again.  The next time a neighbor wants to go to town to get a loaf of bread and a quart of milk and he wants to use your motorcycle better let him or be an asshole.

[Lester Sasquatch]

Troll, the problem with your story is that the fire department is privately owned. Be careful not to fall for the Nirvana Fallacy like many do.

The best way to avoid a house fire is to have your home constructed out of fire proof materials. My favorite is Insulated Concrete Forms or ICFs. Not only are they fire proof, they are supposed to withstand sustained hurricane force winds, are insulated extremely well, sound resistant, and so tight air cannot infiltrate so that you lose heat or cool air. Or you could in a cave if bats don't bother you too much.

[LOsborne]

Be careful not to fall for the Nirvana Fallacy like many do.

Lester, you can't use three-syllable words, or esoteric terms from philosophical studies, and expect him to understand. But I do. Let's you and me get a bottle of Patron and talk about it. Tequila makes my clothes fall off, remember?

[Palehorse]

. . . Tequila makes my clothes fall off, remember?

I knew there was a reason I liked mexican moonshine! 

[Lester Sasquatch]

Lester, you can't use three-syllable words, or esoteric terms from philosophical studies, and expect him to understand. But I do. Let's you and me get a bottle of Patron and talk about it. Tequila makes my clothes fall off, remember?

Yes I remember very well. I guess you recall how tequila makes my hair stand on end? That's why I have the rest of that bottle we shared put away for your return.

I don't know Lolly, I took Troll for a deep thinker and maybe a follower of Western Philosophy. I wondered why he didn't get the Quaker Oats post.

[LOsborne]

I guess you recall how tequila makes my hair stand on end?

Oh yes. And you have a lot of hair!

[Sandy Eggo]

Pardom me while I go scrub my eyes....

[Palehorse]

Pardom me while I go scrub my eyes....

You've been hitting the bottle already haven't you!

[Sandy Eggo]

It would seem that way; I need to spellcheck