The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Jonathon Naylor Editor Owners of homes and businesses that succumb to flames just outside Flin Flon are not always eager to reimburse the city for firefighting costs. In cases where an insurance policy will not compensate the Flin Flon Fire Dept. for the full cost of a blaze, the city pursues the additional dollars from the owner. But Mayor George Fontaine says some of those individuals have been objecting to the bill. 'We have been caught in commercial and residential situations where people will pay what the insurance company has given them but balk at paying the rest (to the city),' he said at last week's city council meeting. 'And, let's face it, that is being covered by the taxpayers of Flin Flon, if they don't pay. If they won't up and pay we, as taxpayers, are covering those costs, and there's no need for that.' In instances 'where people have either refused to pay their share or have been very reluctant,' Mayor Fontaine said, those individuals 'have been, I guess for lack of a (better) word, pestered or badgered by the city to do it.' This 'is not something we feel we should need to do,' he said. See 'Prompt..' on pg. 6 Continued from pg. 1 Mayor Fontaine made the comments in response to a question from The Reminder about a letter he wrote to area cottage owners associations last fall. In the letter, he said outlying property owners 'usually' have insurance policies that reimburse the fire department no more than $3,000 in the event of a fire. That is below the $5,000 to $7,500 the city estimates a typical structural fire outside its limits costs. Mayor Fontaine's letter, referenced in a recent front-page Reminder article, prompted two letters to the editor. In his letter, Brent Lethbridge of The Standard Insurance said insurance buyers can usually have their fire department reimbursement increased for a nominal fee. Bakers Narrows resident Jane Robillard stressed that not everyone who lives at the lake has fire department reimbursements capped at $3,000. She said she and others have policies that cover 100 per cent of those costs. But Municipal Administrator Mark Kolt said most of the buildings that have caught fire in recent years have carried insurance policies that pay a maximum of $3,000 to fire departments. And while they have the ability to up the fire department reimbursement in their insurance policies, Mayor Fontaine said 'people have generally opted not to do it.' 'So there are people who are doing it and to them we say 'thank you,'' he said. 'But one of the things we're trying to do with these things is to educate that public which is getting free fire service, with no contract obligating us to do it, (to) do your share, please, cooperate or, you know, we're going to maybe change the rules as we go along here. 'But in the meantime, as it stands, if you're not insured beyond the $3,000, find out about it and don't let yourself be open for surprises.' In his letter to the cottage associations last November, Mayor Fontaine used fire protection as part of his argument for an annual fee to be paid by cottagers to the city. Divided evenly He said the cost of fire protection, if divided evenly among all lots in Flin Flon and the cottage subdivisions, works out to $126 a year. The mayor asked all cottagers to voluntarily pay that amount, and for year-round cottagers to dole out an additional $756 _ for a total of $882 _ to take into account other city services. The cottage associations have said they agree with the need for 'a reasonable cost structure to address the level of fire protection' the city provides. But in a letter to mayor and council, the associations balked at the proposal for an $882 fee that goes well beyond fire protection Mayor Fontaine has also argued that same-day costs are only one part of the cost of a fire department, as personnel must be trained and equipment purchased, among other expenses. Specific data on how many times the fire department has responded to an outlying blaze, and then received only $3,000 in return, were not available at press time.
