Quote:
Originally Posted by Rogue Leader
Pal you have absolutely no clue how this works. There isn't some big Tax pool that they break up and pay for different services. Fire departments that aren't city owned and run (unlike the FDNY, DCFD, LAFD, etc which are city run) work almost like subcontractors. Their budget is paid through PROPERTY TAXES ONLY. Part of everyones property taxes is a fire tax. The department covers the area of their district that is covered by their taxes. Unless a mutual aid agreement is in place between departments, they do not serve adjoining districts. Or an agreement such as the homeowners in this persons area were in.
In this particular area this fire department covers their county or city. These people live OUTSIDE THE CITY/COUNTY LIMITS in another county or city which means their property taxes do not pay the FD budget. Also their area does not have a fire department so the FD in the adjoining areas offer fire protection service for a fee, basically a fire tax paid directly to the department. Its not a bullshit extra fee. They pay LESS TAXES because they live outside of the district!
The fundamental purpose of government is the maintenance of basic security and public order, and yes to protect its citizens from threats. Maybe if you read the article you'd know the homeowner and residents were not threatened they were OUTSIDE the house. Public safety was not threatened, the FD was there, protecting the property surrounding the fire. It wasn't going to spread and burn down the neighborhood. It takes a LOT of perfect circumstances for something like that to happen and a regular house fire generally will not cook the neighborhood 99% of the time.
You tout having "operated the truck" a some kind of validation to your argument but you will get no sympathy from me. I'm not gonna get in a pissing contest here with you but you obviously didn't have enough experience when you were there to know how every aspect of running a fire department works, or how a fire behaves. You would also understand that public safety such as EMS or Police protection to PERSONAL INJURY is far different than protection of PROPERTY and this would not have happened if someones LIFE was at stake.
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Rogue, I don't need to be an expert and 100% educated on how our tax monies are spent to know when it is broken, this is obviously a problem that they state or counties need to fix, ie. have a agreement made between counties/cities etc...Is there not a department of forestry in the area? Like i said before, this guy pays property taxes to somebody, its obvious to me the system is broken.
My firefighting experiance was only enough to know how to operate the controls and aim the hose at the fire, i mostly only fought brush fires, and a handful of house fires..by no means did i claim to be an expert and that was almost 15 years ago anyway...and it was in southern california where fire has always been a huge threat.
the bottom line, i understand your side of the arguement, but we can sit here and argue about it till the thread is locked, I won't change my mind. They should have attempted to save this home owners house.