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Posted by David Sherman on Wednesday, February 04, 2009 at 17:33:10 :
In Reply to: Imagine you doing your own fire inspections? posted by John K. Seidts on Wednesday, February 04, 2009 at 16:15:22 :
Sorry, but any argument in favor of never cutting back on public safety expenditures is an equally good argument for increasing them. Where does it end? One can always spend more money. The way you're phrasing it is exactly why these budgets have been sacred cows for so long. When a city puts a bond issue for new fire stations up for a vote, for example, the issue is always cast as "do you want the firemen to keep your house from burning and do you want the medics to save you from your heart attack?" But then when we actually see what's built, they are absolutely palaces, each individually designed by a high-end architect, beautiful in every way, with every imaginable amenity. It's nothing to spend $50-$100 million on a fire house these days. Likewise with any new public safety building, squad cars, computers and commo gear, and on and on.
As long as you cast it as "pay whatever they're asking" versus "your house burns down and you die", the costs will keep going up and up. There are whole lot of ways to cut ANY public agency without cutting into the services the citizens want. Let's see if we can keep the old squad cars, radios, dump trucks, and computers for another year. Do the offices REALLY need new furniture, or is somebody just trying to spend this year's budget so they'll get the same amount next year? If the economy is slow, maybe it's a good time to renegotiate various leases. All I'm asking them to do is approach hard times the way any private business would if it wants to survive, by cutting unnecessary expenses, rather than making absurd threats to the citizens and casting it as a fight over whether or not we respect policemen and firemen.
Everybody's life would be easy if they could all get all the money they want. Everybody would be safer and healthier if the state hired each of us our own private doctor and policeman to be with us at all times. The reality is that we don't have infinite money, and we can't get infinite safety and security. We work out some reasonable compromise that we can afford, and if times get tough and we can't afford even that any more, we have to cut back some more.
To answer your questions:
1) My father's already dead.
2) I'd sure as hell try. If I'm there and the kid's not breathing, by the time the experts get there, he'll be dead, so anything I do will be better than nothing.
3) Absolutely. I pay an additional tax on my timber land to cover fire suppression, so it doesn't come out of the general fund, but yeah if the woods around here are on fire, and they're desperate enough to put an old fart on the line, I still know how to operate a Pulaski.
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