There has been more than enough public outcry over the sentence given last week to the man who set fire to the former Mayville Diner back in 2019.

A sentence of seven weekends in the Chautauqua County Jail and restitution to the building’s owner, village of Mayville and a neighboring business hardly seems like enough for burning down a building owned by another person, though state Supreme Court Justice Grace Hanlon decided allowing the arsonist to work and support his 6-month-old child were more compelling than a harsh punishment.

But that list of victims is missing someone — or, we should say, a group of people. Proceedings like the one last week never seem to put a dollar value on the cost to actually fight an arson fire. In areas where there is a paid fire department, it’s easy to come up with a cost to taxpayers because accountants can calculate the amount of overtime paid, the cost of materials and equipment and, in especially strenuous fires, the treatment costs for firefighters injured fighting the fire. But rarely are those costs included when lawyers and judges talk about restitution. We will be the first to admit it’s harder to calculate such a cost for volunteer firefighters and volunteer fire departments, but Mayville firefighters were assisted by on Dec. 9, 2019, by volunteers from Chautauqua, Dewittville, Hartfield, Sherman and Westfield.

Fighting that fire wasn’t free.

District Attorney Jason Schmidt argued for a tougher sentence in court last week, saying “It’s a societal issue, so that the community knows that an adequate punishment is obtained here for a criminal act.” In our view, one way for the community to know an adequate punishment is obtained for a criminal act is to ensure all affected parties are made whole. And that won’t happen until the cost of fighting these arson fires is taken into account by the court.

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