Fee for Services (Investigation, Dang.Goods, etc.

[jpols]

Our department is presently exploring other opportunities for revenue generation. We appreciate that government agencies charging for services is a politically and taxpayer sensitive issue. In helping to make our decision as to what road to go down, I am looking for comments (good or bad) on this subject and in particular, are their any departments out there charging for providing actual fire scene investigations.

[Capez]

Hmmmmm Good question.
I think you might end up taking a funding hit if you start charging for stuff. However if your FMO is attached to the fire department you may be able to gennerate some additional capital by fines imposed by local ordinence for things like nucence alarms, failure to obtain open burn permits etc.

[toddmcbr]

Charging for incidents is becoming quite popular in this area and generally have had little resistance. My department bills insurance companies, not the policy holder. I have been told by insurance salesman that it is written into almost every policy to pay for fire dept. serviced.

The way we look at it...
Taxes pay for the capacity to respond, fees pay for the actual response.

Its kind of like your city's water....
The water mains provide the capacity and were built by taxes and you pay for the actual water that was delivered.

One other thing...If the insurance company is unwilling to pay...we drop it....

[jpols]

All of your comments are appreciated. Looking forward to hearing from others. For those that do charge, it would be nice to get a feel for the rates used. Thanks!