Is your local firehouse and fire protection district a Federally run
operation?
Bill

Bill, you'll find that under the Patriot Act the US GOVT can require local
governments to perform certain functions related to national security. In many
cases, these are additional duties that carry an expensive price tag.

In spite of the fact that we are running up a
record deficit, certain things are still going unpaid......(Good grief, how
much would we be spending if we were living up to all of our
promises?)........and among those things are the monies that the FEDGOV
promised city, county, and state governments to pay for the federally mandated
security measures.

That's the relationship between decisions made on the FEDGOV level, and closing
the local firehouse.