On Wed, 08 Mar 2006 14:03:44 GMT, Nick Hull wrote:
In article ,
Dave Hinz wrote:

So, back to fire protection then. Who buys the trucks? They're not
cheap, y'see.

Where I live we have a volunteer fire dept. The trucks are bought with
donations, NO taxes involved.

Sorry to hear that. I've been on the VFD here for, let's see, 14, 15
years or so. Our budget is about $100K per year. Without that, we
wouldn't have safe equipment. Yup, tax dollars. There isn't enough
donation money available in this area to come up with a $500,000
firetruck. And without that truck, we wouldn't be providing as good of
protection to the district.

When I lived on Merrit Island FL (near the launch pads) the 'city' was
not incorporated and there was no city tax. The library kept building
bigger buildings, it got lots of donations. The local merchants
beautified the roads. The fire dept supported itself by selling chicken
dinners one sunday a month and had more customers than lived on the
island. Traffic lights were almost non-existant, and the sewers were
built and owned privately and worked better than most city sewers. I
could go on, but you get the idea.

It's great when you have an area who donates well. Not all do.