Quote:
Originally Posted by Drolefille
I still don't see it as an either/or situation. I get that they probably didn't want to pay more in taxes, however I don't see why the county couldn't contract with the city and charge the country residents via county taxes.
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For whatever reason that none of us are privy to (though I can imagine it might have had to do with county residents not wanting to be taxed anymore than they already were), the elected government officials in this particular county chose to contract with fire departments to make fire protection a subscription service rather than to automatically provide it to all residents through taxation. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume with local government of this kind that if contituents had wanted it done differently, they would have been able to pursuade their elected officials to do it differently or would have elected new people.
I can see the arguments as to why it's bad policy, but I can also see that this is democratic local government in action -- they can weigh the policy considerations for themselves and decide how they want to handle it. We can second guess them all we want to, but they get to make the call for themselves.
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