Here are some nuggets from today's papers:

There was a house fire in Loveland (where we shop) and fire departments from the surrounding towns of Berthoud, Fort Collins, Greeley, and Johnstown responded to assist the Loveland firemen. Stay with me, you'll se why this is relevant in a minute.

I live near Estes Park, and the town has a volunteer fire department that responds to fires in an expanded area known as the Estes Valley. The boundary of it is right at my property and that fire department has said they would respond to emergencies at my house in addition to the Big Thompson Canyon Volunteers.

Estes Park has been trying for years to get mill levies passed to get the valley residents to help pay for the fire department. The voters turn it down every time, so the town's solution was to send a bill for $130 per property (based on electric customers) to everyone in 'the valley.' I view it as an additional insurance premium, but I have three properties so it's $390 a year.

In a way, it's a form of bribery, because if a property owner hasn't paid the $130 and has a fire they get billed for equipment time and personnel time. One family had a barn fire and received a bill for $12,562. In all, for 2008, the town billed $40,495 for 18 fire calls, but not many people paid because they were disagreed with the formula used to calculate the billing.

The new formula puts a cap on personnel charges: if 4 people are required to safely operate a given apparatus, that is how much will be billed for in addition to the hourly apparatus charge, so Engine No. 1 costs $272 an hour, and there is a $250 minimum charge per event.

If you know anything about firemen, especially volunteer firemen, you understand why this is key: they all show up, and come from far and wide, even if it's out of their official jurisdiction and they are not needed.

Under this new formula the barn fire people would have been billed $4,070 instead of the $12,562.

Granted, the extra help might be needed, but a many times there are a lot of extra fire fighters standing around. So what homeowner wants to pay for all this exuberance over which they have no control?

The new formula is retroactive to when this $130 idea started, so $2,600 will be refunded to the few people who have paid the fire bills from 2008. I think the rest of them were contemplating a class action lawsuit against the town.

Back to yesterday's house fire in Loveland: all those firemen must have gotten a big thrill out of racing between the towns in their fire trucks, sirens blasting.