Do we really need $9.11 Billion Dollars to support volunteer firefighters and other volunteer first responders? Over 7,000 people signed my petition to support it!

I haven’t posted anything on this page for a while because I couldn’t make sense out of the statement made by the NVFC. According to the National Volunteer Fire Council, “The time donated by volunteer firefighters saves localities across the United States an estimated $139 billion dollars

Here’s my issue with the $139 billion dollars, it just doesn’t add up.

As of 2018, there are around 1,216,600 firefighters serving in 27,228 fire departments nationwide and responding to emergencies from 58,150 fire stations. Of those firefighters, 31% or 346,150 were career firefighters and 69% or 788,250 were volunteers.
Source: Wikipedia

The average salary for a Firefighter is $43,704 per year in the United States. Salary estimates are based on 769 salaries submitted anonymously to Indeed by Firefighter employees, users, and collected from past and present job advertisements on Indeed in the past 36 months.
Source: Indeed

If we paid all the volunteers and average salary, this is what that math looks like.

788,250 volunteer firefighters x $43,704.00 = $34,449,678,000.00 Almost 35 Billion Dollars, so I still don’t follow the NVFC’s math, but clearly volunteer firefighters save their communities, their counties and states and the USA BILLIONS!

WHY NOT TAX RELIEF:

We pay the police. We pay other municipal employees to do their jobs. Why don’t we pay firefighters? We should but because volunteers have been working for free since the 1700’s it’s not in the budget. As a result, most volunteer firefighters have to hold down another full-time job.

If we aren’t going to pay them, why should we tax them on their full-time job?

We shouldn’t and we shouldn’t tax other volunteer first responders either who took them time to get trained and hold certificates attesting to that training and are actively responding to alarms.

Proposal:

Allow first responders to apply to FEMA for reimbursement for their service to their community.

Using the average wage $43,704.00, a 15% tax rebate would equal $6,555.60 That’s certainly not a big number, but it would help first responders to make ends meet in a country where the cost of living keeps climbing and the hours they can volunteer keeps shrinking.

If all firefighters qualified and went to the trouble to file for the tax rebate the number would be $6555 x 788,250 = $5,167,767.00 Just over $5 Billion. If you add in other volunteer first responders that number would go up. But not everyone would qualify to what standard FEMA declared or file the necessary paperwork.

As a result, we wouldn’t need to ask Congress for $9.11 Billion Dollars, but I still like it because our lawmakers wouldn’t need a calculator or a notepad to remember how much money we would like to finally support volunteer firefighters and other first responders in the USA.

A tax break would be a meaningful gesture of support to those who have served and sacrificed so much for their communities. Without them, who’s coming to rescue you?