I think the real point here is that it was an absolutely shitty arrangement all around. And to be honest, as left as I am, that guy knew he should pay $75 and he didn’t, he consciously made the decision not to. He subconsciouly made the calculation in his head, bet on black and lost.
So I can completely understand why they would not put out the fire at his house. But the system is completely jacked. Are there other emergency services that are subscription in the county, ambulance, police? Doubtful, if somebody was having a heart attack an ambulance would be there. They have figured out a way for that, they should figure out a way to have fire service for rural residents that they pay for through proerty taxes or some other mechanism.
The point is that those rural folk didn’t want to pay through property taxes.
It’s not that this was beyond the capacity of the fire department, municipal, or county government to set up, tax, and service these properties. Its that Taxed Enough Already morons wanted their libertarian freedom. And they got it.
I pretty much agree with this, but I would note that the analogy with the heart attack is not quite so good since almost all hospitals are required by federal law to treat all comers. The only exceptions are those hospitals which don’t receive federal funds for, can’t remember exactly what it is, but for something that all but a handful of hospitals do receive funds for.
But yeah, having a pay-for-service fire department is pretty stupid, unless there is some sort of volunteer fire department that covers the area.
That’s right, know why? Because Best Buy has a system in place to sell [service], the fire department does not.
In other words, the fire department is not set up to provide a service on a pay-per-fire basis. It’s unrealistic to expect them to suddenly have a value in mind for Cranick to pay.
I think by now we’ve all agreed that charging him the $75 is both too cheap, and bad for their business model.
But then, to calculate what the actual cost is puts them into the position of being extortionists. As far as I can tell, anything other than a subscription service isn’t going to work.
This is what is going on (I post this for everyone if they’re not getting this, I’m not suggesting you don’t get it)
The municipality has a functioning fire department which is paid for by property tax levies.
Right outside this municipality are unincorporated, rural areas of the county.
These areas are not in municipal boundaries, so they don’t pay for fire services, and they can’t be forced to pay.
The fire department decides to extend service to unincorporated areas if those property owners pay 75 bucks.
There is no volunteer fire department because the only way that thing is functioning is if the county/fire protection district levies property taxes to pay for the Volunteer department’s operating costs and equipment (the only volunteer part is the actual labor). The county doesn’t do this because a) the people that live in this county dont like socialjism and b) it’s stupid to do so since there is a municipal fire department 10 miles away who would gladly provide services if they are paid their $75
Although, once again **John **is right about all things, there is a misconception about the *volunteer *part of volunteer fire departments. For one, the volunteers get compensated, usually on a per call basis. Secondly, they almost always have at least 2 full-time paid employees on staff. And lastly, the facility/maintenance/equipment is still huge.
The main difference between volunteer vs full-time fire houses is the cost of having staff on station. Such that, a busy city trying to run a volunteer house would find that (a) they are still paying a lot because they have a lot of calls, and (b) they are losing out because of the time wasted waiting for volunteers to get into the station for each call.
To say that one more time a little more clearly: You already have to pay to have the station and truck. If you only have one call per week, you have 20 volunteers in the community that you pay per call. If you have one call per day, you might as well pay a little more (or actually save) to have them stay on station 24/7.
As a comparison. When I was in the Coast Guard we were paid to be on station 12 hours a day. At time we were on call, but when we got called in we were paid a minimum of 3 hours for each call, and it meant we got overtime. That’s a great system if there is only one call per month, but areas that had a lot of night time calls found it cheaper to set up a second shift.
ETA
Again, that isn’t necessarily true. The *volunteer * has more to do with whether or not they respond to their pager.
And again, ambulances expect 50% of their customers won’t pay. So they charge at least 2x to everyone that will pay. And the only people that can pay are those with insurance. Since there is no system of “fire insurance” it’s pretty safe to say no one is going to pay after the fact.
In this case, it means that the municipal tax payers will have to cover the cost of Mr Cranick’s freedom. And also bare the brunt of retaliation against their fire house by Mr Cranick’s family. As **Dir Trihs **has pointed out, Cranick will now feel slighted (having forgotten that it was his decision not to pay) and either vandalize the station (paid for by tax payers) or harm a firefighter (again paid for by the tax payer).
The solution to the 50% nonpayment problem is simple: require payment on the spot. Of course, few people will have enough cash on them, so accept payment by cheque or credit card.
It’s going to vary for each department. At mine there was a pool of money that got divided up amongst the volunteers based on how many calls they each responded to. At another that my friend worked at they were more like on-call-staff and actually got paid the comparable hourly wage when they worked.
Point being, they aren’t free, it cost the city a lot to have that crew out there, and also meant they weren’t available for other calls. As far as the *wide spread death and destruction *Der Trihs is so worried about, having the crew out there actually puts the city more at risk than letting a lone house burn. That crew was removed from the task list, meaning a truck from a different house had to cover their area, increasing overall response time, meaning a fire would burn longer, and a easy save might be lost.
What if he left his cash in his other pants, you know, the ones in the fire.
What if he can’t come up with the $4,000 required on the spot? Let the house burn while he goes to the ATM/loanshark
I hate that we have to point out this again–the fire house is not a pay-per-service system. The guys in the truck don’t carry a credit card machine, or a book of receipts.
While a fire is burning is a piss poor time to try and enter into negotiations. Which is one of the main reasons privatized health is so fucked up. Dude as a heart attack, so first the fee is $2000, but if you take too long to negotiate, the heart attack gets worse and now the fee is $3,000. Oops, not it looks like we’ll need to operate, $10,000.
Mr. Cranick does not live in some sort of Libertania, he may not pay Municipal taxes but he certainly pays state taxes, sales taxes, porperty taxes etc. I cannot fathoom how the state or county cannot figure out a way to compensate the nearby municipal fire department so it doesn’t have to work on a subscription basis.
You’re not getting it. These people don’t want their elected representatives to figure it out. They’re taxed enough already, they don’t want to pay more.
Tell that to him. He’s the one that flipped out and was aghast that the fire department wouldn’t respond to his call because he didn’t want to pay for the service.
Obviously they are not taxed enough already if somebody’s house burns down because there is no fire fighting services. Even the stupidest Tea Partier generally recognizes that the government has a public safety role. And figuring something out does not necessarily entail having to raise taxes. I don’t live in Tennessee or this county so I don’t know what thhe dynaimcs are but this is clearly a half-assed solution to a fundamental goevernment responsibility. Like I said, I have little sympathy for Mr. Cranick in this case, but must we throw up our hands and not try and think of a better solution?
Dollars to doughnuts he was mumbling “TEA, where is my TEA PARTY” when he was writing out his property taxes for the year. He perceives that his taxes are too high - thats a wrong perception, but its his to make.
Yet the stupidest Tea Partiers scream when their mill rate goes up by .25 to pay for this funny levy called “fire services”
Of course it does. Providing fire protection isn’t free to any party.
The solution is absolutely obvious, and it’s been tried and tested for decades in this country: either get annexed into the municipality where you’re forced to pay for public safety, voluntarily pay user fees as a non-municipal resident, or roll the dice.
oh, and another thing: we live in a democracy. “fundamental government responsibilities” are delineated by the relevant polity. in this case, i guess the Cranicks of the world didn’t think that fire services were fundamental enough.