You're getting close to the truth of our own situation up here in the mountains.  We have a volunteer fire station down the road several miles.  However, our fire rating was still fairly high because fire trucks would have to make many trips back and forth to grab water and come all the way back up the mountain.<p>So the property owners' association purchased a big water tank on top of the mountain.  Now the fire trucks can refill locally without making long trips back down to the lake to refill.  So that helped a good bit.<p>Also, all of the roads up here are privately owned and maintained by our property owners association, and our annual dues have not increased in 9 years.