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Comment by dantheman | Hacker News Reader

If it wasn't a gov agency, something could have been worked out on the spot. Ask them if they want to pay the full price, what is it $10k, $20k?.

If you don't pay, you'd have the lowest priority. But there is no reason other than bureaucracy that they couldn't have handled it.

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Article doesn't seem to agree with you here, instead citing different reason:

> South Fulton's mayor said that the fire department can't let homeowners pay the fee on the spot, because the only people who would pay would be those whose homes are on fire.

dantheman was proposing agreeing to pay the full cost (tens of thousands of dollars), not just the advance fee ($75).

Fires are pretty rare, I'd take that bet.

How do you calculate the "full cost" of having staff on call 24/7, well maintained equipment that's regularly inspected, building inspectors to verify that fire code is being met to keep usage down to sustainable levels, and so on? The full cost isn't $10k in salary and gasoline and foam, it's millions.

Total cost of running the department for a year, divided by the number of callouts. Possibly weight the callout types depending on approximate resources consumed.

Though I am fully in support of just letting the house burn.

These costs still exist in a hypothetical year with zero fires, though. Additionally, people whose house were just on fire with zero insurance are probably not in a good financial position (anymore), and they are unlikely to be able to pay…

If you don't have the money, then a lien is placed on the property and it will be sold to pay the debt. Or you can take out a mortgage to buy it. In any case you'll be richer than if the house is burned down.

Ability to pay still not guaranteed, depending on the financial situation. Family can easily have more that's than assets to their name, preventing collection.

You can prioritize firefighter debt over other liens.

And it doesn't have to be guaranteed if it works 90% of the time.

Your first problem is trivial cuz you can look at a multi-year average.

The second part is more significant in people simply don't have the money to pay.

amortize that cost over the population that is covered; perhaps discount the services utilized by residents who pre-pay and charge a premium for those who pay on the spot.

My city spends ~$20M/y on the fire department [1] and has ~300 structure fires and ~14k callouts annually [2]. The cost for a marginal fire is definitely not millions; even if you only divide $20M by 300 you get $70k and that ignores the tens of thousands of other calls they take.

[1] https://stories.opengov.com/somervillema/published/BhSqQ0eG2

[2] https://www.mass.gov/doc/2020-county-profiles/download

Another problem is the difference between agreeing to pay and ability to pay. Someone might be wiling to pay anything in the moment, but you might be hopelessly unable to actually collect.

"If it wasn't a gov agency, something could have been worked out on the spot."

Or there would simply be no fire service at all because the rural area isn't profitable to service.

Do people have that cash lying around, what guarantee would you have that people would pay? Maybe you can take the deed to the house that you saved?

Seems like the agreement could be backed with the threat of a lien on your property.

The property that just burned down?

The fire brigade would borrow the technique of Marcus Licinius Crassus and buy your property as it burned, improve its value by extinguishing the fire, then rent it back to you.

Presumably they would save it by extinguishing the fire then if you can't pay the cost of the service they take the property or place a lien on it.

If the firefighters can't keep it from burning to the ground, I doubt you want to be paying for them to do anything.

Even then, there's still the value of the land.

Hold on there Crassus.

If they do have that cash laying around, hopefully it's not stored on-premises.

the guy who can’t pay the insurance fee isn’t usually going to be able to pay the full price of the services

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