Fire protection district officials in Cole County want to assure their patrons they will get a response from district firefighters if a fire occurs at their residence.
Tuesday, the Cole County Fire Protection District headquarters office received numerous phone calls regarding the story from South Fulton, Tenn., where a fire department let a mobile home burn down because the individual did not pay dues to the department.
Steve Cearlock, public information officer for the Cole County Fire Protection District, said, "From our point, in 1993 voters in our district waived the tag system and went with a tax levy. All other fire districts in the county followed, and now nobody in the county has tag membership anymore. They are all districts."
Cearlock said when a resident of Cole County receives a notice from the county collector for real estate and personal property taxes there is a line under the school tax, the road and bridge tax that says fire tax.
"The situation that happened in Tennessee will never happen in Cole County because we are entirely funded by everyone who pays taxes within each fire district," Cearlock said.
In the Tennessee case, the city fire department let the trailer home near the Kentucky border burn last week because the homeowner didn't pay the subscription common in many rural areas, according to Jeff Vowell, city manager for South Fulton.
The doublewide home is outside city limits. But South Fulton offers fire protection to nearby residents for a fee and once the fire threatened to spread, the department did protect a neighboring house that had paid.