Fire trustees' letter was incorrect
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Editor,
In a recent opinion article (Valley Journal, June 1, p. 14) "Trustees address accident response fee issues", the Polson Rural Fire District trustees stated, “The majority of crash response is provided to persons who pay no taxes to this community.”
I contend that the data to support the conclusion does not exist, because without investigating tax records, there is no way to know whether a crash victim is a local taxpayer. (Furthermore, anyone who buys products or services in the fire district pays taxes indirectly.)
Additional information on this subject was obtained from a survey of approximately 11,000 crash victims who were asked the distance from their home to the accident scene. The results from this survey found that in a two-car accident, there is a 90 percent probability that one of the participants was within 10 miles from their home. This suggests that a large majority of those charged for crash fees are locals.
I would like to thank the trustees for clarifying the "large amount of misinformation [that] has been disseminated."
Tom Eddy
Polson
