There's a crisis in the Town of Rochester. The Accord-Kerhonkson rescue and ambulance squad is out of just about everything, and it's quite possible that it will cease to exist. If it does, and you get in a car accident on that stretch of Route 209, what happens?

Well, a commercial ambulance service steps in, in this case most probably Mobile Life Support Services, which has stations in Rosendale and Kingston. Round trip times will increase markedly, perhaps placing peoples' lives in jeopardy. The cost for this service will also have to be picked up by NY State taxpayers.

And while you wait for the ambulance to arrive, you might reflect on this odd gap in our thinking, these days.

Modern-day Americans expect to be rescued. They expect that, when they call 911 after an accident, no matter where, an ambulance (or even a helicopter) will come and take care of them. And not just that, they expect that ambulance to be there in minutes, even in a rural area.

At the same time, modern-day Americans are very unwilling to fork over the tax dollars to fund such a service. Does this sound familiar?

We blithely expect something that we don't care to pay for.

While thinking about this, let's take note of an interesting little side issue. There's a small charge on our phone bills, placed there by New York State government to pay the costs of 911 service. It amounts to just a dollar or two on a typical phone bill, a pittance really, but when multiplied by the millions of phones in New York, it adds up to a substantial sum of money.

The State, however, gives only a tiny fraction of this money to the services for which it was designed to pay. The rest vanishes into the corrupt stew that is our state capitol and is spent elsewhere. That sounds familiar, too, doesn't it?

Meanwhile there's a slow-growing crisis across our region, as economic and social pressures mount up on volunteer firefighting and ambulance services. The volunteers are working people, from many walks of life. They give up their time to serve. They pay for their own training. When a call comes in, they may even leave their jobs, race to a fire or an accident and go into life-saving action.

And they are woefully under-supported.

Worse than this, as the pressures mount on our working people, fewer and fewer can afford the time and energy to serve as firefighters and ambulance staff.

People from Manhattan, who spend weekends in Orange, Ulster and Sullivan Counties, do not, generally speaking, volunteer. They're in the city five days a week, anyway. And they come from a world where all such services are fully paid for by taxes.

Ah, that dreaded word.

And indeed, the cost of a salaried fire department, or a similar ambulance service, is much, much greater than that of a volunteer one. It seems like a fiscal no-brainer: if people are willing to volunteer, they should get all the assistance they need. But try asking a Town Board for money today. You'll get laughed out of the room.

Again, Americans seem to want everything on the cheap. When we rail against taxes, we rarely take the time to think of how such vitriol impacts the lives of actual people. The old expression, that we can't have our cake and eat it too, seems entirely appropriate. Our local fire and ambulance companies still do an extraordinary job with too few volunteers and too few dollars, but they are feeling the strain and must have more support.

So, anti-tax zealots, the next time you truly need an emergency service (god forbid), don't be surprised if the service you receive isn't quite as rapid as you'd like. There wasn't enough money for gas.