Submitted by Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
I’m not sure which story is worse. Under South Fulton, Tennessee’s, “Pay For Spray” program, rural property owners won’t receive fire fighting service unless they have the foresight to pay a $75.00 fee. In September, 2010, the city was lambasted when a home was allowed to burn because the homeowner hadn’t paid it. Now just over a year later the same thing happened again as firefighters watched helplessly when city officials refused to let them fight the fire of Vicky Bell. Bell isn’t eligible for the service because she can’t afford homeowner’s insurance.
To add to her misery, National Review Online deputy managing editor, Kevin D. Williamson, thinks that’s just peachy keen. Writing after the first incident in 2010 and from the security of a city that wouldn’t stoop to this fiscal insanity and downright inhumanity , the former employee of the Institute for Humane Studies opines:
And, for their trouble, the South Fulton fire department is being treated as though it has done something wrong, rather than having gone out of its way to make services available to people who did not have them before. The world is full of jerks, freeloaders, and ingrates — and the problems they create for themselves are their own. These free-riders have no more right to South Fulton’s firefighting services than people in Muleshoe, Texas, have to those of NYPD detectives.
Williamson, you see, apparently thinks government is a business. And its citizens? Why they ‘re just “customers” who enjoy no benefits except by virtue of their payments. No sense of shared responsibility, no sense of community banding together in a social contract to “promote the general welfare,” and certainly no sense of a collective march forward against the troubles that beset us all. Nope, just fee for service.
It’s a disturbing trend in our national consciousness when citizens become mere customers. Instead, of public servants dedicated to the welfare of all and funded by the taxes of all who can pay, we now have proprietors who precondition their public duties on remuneration and not public spirit.
One wonders about the conscience of those like Williamson who would accept a catastrophe being suffered against someone like Vicky Bell.”We have no idea where we will go from here,” said Bell. “We are very lucky it was minutes from getting us.” If it wasn’t for the couple’s cat, they might not have woken up. He was shaking Brian’s leg and Brian yelled at me to get up,” said Bell. “We don’t know where the cat is now.”
At City Hall , this recent incident is already causing a stir. The city issued a press release saying the policy has been in place since 1990. It was reviewed in 2007, but not changed. If the property owner does not pay, then the fire department will not respond. According to the city, everyone should be aware of the importance of fire protection.
I wonder, indeed, what those city officials, fireman on the scene, and maybe even Williamson would have thought if Vicky and her family were trapped by the flames when help arrived. Would they have made her search her home amid the smoke to come up with the $75.00 fee before extending a hand to save her?
I think I know. If they have any conscience at all, they’d be worried another fire strewn location where eternal admission is free for those who deserve it.
Source: Digital Journal; NRO
~Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
“It’s a disturbing trend in our national consciousness when citizens become mere customers. Instead, of public servants dedicated to the welfare of all and funded by the taxes of all who can pay, we now have proprietors who precondition their public duties on remuneration and not public spirit.”
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this is nothing new…in the hospital the patients have been referred to as ‘clients’ since the for profits stormed through taking over the industry…it is not long now before the governing infrastructure itself becomes outsourced to the corporate meme…
This same policy is used in some of the more outlying areas of Maricopa County in AZ–even though they are technically within the county boundaries. The weird thing is that no one (like real estate agents or title companies) bothers to mention this deviant practice to people moving into the area who, naturally, have often never heard of ‘pay for play’ fire extinguishing services. A number of families in AZ have had to learn about this policy the hard way–by losing their homes and then being denied insurance coverage to pay for the damage because of their ‘negligence’ in not understanding that city and county services are only selectively available.
mepso,
I’ll have to agree with that assessment. It never ceases to amaze me when people don’t understand that the general welfare/common good and the rights of the individual are a balancing act when if comes to justice and equity, but especially when that argument hinges upon money.
“The humanity aspect of it sucks when you consider the one shining example of it going wrong, but when you consider the good provided to the many, its takes on a different light.”
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And to summarize your point as Jeremy Bentham would say “It is the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong.” To continue your point, that treats Ms. Bell, not as a human with inalienable rights and an equal stakeholder to the social contract,but an object whose interests may be discarded in service to the rights of the many. As Bron might say that’s collectivism– and the rankest kind to arrogantly presume that collective rights always trump individual ones when the stakes are pecuniary. The whole purpose of government is to advance societal goals without — or to the least degree possible –destruction of the rights of the individual.
Being able to pay the fee for protection should not be contingent on whether or not an individual has insurance or not… Why does that matter to the Fire Department? I just don’t understand that part of all of this.
And, working in the industry, I am quite certain that every state has some sort of high risk pool to insure home’s such as this… But it is not hard to understand why standard market and even E&S market companies don’t want to insure run down trailers…they barely want to insure new trailers.
All that being said…I’m with South Fulton on this one, they are charging a fee to provide services outside of their community and in order to afford those services they must charge a flat fee to do so. If they put out fires of people who haven’t paid and/or accept the fee’s paid after a fire, then no one will pay until they have to and the city will no longer be able to afford to provide fire service outside of the city’s limits, where its paid for by taxes.
There are only two other options.
1.) Collect a mandatory tax from rural individual’s to provide service, which would then include those who do not want to pay for the service (homeowner’s insurance isn’t necessarily contingent on available fire service, though it does get expensive without).
2.) Charge an exhorbitant fee for putting out fires and collecting money after the fact to help offset those who won’t pay until their house burns.
The bottom line is that putting out the fire of someone who is unwilling to pay for protection (someone who doesn’t have the right to protection because they live outside of the city limits) puts the rest of the homeowner’s in that area in jeopardy of losing their service.
There are certain hazards and additional costs to living in rural area’s and this is one of them.
The humanity aspect of it sucks when you consider the one shining example of it going wrong, but when you consider the good provided to the many, its takes on a different light.
My house has knob and tube wiring though the inspector and seller’s disclosure never disclosed that. I got home insurance based on ‘romex’ (newer) wiring. When I found out I had knob and tube my ins company refused to renew the policy and we so far have not found another to cover my house. It is all to easy to dismiss homeowners who do not have ins and I know some are idiots who just cross their fingers but some truly cannot get coverage. I hope where I am in Pa the state will offer me some way to insure the place. Paying the fire co ‘donation’ of I think it is 40$ is not going to do much absent insurance so it goes both ways, pay the firs co but have no insurance you are still potentially in a bucket of trouble.
The Republican dream of a 100% a la carte society is approaching reality. How soon till every road is a toll road, every sidewalk a toll way?
There is an old song with the line “the best things in life are free.” Not any more!
The poor will be (if they aren’t already) poor and destitute in ways we haven’t seen for a couple of hundred years.
Did anon or Bron write this:
And, for their trouble, the South Fulton fire department is being treated as though it has done something wrong, rather than having gone out of its way to make services available to people who did not have them before. The world is full of jerks, freeloaders, and ingrates — and the problems they create for themselves are their own. These free-riders have no more right to South Fulton’s firefighting services than people in Muleshoe, Texas, have to those of NYPD detectives.
Seems eerily familiar….