This has always been a hot topic of debate no matter where you live. I'll do my best to explain it.
Yes your property taxes pay for municipal services, but the money only goes so far. For example, if you live in a city, you pay an annual property tax. We'll say you pay $300 a year in tax. That $300 goes to all the departments a city provides water, sewer, fire, police, ems, 911, roads, admin, etc. So the smaller a city is , the less money ther is for all those diffrent services.
Your tax basicilly covers the crew to be available 24/7. Once they arrive onscene, the work begins. The FD has to cover their cost of the service. Salaries, equipment, fuel, etc. For example, youcall the FD for a fire at your home. And we'll say the entire $300 in tax went to the FD. When the FD arrives onscene with two fire trucks, eight firefighters and ahost of equipment, uses 5,000 gallons of water, and takes acouple of hours to put ot the fire and clean up. Do you think that $300 will cover all that? Therefore, they may charge a fee to recoup some of their expense.
Here's anoyher way to view it. My department works a lot of motor vehicle accidents. Most of those MVAs are from out of state drivers. Should your tax dollars be spent for the FD to come out and spend an hour or so working the MVA, using your tax dollars without charging the owners of the vehicles involved?
Some citie suse the EPA rule that water cannot be given away for free, so the citymay charge for the water the FD used to put out the fire. The problem comes, in your case, that the fire was out by the time the FD got there and they didn't flow any water. But they may still cherge you for comming out.
A little known fact, homeowners insurance has a cushion built into them to cover charges and fees issued by an emergency agency. If you receive a bill from the FD, just forward it to your homeowners insurance.
I hope this helps. We all are taxed to death anyway, so why rub salt in a wound when you have a fire? The wisdom of our leaders is, well sometimes not there. I can't answer why they make the decision they do. But I can tell you this, folks usually don't think about things like this untill they have an emergency. Please don't let it prevent you from calling 911. That's why we're here. No matter how big or small, we're her 24/7.