Baltimore City Fire Department

[edburke]

[quote name='Jaws' post='120890' date='Jun 20 2007, 09:31 ']The fire calls don't generate any monies from billing, but by protecting the city's tax base from burning up, they keep the city's coffers full of tax revenues. The EMS billing monies are a drop in the bucket compared to the loss of tax monies.[/quote]



SIGH! The fact remains that fires are decreasing, which means that they are doing less to keep the city's tax base from burning up, and fire prevention is doing more to put firefighters out of jobs. EMS, on the other hand, is responding to more calls every year nationwide. You talk about a drop in the bucket, given the size of Baltimore, I would assume that it's probably 30-40 million dollars of billable revenue that's generated annually. Unless a fire resulted in the company moving out of town, the taxes would be the same, burnt out building or not-someone is going to be paying property taxes based on the City's valuation (which usually doesn't take the condition of the building into account) of the property no matter what.