The money will come, not right away, but it will come. The decrease in cost of doing business for the county will help. That cost is decreased when services are being used by those who pay their fair share.

It is an interesting site. You can get lost in the information it provides

I think the volunteers buy the equipment from the fire levies….

Well, I just think this should be a higher consideration for funding evaluation but I guess there are other pressing issues that will chew up funding. Still, I would be willing to pay a bit more for more….. Looks like I am pretty much alone on that.

I just don’t see any saving from illegals funneling into county coffers soon enough to address some of these issue. Guess I’ll go look for a Class I community!!!

Thanks for the info!

This table shows the point breakdown.

Not only does it affect your taxes, but also your insurance rates. The fire dept has to have a certain number of people on staff and certain types of equipment as well. There is an ISO PPC ( http://www.isomitigation.com/ppc/0000/ppc0001.html ) rating for the fire district. This is determined by the amount of training, apparatus and hydrant flow and placement. The higher the rating, the lower the property insurance rates.

With departments understaffed, it will cause the ISO PPC rating to go down. The lack of apparatus to meet the needs of the community, a ladder truck to reach the tallest building for example, will also cause the rating to go down.
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From the website:

“Virtually all U.S. insurers of homes and business property use ISO’s Public Protection Classifications in calculating premiums. In general, the price of insurance in a community with a good PPC is substantially lower than in a community with a poor PPC, assuming all other factors are equal.

A community’s PPC depends on:

* fire alarm and communication systems, including telephone systems, telephone lines, staffing, and dispatching systems
* the fire department, including equipment, staffing, training, and geographic distribution of fire companies
* the water supply system, including the condition and maintenance of hydrants, and a careful evaluation of the amount of available water compared with the amount needed to suppress fires”
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So it isn’t just about the staff, but also maintaining the apparatus to fight fires and a proper water supply.

When your fire insurance goes down, you need to stop by the fire station and thank the firemen for working hard in training and testing to get a good ISO PPC rating. They come out to test the staff and apparatus when the department feels they are ready to go for a higher rating. They have to be careful it doesn’t back fire on them too.

I am all for saving money from illegals, but I would like to see the actual dollars from the hospitals and watch the transfer to PWC’s coffers. I just want to see it - call me a skeptic.

It is a shame that a guy has more sympathy for criminals then he does for the average Citizen of the Commonwealth. There is a special place in hell for people like Dick.

Paid service is expensive since Medicare will only pay about $15-$20/run.

I saw a Medicare check for reimbursement of an ambulance bill of $5.00. The cost of the supplies used was $30.00 not counting the gas, vehicle maintenance, payroll or vehicle lease payment.

Then you have the higher risks of disease. I have always said I will not go back to being a Paramedic until they pass a law that says every HIV/HepC positive patient has to have it tattooed on their forehead. I have been stuck by needles in the back of the ambulance before. After the IV was in their arm, the driver hit a bump. The needle came out of their arm and into my hand. That had happened on several occasions. I was lucky enough not to contract something.

The dept I was on was going to full time paid members. I was on the list to be paid full time because I could run on the ambulances as well as the fire trucks, until I herniated a disc in my back and was no longer able to do the job. I understand fully about going from volunteer to full time. If the dept is not going until 2013, that is not good. They have a long hard road in front of them.

I think there are many reasons they are having so much trouble:

1) HIV
2) Hep C
3) No time, people work so much just to make ends meet.
4) No incentive to do so. The youth of today want everything right now and they do not want to work for it.
5) It is hard work being a Fire Fighter. It isn’t all about riding in the shiny truck, you have to actually work on the fire ground.

I was chastised for making women take K-12 saws (heavy saws used to cut holes in the roof) to the roof to ventilate. I told the chief, if Firefighter “Patty”, Firefighter “Sherry” and I arrived on the scene first and the roof needed to be ventilated, would you want your LT on the roof ventilating it while Firefighters just stood there and watched? He understood my point about making the women carry the saw up the ladder and vent the roof. If the men couldn’t do it, they were dismissed from the dept. The women quit after they were made to do the same things as the men. I have no quarrel with women paramedics/firefighters or police as long as they can hold up their end of the cot/hose and take down a 350lbs man.

I am a strong support of volunteer services; that’s not the issue. Its the staffing and availablity.

Were you the one that posted you were thinking of going back to the midwest to the family farm to sustain you and yours?? I think that the smartest thing I’ve seen here in a long time.

We all need to think about being able to take care of ourselves in that way. I am not speaking of paranoia, I am speaking of strength.

I agree. One person did try to do so with money backed by precious metal. The Fed Gov’t closed him down.

I have a problem with it in that the reason they pay taxes is because they have stolen the identity of a LEGAL person to do so. Whether it is some unknown or their anchor baby, it is still stolen. Naming the anchor baby after you is a smart way to get a SSN card.
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AWCheney said on 30 Jan 2008 at 7:25 pm

The average taxpayer must “balance their checkbook” or face financial disaster…I see no reason why government should not be held to the same standard as are their employers.
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You are absolutely right, but when the Gov’t can print money at a whim, there is really no need to follow that line of thinking.
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Best practices exercises are all about comparative anlaysis of jurisdictions; comparable in wealth and size. PWC is far apart from EVERYONE in tax dollars with those comparisions. I think overall it’s a good thing. Best Places to live guides, retirement guides and such. Good comparisons adjust for cost of living, match eduactional levels, incomes, heads of households and such to get a good analysis. There is an assumption that by isolating those characteristics of a community then you are able to compare satisfaction as some of those characteristics seek the same quality issues and similar services from the local government.

Police just lost over half a million bucks from the state on the anti-annexation deal, but that was due to Kaine. Regarding revenue streams….

Absloutely agree that PWC has been good at getting bang for the buck. Bang is now a popping sound. We are slowly moving into underfunded. Just consider the fire service.

Like I said, we get what we pay for and we attract what we have to offer……

Our schools have out-performed each of these jurisdictions (that includes Fairfax) over the years, at far less comparative cost (of course, under this new Superintendent, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s been changing). Until the illegal alien situation here got out of control, crime per capita was also lower (may still be). Prince William County has simply been a bit better at getting more bang out of the taxpayer buck for quite some time. Of course, the City of Manassas, thanks in large part to a forward-looking former Mayor by the name of Harry Parrish (those annexation deals that Harry pulled off were shear genius…and then there’s Lake Manassas), has proven to be the most efficient of all the area jurisdictions in keeping the taxes low and services high…until that illegal alien invasion, that is. There were some very good reasons for the enormous growth of PWC during the past two decades, and it wasn’t because crime was high or the schools were bad or the taxes were off the scale.

I don’t see any benefit in modeling our tax base after that of our neighbors, given that the vast majority of our neighbors have a history of far more wasteful spending than we have, here in Prince William County.

Bad News, this just posted on the Legislative Website…

SB 90 Employment; verification of eligibility.

01/30/08 Senate: Passed by indefinitely in Courts of Justice (13-Y 2-N)

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YEAS–Marsh, Saslaw, Stolle, Quayle, Norment, Howell, Lucas, Edwards, Reynolds, Puller, McDougle, Deeds, Hurt–13.

NAYS–Cuccinelli, Obenshain–2.

ABSTENTIONS–0.

[Ed note: often I have to rely on the same crappy state website for information that you do. Sometimes you will catch that things moved from subcommittee to committee before I do, because I don’t always have the time to be hitting “refresh” all day long. Unless I get a head’s up I may not be aware of all the statuses on the 100+ bills on this issue moving through the GA at any given time. I wish I had caught this earlier, though. Thanks for getting the information out there quickly. I appreciate it.]

That’s why I suggested that you may have forgotten your “sarcasm alert.” You should go back and read your previous comments. I don’t disagree with your comment at 8:19 pm, with the exception of, “I will continue to maintain that comparatively speaking, PWC is the 7th wealthiest county in the country with an average tax bill so far out of proportion with the rest of them and with surrounding jurisdictions that it should make someone wonder.” I don’t see any benefit in modeling our tax base after that of our neighbors, given that the vast majority of our neighbors have a history of far more wasteful spending than we have, here in Prince William County.

That said, I am also not adverse to reasonable tax increases and have never been in concert with that group that seems unable to recognize the logic that decreasing assessments along with a moderately increasing tax rate does not a tax increase make. Reasonable investment in the schools (particularly direct educational costs, as in teacher’s salaries, school supplies and materials, and infrastructure…it’s way too heavy in administrative costs already) and in public safety (which, by the way, Kaine is holding hostage over the 287g programs popping up around the state) is a no-brainer. It goes back to “prioritizing.” I just believe that the budget process must be more detailed and open to public scrutiny, and less dependent upon a bureaucrat telling our elected officials simply, “that’s our bottom line.”