Given many residents' "skepticism," as Deputy Fire Chief Stephen Aiello calls it — and given the myriad questions raised by city councilors — the council made the right move earlier this week to put the brakes on a proposal to allow the city to collect "fees" from insurers for emergency responses.
While there can be a context to assessing charges in some cases, as we noted previously, the idea of collecting "fees" from residents' insurers for putting out house fires, or tending to motor vehicle accidents and other emergencies, runs contrary to the idea that property owners indeed already pay taxes for these services.
And despite claims that insurance companies already essentially charge policyholders for emergency responses, so a local fee wouldn't carry any cost to property owners, it's frankly hard to imagine that companies wouldn't tack this added charge on the property owners' bill as well.
As we've noted, there can be a context for charging fees such as these to property owners or motorists who force repetitive or unnecessary emergency responses and unduly put others at risk — most notably, drunken drivers so impaired that it's frankly hard to call a crash they caused an accident. And if fees could be charged but limited to those specific types of issues, this proposed ordinance may be viable.
But routinely charging emergency response fees to drivers' or property owners' insurance companies for services that should be considered public services covered by property tax bills is a whole other matter.
And that concept should remain shelved — for a very long time.
